THE PRESS MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1981. Reforming drivers who drink

Press, 12 January 1981, Page 14

THE PRESS MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1981. Reforming drivers who drink

The Ministry of Transport will have to come up with better reasons than those given so far for its decision to scrap a trial programme to rehabilitate alcoholimpaired drivers. The department has dropped the plan for the course because it does not want offenders to be referred to a compulsory course, and because it believes offenders who have been disqualified from driving would have difficulty in attending the course. The community must hope that convicted offenders would, indeed, have difficulty in arranging transport for the period of their disqualification. This is the whole point of such a penalty. Public transport is adequate in many parts of New Zealand, including Wellington where the trial course was to have been held. Compulsory attendance at such a course—which was to have been spread over 16 hours and would have cost those attending a fee of sloo—would itself have been a useful penalty. No-one suggested that the course would make a rapid difference to New Zealand’s alarming road toll. “We were not starry-eyed about it,” said the chairman of the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council, Sir Leonard Thornton. Still, the course could hardly do harm. It would not have been particularly expensive, when measured against the cost of other attempts to reduce drinking and driving. Its cost would have been tiny measured against the cost of accidents caused by drunken driving each year.

Attendance at such courses might have been a useful alternative for courts seeking an appropriate penalty when convicting people for driving after drinking more alcohol than the law allows. More than 10,000 convictions are being recorded each year in New Zealand — well over 100,000 since hreath tests for suspected offenders were introduced in 1967. A typical sentence for an jiffender these days might be a fine of ?>4OO and disqualification from driving for a year. These parts of the penalty could easily be adjusted by the courts to take account of occasions when a driver was also ordered to attend, and pay for, a course designed to persuade the offender from mixing driving and excessive drinking. The present penalties are not especially effective. Hundreds of drivers are convicted each year for driving while disqualified; this suggests that many more, perhaps thousands, continue to drive in defiance of their prohibition. Fines are not always paid and the Justice Department has expressed concern about the difficulty of collecting; unpaid fines., <

No doubt many people convicted of drinking and driving offences accept their penalties, deplore their own conduct, and mend their ways. Equally certainly, many do not. In the first 10 years after breath tests were introduced, 10,000 people were convicted of drinking and driving offences for a second time. These are the people who might especially benefit from help. They have not been deterred by conviction and penalties. Some of them may have wider problems associated with their use of alcohol.

The decrease in the number of people killed and injured on the roads during traffic “blitzes” demonstrates the connection between excessive drinking and motor accidents. The effect of the blitzes appears to be declining. The blitzes also show that, at all times, a considerable number of drivers must be breaking the law and getting away with it. Ministry of Transport officers report that the number of offenders detected is limited by the manpower to police the roads, rather than by any marked or lasting improvement in the habits of drivers who drink.

If the roads are to be made safer for everyone, a considerable number of New Zealand drivers need to be persuaded or deterred from driving after they have been drinking to excess. In practice, they have to be stopped from pursuing one or other activity. Putting them in jail stops both drinking and driving, but still seems an excessive penalty for many offenders. Disqualification from driving is difficult to enforce. Confiscation of vehicles is an attractive penalty, but it raises legal difficulties and the ownership of a vehicle may not be relevant to the offence. Attempts to impose prohibitions on drinking seldom work; alcohol is too readily available.

All that remains is persuasion. Although persuasion might not be especially effective, it deserves a fair trial. Every offender who can be persuaded not to repeat his or her offence makes the roads a little safer. The Minister of Transport should think again about the rehabilitation scheme.

Even the exercise of devising a course of instruction, and the testing of it on a sample of offenders, would be a useful exercise. Although the results of courses might not be immediately apparent, the instructors themselves might uncover helpful information about the nature and attitudes of offenders. This information might be turned to good purpose ,in other parts, of the campaign against drinking and