Alcohol accident link defended

Press, 25 January 1989, Page 2

Alcohol accident link defended

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Claims that play down the significance of alcohol as a cause of traffic accidents have been rejected by the Ministry of Transport. The acting general manager of the Ministry’s Land Transport Division, Mr John Toomath, said he was concerned about a recent Statistics Department report. It might have left people with

the impression that the role of alcohol in road accidents had been overstated, he said. It had been established clearly in many research studies both here and overseas that misuse of alcohol was the most important of the human factors so far identified as contributing to road accidents. The most recent such report in New Zealand, prepared by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communications and Road Safety in 1987, had said

that “about 300 lives were lost each year due to drinking and driving.” International research clearly demonstrated that as the amount of alcohol consumed increased, so accident risk in- .. creased, Mr Toomath said. In New Zealand, alcohol was involved in nearly 50 per cent of fatal accidents and about 20 per cent of other serious accidents. Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., about 75 per cent of

fatal accidents involved alcohol. Yet recent New Zealand surveys confirmed overseas findings that between 5 and 10 per cent of drivers had breath-alcohol concentrations over the legal ~ limit. This indicated a seven-fold over-representation of alcoholimpaired drivers, he said. The Ministry did not dispute the need for further research, but there was enough already to establish the serious nature of alcohol in road accidents.