Free Life Commentary,
an independent journal of comment published on the Internet
Issue Number 7
12th December 1997
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The Christmas season always starts for me with my first call from the media to argue about drinking and driving. Every year, I go on radio and television to argue with someone from the Campaign Against Drinking and Driving. Their position is that the permitted legal alcohol limits for drivers need lowering. Mine is that there should be no limits. Usually, there are calls from people—set up in advance, I know—who say how awful it was when their 18 year-old daughter was killed by a drunken driver, and what a heartless monster I am for not abasing myself before their grief. Sometimes, a senior policeman is brought on to describe the joys of abolishing any remaining Common Law protections against random stops and tests for drivers.

My first appearance this year was last Friday morning—the 12th December—on Espresso, a Channel Five late breakfast programme presented by Tony Kerner. He showed an interview with Neil Kinnock—formerly Leader of the Labour Party, now European Union Commissioner on Transport—in which he called for a lowering of the alcohol limit from 8 per cent to 3 per cent, with a desired final limit of zero. In the studio with me was Ron Jessup of the Campaign Against Drinking and Driving and the comedienne Faith Brown. Except I accused Mr Kinnock of "speaking as carefully and falsely as one would expect of a European bureaucrat"—I like to abuse our new European masters as often as I get the opportunity—the programme went just like all the others. I faced the same anger and incomprehension as ever; and Mr Jessup and I wished each other a happy Christmas before going off about our other business.

The difference is that this year, I have decided to write down my reasons for opposing alcohol limits for drivers. These reasons never get properly aired in a studio debate—and my article might be picked up by the media, and I shall get another fee to say it all again in another studio. So, here we go with my case against making a crime of drinking and driving.

Let us begin with the statistics, which I have by fax from the Department of Transport and from the Web site of the Office for National Statistics <http://www.ons.gov.uk/ukinfigs/index.htm>. In 1994, there were in Great Britain 540 "fatal accidents where one driver or rider was over the legal limit". These are not all cases of pedestrians or other drivers killed by drunken drivers: an unknown but possibly large number is of drunken drivers who kill only themselves—not, I suggest, a matter for legal concern. But taking the figures as they stand, they work out as 14.79 per cent of the 3,650 total road deaths in 1994. They also work out at 0.086 per cent of the 627,600 deaths from all causes. Looked at another way, for every "fatal accidents where one driver or rider was over the legal limit", there were 15.37 deaths from other non-road accidents, 349.25 deaths from heart disease, and 299 legal abortions.

Of course, 540 drink-related driving road deaths are not to be written off as of no importance. But the point is that they are statistically very rare. On a dispassionate view of public policy, they do not merit the hysterical treatment they receive in the media and from the authorities. This year's drinking and driving campaign—"have none for the road", etc—is costing the Department of Transport 2 million; and the local authorities have their own budgets that do not appear in this figure. In 1994, 678,500 drivers were stopped by the Police in England and Wales and made to take breath tests. I do not know how much it costs to patrol the roads looking for these hundreds of thousands of drivers, but the financial and opportunity costs must be enormous.

Turning to punishments, under the Road Traffic Offences Act 1988, the normal penalty for driving or attempting to drive while under the influence of drink or drugs is six months' imprisonment, or a fine up to level 5, or both. Disqualification and endorsement are obligatory unless "special reasons" are adduced in court. And the vehicle may be forfeited. For being in charge of a vehicle while under the influence—this may mean having been caught at the wheel of a stationary car with the keys in the ignition, the maximum penalty is three months' imprisonment, or fine, or both.

Whenever I suggest in a studio that all this effort is far more than needed, the answer always comes back that it is justified if it saves even one life. Apply this standard of prevention to any other activity, and the results would be seen as absurd or tyrannical. We might, for example, have prevented thousands of Aids deaths by banning all homosexual acts and censoring the media to stop any reference to and therefore encouragement of gay sex. Instead, the last Government reduced the gay age of consent from 21 to 18, and this Government intends to reduce it to 16—measures that I regard as entirely just, but quite out of keeping with the philosophy of prevention at almost all costs that we hear in the discussions of drinking and driving.

I say at "almost" all costs. One valuable admission that I had from Mr Jessup last Thursday came when I suggested that most road deaths could be eliminated if the Government banned driving. His reply was that this would impose costs on society that vastly outweighed the benefits. These are the first words of sense that I have had out of anyone from the Campaign Against Drinking ad Driving. They also allow me to say that the law as it stands has costs that outweigh its benefits.

That cost is mainly in freedom. Until recently, one of the great safeguards of English law was that people could only be accosted by the Police if there was reasonable suspicion that they were committing a crime. The drink driving laws abolish that safeguard. The Road Traffic Act may explicitly disallow the Police from random stopping and testing of drivers. But the statistics and everyday experience say otherwise. Of the 678,500 drivers stopped and tested in 1994, only 14 per cent proved to be over the limit. That means 583,510 drivers tested who were not over the limit. Granted, the Police like to test drivers on any pretext—they once tested me when someone crashed into my car while it was parked outside a shop where I was buying something. But the likelihood is that many of those tests were carried out at the informal checkpoints set up at pub closing times in the weeks around Christmas.

To reduce the present limit to 3 per cent will mean an immense expansion in testing of this sort. Indeed, it will even require the allowance of random testing. At 8 per cent, most people do not obviously drive without due care and attention. At 3 per cent, there will be almost no impairment. There will be an entire abolition on the roads of the main barrier that stops the British Police from acting like the Gestapo.

I might add that Mr Kinnock's desired limit of zero will turn nearly all drivers into criminals—since most stomachs ferment enough alcohol from their ordinary contents to give a positive result in a blood test.

The other main cost is in the general work of the Police. Every officer assigned to looking for drivers over the limit is one officer fewer to catch real criminals. Christmas has lately become carnival time for burglars and muggers. There are fewer officers around to deter them, and fewer to go looking for them after the event.

I could mention the general loss of jollity that the law produces. The prospect of being stopped and tested means that around half the people at any party will drink nothing. If the Police had their way, and self-testing machines were banned from sale, parties would be drier still. This also is a cost. And if anyone is inclined to sneer at it, I will mention the case of Aids again. The growing legal indifference to gay sex in spite of its risks owes much to a praiseworthy desire not to interfere with private amusement. Yet more people die every year from Aids than from all causes on the roads.

The true reason for all the fuss about drinking and driving has little to do with saving lives. If it had, there would be similar concern about other causes of road accidents. A driver at the present limit has about as much chance of getting into an accident as someone who is stressed or tired or has drunk too much tea or coffee. Yet when I asked the Department of Transport, I learned that no figures are collected for such accidents. The campaign has much to do instead with furthering the agendas of various special interest groups.

It is the area of intersection between the anti-drink and the anti-car lobbies. The prohibitionists have been greatly set back in recent years by the discovery of evidence that even immoderate drinking is good for the heart. The anti-car lobby is limited by the fact that there are about 25 million road vehicles in the United Kingdom, and that their owners are still fairly reluctant to be pushed into the same abject public submission as smokers. Campaigns against drinking and driving are a blessing for these movements.

Then there are the Police. Catching drivers who are over the limit is much safer than catching real criminals. There is less chance of violent resistance. And there is the prospect of several hours off the road, filling out forms back in the station for every driver arrested. And, I suppose, there is the joy of power exercised over people who are richer and have nicer accents and cars. Look at their evident pleasure when they catch the occasional politician or High Court Judge.

None of this is to say that I think nothing of drinking and driving. I am firmly against it. My own desire to avoid doing it leads me to an absolute—and perhaps excessive—refusal to drink alcohol even the night before I know that I shall be driving. I simply do not believe it is right to have laws against drinking and driving.

I believe instead that being over a certain limit should be an aggravating circumstance for the courts when passing sentence on a driver who has caused an accident. I also believe that the penalties for causing death by dangerous driving are too low. I would abolish the offence and have the act subsumed under the general laws against homicide. A driver who negligently kills would then be charged with manslaughter or even murder. The maximum punishment then would be increased from the ten years' imprisonment plus fine, as at present, to imprisonment for life.

The usual objection I hear to this proposal is that people cannot be trusted to know their safe limit, and must have one prescribed for them by law. But this comes down to a general argument about the ability of ordinary people to act responsibly in any circumstances, and takes us into much wider arguments about the validity of Western liberalism—and I have said enough already.

I will conclude by wishing my readers a happy Christmas, or whatever else they may celebrate in its place. And I invite any media researcher who may be reading this and have a studio to fill in the next few days to call me on the above number and offer me another fee. Every little helps!