INTOXICATED DRIVERS

Evening Star, Issue 22628, 21 April 1937, Page 8

INTOXICATED DRIVERS

THE BLOOD TEST INFALLIBLE 'EVIDENCE. Tlie nervous driver who makes a mistake i$ safeguarded, while the intoxicated driver is proved guilty beyond any dispute, when their bloqd is tested for alconolic content in accordance with a- technique developed by Professor Widmark, of the University of Lund, and adopted In Great Britain and most European countries. Describing the test and its value, in a recent book. Dr W. M'Adam Ecoles, consulting surgeon to _ St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, who visited New Zealand last year, stresses the fact that • there is no necessary relationship _ between the amount of alcohol imbibed and the percentage of alcohol actually circulating in the blood. # In one man there might be enough in his blood to make him “ under the influence ” after drinking only two small glasses of beer, while another man /usually a heavy , drinker) may have _ imbibed several drinks, even mixing drinks containing large proportions of alcohol, and yet when his blood is tested there will not be a large amount of alcohol circulating in it. i ONE DROP OF BLOOD. For the purposes of the test only t drop of blood from, the subject is neeaed, this being drawn into a capillary tube from a puncture in the finger or the lobe of the ear. Both ends of the tube are then sealed and sent to the laboratory, where, within a few hours, a skilled worker, using elaborate and extremely delicate apparatus, can determine the exact proportion of alcohol in the blood. Various tables showing the condition 1 of the subject corresponding to the ascertained quantity of alcohol circulating in the blood have been drawn up after exhaustive series of experiments. Dr Kenneth Soltau, of'London, after applying the test to over 100 cases,issued the following report The minimum percentage causing evidence in the person of being “unde* the influence ” was 0.088 per cent. The maximum found in any case wa« 0.430 per cent. In any person whose alcohol biood content was 0.1 per cent, there were always signs of being “ under the influence.” * AMERICAN STANDARD. As might be expected, an Americas' investigator, Dr Walter _L. Mile®, makes his table a little brighter. He puts it this way : 0.40 mg per cc: “You don t think I’m drunk do you? Why, I haven’t taken anything yet.” 0.50 mg per cc: “ Can lick anybody in the country.” Observable difficulty in lighting a match . 0.70 mg per cc: Amused at the seeming perversity of things. Upsets chaw on rising. 7 * 1.00 mg ner cc: Staggers perceptibly. Sings louefly. Complains that other* don’t keep their side of the road. 2.00 mg per cc: Can’t recall with whom he spent the evening. 4.00 mg per cc: Deep anaesthesia that mav bo ratal.

Dr Eccles suggests that every person involved in a road accident should be submitted to the teat, be he driver, pedestrian dr passenger, a"nd a conviction of being “ under the influence’* should follow, together with such punishment (in most cases a term of imprisonment) as is thought fit.