A Consultant in the Emergency Department at Letterkenny General Hospital has welcomed the Transport Minister Mr. Noel Dempsey's proposal to introduce legislation to reduce the legal limit for drink driving.
ED Consultant, Mr. Gerry Lane, has been to the forefront of road safety campaigns both north and south of the border, and is the face of a road safety advertising campaign which is broadcast on Irish and English television channels.
Mr Lane commen
ted: "As a frontline worker in the Emergency Department at Letterkenny General Hospital, I have seen too often at first hand the bloody pain and suffering which follows from Ireland's bizarre "love affair" with alcohol. I have read the current best research carefully and I know for a medical scientific fact that my relative risk of a fatal car crash is between 4-10 times more likely (400% to 1000% increased) if my blood alcohol level (BAC) is between 50-80 mg/dl than if I had no alcohol in my system. I know there is no alcohol level below which there is no risk of a collision, but a limit of 50mg/dl is a lot safer than a limit of 80mg/dl.
"Drinking any amount of alcohol impairs a driver's ability to drive safely. There is strong evidence from the international literature that reducing the legal limit will act as deterrent to drinking and driving. Other countries that have reduced the legal limit have seen a significant fall in deaths and injury. At the current legal limit in Ireland of 80mg/100ml a driver is 6 times more likely to be involved in a crash. The risk rises more steeply when the blood alcohol level reaches 50 mg/100ml.
"The World Health Organisation has called for all countries to reduce their legal limits to 50mg/100ml or lower. Ireland is one of only three EU countries with legal limits above 50mg/100ml. The United Kingdom and Malta are the only other two countries with legal limits higher than 50 mg/100ml.
"Drink driving is still a serious issue in Ireland. Research undertaken by the HSE has shown that alcohol is a contributory factor in 1 in 3 fatal crashes and that one in two drivers killed on the roads, where a blood alcohol level was available, had a blood alcohol level of 50mg/100ml or higher."
Mr. Lane went on: "We all know from Irish research that alcohol is a contributory factor in more than 1 in 3 (36%) of fatal road crashes, we know that 2 in 5 (40%) of drivers killed in Ireland tested positive for alcohol and that the rate of alcohol related driver deaths was highest in the 19 -34 age group. Declan Bedford from the HSE has shown what we all already know: that there is no safe level of alcohol when driving. We all know we are impaired driving because we know what alcohol does to us. We drink to "get mellow" or "to take the edge off", but that very "mellowness" or lack of "edge" causes the delay in decision-making or the incorrect decision-making when driving that leads to collisions. Alcohol continues to impair our judgment even the morning after, with up to 20% of fatally injured drivers killed in the morning still over the current alcohol limit.
According to Mr. Lane, we need, as a nation, to wake up from our "love affair" with alcohol and get in line with the best practices of Europe.
He concluded: "I know from excellent research that more than 1 in 4 of all injury attendances at this Emergency Department are alcohol related, and that up to 50% of attendances at Mater and Beaumont Emergency Departments are alcohol related."
