THE DRUNKEN DRIVER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 46, 17 May 1927, Page 10

THE DRUNKEN DRIVER

CERTIFICATION DANGERS LONDON, March 22. The clause in the proposed Road Traffic Bill, which deals with the drunken driver, can only excite comment from the standpoint of the difficulty of saying when a driver is drunk in point of actual fact (says a motoring writer). The recent .findings of the British Medical Association Committee on Tests for Drunkenness are genuinely appalling in the danger of wrongful committal which they not only indicate but actually stress. They state: “There is no single symptom due to the consumption of alcoholic liquor which may not also be a sign of some other pathological condition.”

There can be no equivocation in regard to such a definite statement from such a high authority. Every sane citizen, motorist or nomotorist. wants to see the drunken driver eliminated. But in view of the medical dictum, great care is obviously necessary to avoid injustice. LOCAL DOCTORS’ ROTA

I make the following suggestion not because of any lack of trust in the ability and integrity of the average police surgeon, but because of the danger of error above referred to. In any case of alleged drunkenness the driver’s own medical attendant should be called in if possible, and, if not, a local independent doctor. There should be a rota of local doctors, and they should be called up in turn.

NERVOUS OLD LADIES

Old ladies occasionally venture into cars. Whatever they are now, they used to be very nervous and watchful. Particularly so was the Exeter dame, who could not with equanimity watch her driver signal with his hand to the traffic. Her nervous tension grew. At last she said: ‘Young man. you’ll be the death of us both, putting your hand out like that You attend to your work. I’ll tell you when it starts raining.”—“Morris-Owner.”