In the News

Lower limits and random tests will save lives
By Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
March 13, 2010

Proposals for changes to the Criminal Code that would lower blood alcohol limits for drivers and provide for random testing to determine levels of impairment have predictably triggered a debate over whether the measures go too far in a democratic society.

We should be arguing instead over whether the measures go far enough.

Impaired drivers are killing their fellow Canadians in numbers that exceed our war casualties in Afghanistan.

In fact, estimating from Transport Canada tables for national traffic fatalities between 1980 and 2006 and from epidemiological research estimating the role of alcohol in those fatalities, impaired drivers have now killed just about as many of themselves, other drivers, passengers and pedestrians as the number of Canadian soldiers the Axis managed to kill during the Second World War.

Calculating conservatively, based on the annual number of alcohol-related driving injuries -- which range from catastrophic brain damage, paralysis and disfigurement to minor cuts and bruises requiring medical attention -- the total impaired driving casualty rate since 1980 now approaches two million victims.

It's estimated that in 2006 alone, the most recent year for which I could obtain firm statistics, alcohol was responsible for 1,278 traffic fatalities, 75,374 injuries and 163,893 non-injury accidents resulting in property damage. The total estimated cost was $12.8 billion.

So we are talking about a phenomenon which should be considered on the same scale of magnitude as any of the major wars in which Canada has been involved.

Considered in that light, perhaps the blood alcohol limit should be reduced to zero with graduated penalties increasing substantially and incrementally as blood alcohol levels rise for any driver testing positive. Penalties could start with roadside suspensions and fines and rise sharply through confiscation of the vehicle to jail sentences.

There's plenty of scientific research showing that the lower the threshold for considering a driver impaired, the greater the reduction in alcohol-related accidents and fatalities, particularly among younger drivers.

A recent Canadian study at the University of Western Ontario evaluated the effectiveness of graduated licensing programs for new drivers, which imposed either very low or zero tolerance for blood alcohol concentrations. After reviewing the current scientific evidence, the researchers urged that blood alcohol limits for all drivers under 21 be reduced to zero. Perhaps it should be zero tolerance for all drivers under 25.

This doesn't seem unreasonable considering that vehicle crashes are among the leading causes of death for youth and that 45.4 per cent of the drivers killed in 2006 who were aged 20 to 25 had been drinking.

Another study published in the Journal of Safety Research in 2006 examined the impact of lowering legally accepted blood alcohol concentrations for drivers from .10 to .08 in 14 American states and concluded that doing so reduced alcoholrelated crashes, fatalities and injuries by up to 16 per cent.

"There is strong evidence in the literature that lowering the blood alcohol concentration from .10 to .08 is effective, that lowering the blood alcohol concentration limit from .08 to .05 is effective, and that lowering the blood alcohol concentration limit for youth to .02 or lower is effective," the authors said. "These law changes serve as a general deterrent to drinking and driving and ultimately save lives."

Considered another way, the .08 blood alcohol limit gives a 77 kilogram man permission to consume a drink every 15 minutes for an hour on an empty stomach. A 60 kilogram woman has permission to consume a drink every 20 minutes. As one researcher observed, this is not exactly social drinking and when people's blood alcohol concentration reaches .08 they are already showing severe impairment in critical driving skills like judging distance and speed, steering, visual tracking, ability to concentrate, braking and staying in the driving lane.

Drinkers, of course, argue that they aren't impaired until after they hit the magic .08 threshold but by the time they reach that level they are already 11 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than somebody who has had zero to drink.

Logically, then, somebody at .05 or .07 is already in the range of impairment that should prohibit them from getting behind the wheel. This is corroborated by research conducted in 2006 by James Fell and Robert Voas for the Journal of Safety Research, which found that most drivers are "significantly impaired" at a .05 blood alcohol concentration.

Other research in Japan found that driving skills deteriorate and crash-involvement risk increases beginning at .02 per cent and concluded that higher blood alcohol standards encouraged drinkers to overestimate their capacity to consume alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

"There are consequences attached to setting a blood alcohol concentration limit so high that a 72 kilogram man can drink five bottles of beer and still be under the legal limit," the authors said.

In Japan, where permissible blood alcohol concentration for drivers was lowered to .03 per cent in 2002, subsequent research found statistically significant decreases in alcoholrelated crashes, single-vehicle night crashes and injury accidents for drivers aged 16-19.

"The evidence suggests that the lower blood alcohol concentration legal limit and perceived risk of detection are the two most important factors resulting in a sustained change in drinking and driving behaviour in Japan," the researchers concluded.

What were the consequences of the lowered limits? A study at the University of Tsukuba's Institute of Social Sciences found that as legal blood alcohol concentrations were lowered, alcohol involvement in fatal crashes declined "substantially."

Research in the U.S. reaches the same conclusions. An analysis of 25 years of data from 28 states found that by lowering blood alcohol limits from .10 to .08, an estimated 360 driving fatalities were avoided each year. "An additional 538 lives could be saved each year if the United States reduced the limit to .05, consistent with limits in most countries worldwide," the researchers argued.

Discussion over whether police should be empowered to administer random breathalyser tests to nab drivers over the legal limit will likely be heated.

However, perhaps it's worth remembering that a study of more than 6,000 drivers admitted to B.C. hospitals following a crash during the years from 1992 to 2000 found that only a third were tested for blood alcohol levels but of those who were, 47.1 per cent had been drinking.

Are random breath tests reasonable?

One might consider that proposal in the context of airport and other security measures enacted to deal with international terrorism.

In the big picture, Canadians are at far greater threat of being killed or maimed by some driver who pounds back five beers after work and then climbs into a car convinced that he or she is not impaired than they are at risk from international terrorists.

We need to get drunk drivers off the road and save lives -- their own and their innocent victims. That's what should be informing this public discussion rather than self-interested prejudices and misconceptions about the magnitude of the problem.