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Queensland Government to consider BAC of 0.02

By Matt Brogan |

The Queensland Government has released a discussion paper outlining plans to reduce the state’s blood alcohol limit for drivers from 0.05 to 0.02 per cent.

The new limit would bring Queensland in line with Sweden and Norway, which record the lowest road toll figures in the world.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says she believes the reduced limit should be adopted nationaly, but will first ask Queenslanders to comment on the proposal.

Spokespeople for state governments in New South Wales and Victoria both said there were currently no plans to change the limit in those states.

Queensland is also considering other options that include the immediate license suspension of drink drivers with a BAC level of 0.1  (down from 0.15) and the compulsory blood testing of drivers who attend hospital as a result of a traffic accident.

Alcohol related accidents formed 21 per cent of Queensland’s road toll figure for 2009.


 
  • Radbloke

    And I’m sure the intense training and testing procedure in Norway and Sweden to aquire a drivers licence has nothing to do with the road toll. No one drinks or speeds over there.

  • Mitch

    It should only be reduced if its proven that crashes would not have occured if the drive was at .02 compared to .05

  • fishman

    I have no problem with this – alcohol and cars are not a good combination, and this sends this message out loud and clear, whereas the current laws encourage people to have a couple of drinks and flirt with the limits…

  • MisterTwo

    The reason Sweden and Norway have the lowest road tolls is because their driving standards are about 200% higher than Australia, and about 400% higher than Queensland in particular. Just lowering the limit will not bring down the road toll overnight. Just proves how naive Australian state Governments are. The limit in the UK is around 0.08, with much faster traffic and a lot more cars on the road, but I’m pretty sure the number of deaths per 1000 population is lower than Australia because the driving standards and the roads are much better. Also the youngsters aspire to newer safer cars whereas here the kids aspire to a 15 year old Falcadore.

    • Martin

      You’re exactly right. Every month theres some new little publicly announced plan to lower road toll without them actually doing the only thing that will properly bring down the number of deaths on roads. DRIVER EDUCATION.

    • Marcoz

      Couldnt have said it better myself mister…

      So for the 90% of us responsible drivers who do the right thing…we shall be punished….just doesnt make fn sense…..getting rid of that ChesherCat smiling fat ass mole they call our premier sounds a better solution…

      imho of course… :)

  • Robert

    This has nothing to do with saving lives, this is just another way for the Queensland Government to raise more money from people driving cars, just the same as speeding cameras have not lowered the road toll, they have only raised revenue for the governments!

  • Splatcat

    The standard of roads in Australia has more to do with the number of deaths each year, than Drinking and Speeding combined. If govts were serious about reducing the death toll, they would use 100% of car registration fees, speeding fines and the revenue raised by other traffic infringements on increasing the standard of roads and, not on covering the economic mismanagement. There also needs to be tougher standards for getting a drivers license including increasing the standard of driving instruction and education.

  • John

    The BAC limit definitely needs to be lowered. They also need make compulsory blood testing of drivers who attend hospital as a result of a traffic accidents.

    I work in an emergency department and the percentage of accidents involving alcohol is huge. Unfortunately, unless police are present when I take the patients blood, the blood alcohol concentration CANNOT be used as evidence and doesn’t even get reported to the police.

    Also many drivers in accidents leave the scene immediately (often abandoning family & friends who are hurt), wait a few hours for their blood alcohol to reduce THEN present to emergency asking for help.

    Additionally, when measuring BAC on patients it is amazing to see the variation in how people handle their alcohol. Some people will be .05 and barely be conscious, others can hand 0.4 and seem sober.

    But the biggest issue should be what happens if you are caught exceeding the BAC limit. Currently it is a slap on the wrist. It should be a criminal offense with perhaps even crushing the persons car. A small fine and license suspension (which everyone seems to drive anyway) is far too soft for drink driving considering the potential consequences. Make the penalties of being caught a serious deterrent.

    Just my 2 cents…

  • Nick

    When the limit was dropped to .05 from .08 road deaths dropped 11% (and were attributed to that change). I think (from anecdotal evidence when I was in the Police) that this would not only target those between .02 and .05 but those who are also .05 – .07 where the judgement of their own level of intoxication has been less than accurate, it should remove such room for error. In saying that it is a major policy decision as much as a road safety one.

  • The Oracle’s Teacher

    That’s the way. Punish us all for a handfull of morons. I on occassion have a beer with other tradesmen after work before heading home. Never enough to put me near 0.05 and never enough to be a risk to other drivers. That will be taken off me because of the people that do abuse it. What a joke.

  • Jimmy

    I read some figures yesterday which where interesting – in Sweden and Norway, 4 out of every 100,000 people will die from alcohol related driving accidents. In Australia the figure is 8 out of 100,000 people. That’s a pretty minimal difference to take such drastic action.

    It really astounds me how much effort and money goes into drink-driving related campaigns. Sure, there needs to be a certain level of drink driving campaigns out there, and sure, people who drink drive are morons, but why aren’t there as many campaigns simply focused on reckless driving? I would’ve thought careless and reckless driving would be the major cause of accidents and deaths on the road. I’m not talking about speeding, drink driving or anything but things like overtaking in the wrong spot, misjudging corners, going too fast in the wet, not taking enough care at intersections etc. Why do we never see campaigns that include these things? Maybe because it’s difficult to politicise it? I don’t know… correct me if I’m wrong.

    • chris

      Minimal difference? According to your figures their road toll due to DUI is half ours. I thinking half is very significant.

      • Jimmy

        Yeah maybe so. Maths was never my strong point.

    • John

      The figure you quote is deaths. Try looking into morbidity as well as mortality and the figures will be significantly higher. I don’t dispute that our poor road conditions also contribute, but you can’t deny that drug and alcohol impacts negatively upon driving.

      Also if you do the math on the figures you quote:

      Australia population is approximately 20 million

      At current rates you quote 8/100,000 = 1600 people
      At Norway/Swedish rates 4/100,000 = 800 people

      Saving 800 lives a year seems like a significant difference to me….

      • Jimmy

        Yeah that’s true John. See my above comment. The way the figures where presented made it look insignificant to my maths adverse mind I guess.

      • Betty Blue

        How good are the roads in Norway/Sweden compared to Australia. It is easy to compare their legal limit with ours, but if their roads are of a higher standard than ours, it could be easily argued that road quality has more affect on the death toll then the legal limit.

        • Michael

          My understanding is that there are many hundreds of miles of country lanes in that region. It is very difficult to police, so speeding is very common (average kph over speed limit is much greater than here and if they could achieve the average kph over speed limit we have in Australia they’d be delighted). Don’t know about DUI. Norway has a bit of a rep tho’!

  • qqq

    driver education is the way to lower the road toll, the average australian driver is pretty damn poor. the increasing amount of fines in victoria could pay for huge improvements in driver education.

  • Millatime

    Agree with John above, and would go even further. Limit should be 00 for everyone. It has been demonstrated time and time again, irrefutably, that alcohol and driving has tragic consequences. They should not be mixed ever. If you have a drink, even one, you don’t drive. Simple.

  • Valet Dabess

    that’s like saying yes this is a highway but you can only do 40 kmh

    • Millatime

      Sorry, but I can’t see the connection…

      Let’s not forget that the road toll is only one part of the equation. Equally important but always overlooked is the number of people who survive road trauma, but are left with permanent injuries, disability, disfigurement, unable to work etc…

      Driving on our roads is dangerous. Our poorly maintained roads are a joke, our licensing is inadequate; the last thing we should be legally adding is alcohol.

  • Crossy

    There’s no question in the matter that alcohol and driving don’t mix but I would question the real reason for the Qld Govt bringing this up.
    If 21% of road deaths were supposedly alcohol related, I would think that lowering the limit will probably increase that percentage. All of sudden people with a level of 0.03 or 0.04 that are killed in a car accident are going to become an alcohol related death whereas before it would have been a different, probably non-alcohol related reason.
    The Qld Govt would then use this as a reason to bump up taxes on alcohol. End result, no lives saved.
    If people will drive now with a level higher than 0.05, lowering it to 0.02 is not going to stop them driving.
    Don’t lower the BAC, increase the penalties for driving over 0.05 to act as a deterrent instead.

  • Kieran

    What’s that smell? No, it’s not the smell of alcohol on the breath, it’s the putrid stench of another government knee-jerk, “Quick, let’s do something rash so we can be seen to be doing something!” reaction.

    I would like to see firm statistics showing how many drivers are BETWEEN 0% and 0.05% when involved in a fatal crash. I refuse to believe that someone who drinks responsibly should be punished because some other d***h*** has decided to get “hog-whimperingly bladdered” (May, James) before going for a drive.

    I’m imploring the state and federal governments to find the balls do something productive to reduce the road toll in the long term, to provide comprehensive, European-standard driver training, and stop using every single traffic collision as an excuse to take more of our money away!

  • sam

    Another stupid idea from another stupid government.

    May as well lower all speed limits to 40, because people can die from speeding

    people die from about 1000 other things. should we ban people using soap in the shower in case they slip over.

    We are living in a nazi state, new rules more taxes less freedoms.

  • i`m not from here

    Negative.In Czech rep. where i come from the legal limit is zero and policemen have analysers sensitive enough to detect alcohol reading even if you ate plum conserve(trace amount of alcohol) and yet the amount of drink drivers there is spectacular.So it`s another proof that tougher rules make no difference and/or situation worse.
    By the way ,making it compulsory to have your driving lights on (not fog lights) even during the day dropped the road toll by 17% in the first 6 months alone – bit of a commonsense to think about.

    • Jim

      Interesting… the lights thing is possibly a good idea.

      Only thing is maybe the weather is so good here that its not as big of a deal and wouldn’t help as much.

  • john

    I may be simpifying it a bit, but does anyone else see this idea as a way too get more revenue? I bet a government official was up all night thinking how many more people they could get too pay fines in the region between .02 and .05. Since when has any government been serious about the road toll. We have some good dual carriage highways with limits of 100 and some crappy road only wide enough too allow a couple mini’s too pass each other with the same limit. There are a myriad of factors that go into the road toll. Yes drink driving is a serious issue, but how much is one’s senses impacted at .05 versus .02? I would like too see some evidence from independent analysis on this matter!
    This is the government afterall, since when did one of their bright ideas ever make our lives easier, us safer and our wallets heavier. The reverse has been true for me!

  • http://www.davidmcsteen.com.au Drink driving lawyer

    Getting absolutely smashed on booze then getting behind the wheel of a car and endangering the lives of innocent young children and families just for a bit of fun. How bad would you call deliberately endangering the lives of innocent people. I hope the ECB have the guts to take action here and ban this idiot for at least two years, but I guess with the quality of cricketers in England they will take the PCB route and come out with egg on their face. Its hard to nkow who is the weaker board when dealing with rouge cricketers the PCB or ECB.

  • As if

    This is def a revenue raising scheme, if not just to get more people stuck in the government lock-ups for doing nothing but having a 3rd gold at the local bbq, ridicilious load of crap… So the government can get you unemployed and under their thumb, so you have to use public transport(more money for the gov.) and possibly put you in jail if you were to keep driving, as many people need their cars to maintain work, get you on centrelink so they can access you bank account, living in a country of underground communism…

  • Whats next ?

    If they are going to reduce the limit to .02 they may as well lower it to .00. I mean what’s the point of having anything to drink if that’s the limit. I don’t know about anyone else but if I have a couple of beers and drive I am a lot more cautious and deliberate with my driving knowing I have had a bit of alcohol and it could effect my response times. I am always conscious of my intake and around the .05 level I don’t feel that impaired at all the only way it could become a factor is if someone else was driving recklessly and I had to take evasive action my response time might be lowered by mili seconds. Again its idiots that cannot handle their alcohol that wreck it for everyone else and responsible people suffer. We don’t have a quality government or opposition we have no choice the major political parties in this country have morphed into one totalitarian regime right before our eyes and we just sit back and take it. We need to all wakeup to this. We need a real option in the selection of governments state and federal in this country. Maybe it’s a good thing we are going down this road because their will come a time when people will finally say enough is enough and do something about it.

  • Whats next ?

    You know why they want to make it .02 and not .00. Because if its .00 responsible people wont drink at all. If its .02 they know that some people might misjudge their intake and Mistakenly go over. This equates to more money in the coffers.

  • Drinkers not Drivers

    Maybe its Drinking that should be looked at not Driving, Yes there may be a higher rate of road accidents due to drink drivers, but then its not only the drink driving that is the cause, poor road infrustructure plays a big part. After having had a car accident last yr I now understand how easy it is to have an accident, I had done nothing wrong, no acohol involved, no phone useage, no smoking, no cd changing, NO speeding. Perhaps it should be the legal age limit of drinking that should be addressed or perhaps the age limit of learner drivers that should be increased. As leaving school and entering into the real world of responsibility, youngsters today are too ill prepared for driving in general, I think majority rule that education is a major factor and maybe that should be an issue that schools need to take on. Drivers Ed in schools would be a starting point. Wheather you agree or not the bottom line is reducing the alcohol limit will not solve the problem, it will only increase it.