Drivers may soon be banned from drinking any alcohol before getting behind the wheel.
“We are going to do away with the alcohol limit. We are drafting a document and we will put it out for public comment on the zero alcohol limit proposal,” said
John Motsatsing, chief director of road transport regulations in the Department of Transport.
“Irrespective of how many drinks you have had, you cannot judge if you are over or above the alcohol limit because you are not an expert,” he said.
“Why, therefore, can we not say ‘no drinking at all’ if you are driving?”
At least 203 people were killed in road accidents over the Easter weekend, according to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC).
It is estimated that almost half of the people injured in weekend road accidents are in public hospitals as a result of the abuse of alcohol.
In metropolitan roadblocks, one in 10 drivers tested was above the legal alcohol limit, said Ashref Ismail of the RTMC.
Motoring website driving.co.za said this week that according to the National Injury Mortality Surveillance system that reports on non-natural deaths from mortuaries, traffic accidents accounted for 29 percent of all unnatural deaths.
The reports said 57 percent of drivers tested positive for alcohol in 2008 – an increase of 16 percent from statistics compiled in 2002.
The reports showed an alarming growth in alcohol use by all road users. There was an overall 6 percent increase by 2008 in the number of people who died in traffic accidents while they had alcohol in their bloodstream compared to 2002.
Howard Demvosky, chairman of the motorists’ lobby group Justice Project SA, said giving people permission to drive while under the influence of any amount of alcohol was irresponsible.
“It is not yet illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol in South Africa,” he said.
“It is just illegal to drive under the influence of too much alcohol. It is our belief that the limit on alcohol you may consume prior to driving should be scrapped entirely as it causes confusion and leaves things open to interpretation.”
Caro Smit, director of South Africans Against Drunk Driving, agreed.
She said her organisation would support a 0.02 limit that allows some sort of reasonable leeway for measurement error – especially to avoid criminalising people for taking medicine such as cough mixture when they have a sore throat.
“We feel strongly that the alcohol limit should be lowered drastically,” she said. “However, we wish to warn that it is no use lowering the limit if authorities are not going to catch those who drink and drive.
“They have got to catch people every single day but we still do not have enough testing of drunk drivers.”
Alta Swanepoel, an independent traffic and transport consultant, said a zero alcohol limit may not be easy to police.
“I would say the best way to hit an elephant is to cut it bit by bit,” she said, suggesting the plan could start with drivers aged between 18 and 25.
“It will be totally unmanageable to put a blanket prohibition for everyone. We don’t have enough traffic officers to take on hundreds of people and charge them at the same time.”
Gary Ronald, of the Automobile Association, said: “We certainly will support this. It is high time but this will also depend on the type of law enforcement that is brought with it.”
Ronald said that in Brazil there was a 30 percent reduction in road fatalities in three months after the zero alcohol limit was adopted. - Saturday Star