Report Says That Young Drivers Risk Lives By Drink Driving

Tuesday, 20. January 2009

1 in 12 seventeen to twenty five year old drivers don’t believe that they will ever get caught when drink driving compared to 1 in 25 older drivers. These findings were the result of a survey carried out amongst 4,000 drivers by safety charity BRAKE and Green Flag Motoring Assistance. Safety organisations have been pushing to extend police powers to enable them to breathalyse drivers without reason to suspect that they have been drinking. At the moment police can only stop and breathalyse a driver if they have reason to believe that they are drunk driving eg. driving erratically. The government has issued a consultancy paper which does not include random testing. BRAKE will be responding with the call for random breath tests as well as a reduction from the current limit of 80mg per 100ml of blood, one of the highest in Europe, down to 50mg per 100ml. By Graham Hill