A review of road safety announced yesterday could reduce the drink-drive limit to the equivalent of one pint of beer and introduce a new drug-drive limit.
British motoring bodies believe a lower limit would reduce fatalities compared with the 430 people killed by drink-driving last year.
The point they are missing?
Well, there are two possible reasons that this might alter the number of fatalities.
First, those people who are already breaking the law by driving while drunk stop driving because of the new limit. This I doubt. Strongly.
Secondly, the number of people who have accidents while driving while over the limit increases - because the limit is set to a lower value. This will increase the number killed by a process known as "moving the goal posts".
(The real question is how many of these deaths are caused by alcohol, how many from increasing the number of journeys included in the statistics. But that's a sensible question that isn't answered...)
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