Road toll ‘disaster’

Press, 10 April 1978, Page 6

Road toll ‘disaster’

New Zealand’s annual death toll on the roads was a health problem that had become a national disaster, said Dr Morgan Fahey at the Pharmacy Society’s conference in Christchurch yesterday. New Zealand was the only country he knew of where the road toll was rising instead of falling. “Last year 707 people died on our roads, 90 more than in the previous year,” said Dr Fahey, Christchurch’s leading accidentcare doctor. “Analysis of the most recent 121 accidents shows that 78 per cent of drivers had a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit," Dr Fahey said. Young drivers, drinking on empty stomachs and driving older cars, were the most lethal combination. Although the official view was that alcohol had been

involved in only about half of last year’s road accidents, th at figure was “gro s sly

conservative,” he said, because not all drivers involved in accidents were tested for blood-alcohol levels. A traffic accident was the most likely cause of death for New Zealanders aged under 45, Dr Fahey said. Of any group of 200 schoolboys (he addressed on road safety, 'four would be dead before (they .were 25 from such accidents and 50 more would have been in hospital. “We have got to stop ; building booze barns where the barman does not know who he is serving, or how much he has drunk,” Dr ! Fahey said. “Nor will we (solve the problem just by (sending people to jail. The ! courts should understand the (nature of alcoholism, and relalise that 80 per cent of it lean be cured at treatment (centres.”