The Queensland Government have released the Drink Driving in Queensland Discussion Paper which asks for the public to comment on a range of measures to curb drink driving including dropping the allowable blood alcohol limit to 0.02. Copies of the ministerial media statement are available here. Below experts respond.

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Professor Barry Watson is Director of CARRS-Q - The Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety - Queensland at the Queensland University of Technology

“I think that the move to .02 is certainly something that we need to consider and its certainly something that we need to encourage public discussion about. There is some evidence that it would be beneficial. There’s already a number of countries in the world that have a .02 or .03 limit including countries like Norway, Sweden and Japan. And while there is some evidence that the introduction of the lower limit in those countries reduced crashes, it’s difficult to be definitive about it because that counter measure in most of those countries was implemented along with other things, so it’s very difficult to disentangle the unique effect of the lower limit.

Having said that, there are some other good reasons for considering it: one is that at .05 people are impaired, I think more so than they probably realise, and research does suggest that your crash risk does increase and, by .05 is somewhere between one and a half to two times that of a sober driver.

The thing we’d need to bear in mind though is that any crash reductions would not necessarily be large but it may send a message to the community about the ongoing need to tackle the drink-driving problem. One thing I do think we need to be concerned about is the timing of a change like this because at the moment there is very strong support for drink driving initiatives like random breath testing. We would need to make sure there was reasonably strong community support for it so it didn’t undermine the support for our other drink driving initiatives. Therefore, I think the way forward here is for governments to really be undertaking more public education, to tell people about the dangers of driving even with small amounts of alcohol in their system and to really encourage people to voluntarily choose not to drink at all when they drive, so that in the future then if we move towards the .02 limit it wouldn’t be as big an adjustment for people.”

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Dr Alex Wodak is Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney

“The risk of a car crash with a blood alcohol of 0.05 is double that of a driver who has not consumed any alcohol. The risk at 0.08 is treble. It is worth reducing the maximum blood alcohol concentration to 0.02 for young and inexperienced drivers. But I expect that the law of diminishing returns would operate if the maximum blood alcohol concentration was reduced to 0.02 for older and more experienced drivers. But the measure we should be debating is alcohol tax reform. This is the single intervention best supported by evidence of effectiveness. Reducing road crash deaths and serious injuries will be among the benefits of alcohol tax reform. We should also be putting more emphasis on cutting back on the availability of our favourite drug. There are too many outlets and the outlets have too liberal conditions. The choice of policy changes to reduce harms from alcohol should be based on evidence of effectiveness, likely magnitude of benefit, risk of unintended negative consequences, cost-effectiveness and feasibility. Adjusting for distance travelled, the number of road crash deaths in Australia has declined by a whopping two thirds in the last 30 years.”

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Professor Jake Najman is Director of the Queensland Alcohol and Drug Research and Education Centre at the University of Queensland

A key paper in this debate is by Hingson et al 1994 where he looked at a range of US states which had changed their laws in regard to the permissible level of blood alcohol. He found there was no “magic” level…some US states have zero blood alcohol rules, while others have .02 or .05 or .08. the lower the level of permissible alcohol in the blood the greater the reduction in fatal motor vehicle crashes. There is, of course, the need to enforce whatever level is legislated…those drinking and driving need to be persuaded that they are likely to be apprehended if they drink and drive…but generally the lower the level of blood alcohol the lower the rate of fatal deaths attributed to drink driving. Of course there is a need to legislate in the face of public opinion…so a zero blood alcohol level, while the optimum for health, may not be acceptable…this is a political decision.

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Professor Mike Daube is Professor of Health Policy and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute of WA at Curtin University. He is also President of the Public Health Association of Australia

“This is an important proposal that deserves very careful consideration - and is probably inevitable over time. It is very encouraging that the Prime Minister has called for the issue to be considered nationally - the road toll is a national crisis. Even at the present levels, far too many people think that drinking just a bit more than the limits is acceptable, and that they can get away with it. Drink-driving is the cause of not only road crashes, but death and injury that are devastating for those affected and their families. We need to send out the strongest possible signals that drink-driving is totally unacceptable. Surely as a community we have to recognize that we cannot keep putting the lives of innocent members of the public at risk, just because somebody wants an extra drink or two.

The case for .02 is that it sends out the message loud and clear - we can no longer tolerate the carnage caused by drink-driving. We can wait forever for yet more evidence - or we can decide as a nation that we need to act now.”

Mike is also involved in the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol (NAAA) - A new national coalition of health and community organisations from across Australia to reduce alcohol-related harm. A media release on the new alliance is available here.