Safe Speed Forums

Hi anton,




Low level drinking probably IMPROVES the accident rate. NO research has been done to find out why. I think the ONUS is on the people who want a change in the law to prove the benefits BEFORE we change the law.

The travesty is that we have no data on the number of lives saved by the current limit. Or what will happen if we change the limit. Without this data we are very much making up policy in the dark.


It is interesting to note the initiial improvement in crash risk with BAC. It may be that having fast reactions increase crash risk for some reason. This does fit with highest crash risk being with young male drivers who also happen to have the fastest reaction times. All opinion sadly as NO proper research.



Richard

There is a theory. or perhaps a guess would be a better word, along these lines.

Having had a drink and having no way of knowing if they are legal or not, drivers do the very best they can to stay within the law and avoid any behaviour which could draw attention to them. In spite of driving to the highest standards they can manage some are still involved in incidents which result in breath tests. Suggesting that even a low level of alcohol adversely affects driving.

All opinion sadly as NO proper research.

There is no justification for your linkage of these two statements. They could be involved in an incident which is entirely the other party's fault and unrelated to their own driving.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Of course there is justification.
Yes they could be involved in an incident for which they are not to blame, but they could also be involved in one for which they are.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Yes, and even if they were to blame, they might well have made exactly the same mistake without the alcohol.

Fisherman seems to be suggesting that if people with alcohol levels between 1 and 79 mg claim to be able to drive competently, they should never cause accidents, with is patently absurd.

It's on a par with claiming that bread is dangerous because 90% of people who cause accidents have eaten bread in the past 12 hours.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Its patently obvious he's saying no such thing. I think your 'closeness' to this subject is resulting in you being the one making the absurd statements Peter.

This opposition towards a lowered drink-drive limit seems to be a throwback to the era of the liquid lunch and then drive back to work when attitudes towards drink driving were more casual than they are today. Certainly there are very few people I know who will drink alcohol at a lunchtime function if they are going to be driving afterwards. One who most notably does is a late middle aged individual for whom it was quite normal when he was younger for him and his colleagues to sink a few at lunchtime before driving back to work.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Not at all. What Fisherman said was "In spite of driving to the highest standards they can manage some are still involved in incidents which result in breath tests. Suggesting that even a low level of alcohol adversely affects driving." which clearly implies that he is saying that the mere fact that drivers with alcohol levels between 1 and 79 mg are involved in accidents suggests that the alcohol has impaired their driving ability, when it does no such thing. What you would need to look for, which is what Borkenstein did, is disproportionate accident involvement.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Damned wholegrain!

Better legislate against Hovis post-haste!

No, he's suggesting that it affected the driving of those invloved, not across the board. This may be because they were less tolerant to the effects than others.
They may have had their accident, even though it was ostensbly the others driver's fault, because their ability to anticipate the likely outcome of the unfolding events was slightly impaired.

And also Peter, there is no consistency in your stance on this subject and that of driving whilst conducting another task. Surely the same arguments apply - no alcohol is better than some alcohol, no extraneous task is better than some.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I made it abundantly clear that this is only a theory, and not my theory. I used the word "guess" deliberately to make it clear that I was not putting it forward as fact.

Please try to put your bias against me to one side and read what I actually post.

I'm sorry, I'm struggling to understand what you were saying, then.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

There is a theory which I neither support nor refute - as there seems to be no research upon which to base such a decision - it goes like this :-

Just about every driver can "improve" his or her driving for a short period of time (ie signal properly, obey the limit, correct lane discipline, sensible distance from car in front, not cutting in etc etc.) , especially when followed by a police car or taking a driving test.

drivers who have had a drink and who are aware they may be close to the limit almost unversally adopt this strategy to avoid giving the police a reason to stop them.

Numbers of them are stopped, in spite of this extra care, either because of a collision or because something in their driving aroused suspicion that they may be under the influence.

The extra care does allow some of them to avoid attracting the attention of the police, which leads to their under representation in the accident figures. Giving rise to a false impression that low levels of booze make you safer.

Those who support the theory are of the opinion that as so many are caught in spite of the extra care, the conclusion must be that any level of alcohol decreases ability to drive.


As I said before I neither support nor refute this. Its a theory that seems to be very popular amongst staff in casualty departments.

The number of assumptions piled upon one another makes this theory dubious. I am surprised that people in A&E are not more discerning as their profession is based almost exclusively on evidence based treatments.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Is the only suggestion that low BAC drivers are 'safer' stemming from accident statistics, or has there been research into the reaction times as motor task aptitude under more controlled conditions.

If the latter is true then the 'they're only safer drivers because they know they're slightly pissed' is clearly bunkum.

If these 'more careful' drivers avoid the attentions of the police, they clearly they are also avoiding the post-incident alcohol test that would inevitably follow any RTC.

In any case, surely anything that makes drivers take more care is a good thing, even if it is a glass of wine! This must be anathema to those posters here who clearly think that any alcohol is bad!

What if it makes them try to take more care but actually prevents them from successfully achieving this for sustained periods?

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

If they are underrepresented in the crash stats then it doesn't matter whether the alcohol is super-charging their driving skills or they're just being more careful; they are crashing less than the baseline. This is a good thing.

Sure, if its correct. But there are an awful lot of 'ifs' nested together in your previous post.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Which has nothing watsoever to do with the validity of the point!

Perhaps not, but the little dig in last line ......



.....is delivered as if the preceding supposition is in fact, well, fact. Which it isn't.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

You're suggesting that 'anything that makes drivers take more care is a good thing' is not fact?!