finisterre
Active Member
Personally I would rather have the option to have another pint of shandy.
They should let people live their lives in a reasonable way without hassling the basically safe and law abiding. When the government chooses to criminalise us all they are not acting in our interest, they are pushing us towards a police state.
We currently have the freedom to drive responsibly and have a pint but that isn't good enough, the authoritarians want to control and condemn every aspect of our lives, we are assumed to be a danger without reasonable proof. There will be a good chance that we will be classed as an enemy of the state when we venture out of our homes (if we eat a ripe grape).
It's a fascist regime.
-----------
From Why 50 mg is Wrong
The Two-Pint Men
These are the people (and they are usually men) who are visiting licensed premises and drinking an amount of alcohol that they believe will put them in the 50 - 80 mg BAC range. Two pints of ordinary strength beer is the commonly accepted figure of the maximum you can drink and still stay below 80 mg, but they may in fact be drinking one and a half pints, or two and a half, or even three, and indeed they may be deluding themselves. The key factor is that they believe they are staying within the law.
This is the group where a lower limit would have most effect, because these are people who broadly speaking want to obey the law. Probably a majority would change their behaviour and on most occasions ensure they drink no more than whatever amount they believe will keep them within 50 mg. Whether they did this by going to the same pub and drinking less, not going to the pub at all, or leaving the car at home and walking to another pub, is largely irrelevant here.
That may well have a major impact on the business of pubs in out-of-town locations. But it is much less clear that it would make much difference to casualties. In practice, because of the extremely unpredictable rate at which alcohol is absorbed by the body, nobody can "drink up to the limit". Either you play safe, and stay comfortably below it, or you try to drink up to the limit, and run a serious risk of exceeding it.
So the people who are trying to abide by the law are general at the lower end of the 50 - 80 mg range, where the additional risk is small or non-existent. As mentioned above, two pints of beer in the 3.5% - 4% ABV range will probably lead to a maximum BAC concentration of around 60 mg in an average sized man, and that will not occur until about an hour after he has finished his second pint, by which time he may well have driven home from the pub. The "two pint man" may in reality not even exceed 50 mg while driving. That of course is no guarantee that he won't, but it does indicate clearly that even if you succeeded in getting most of them to cut down to one or one and a half pints, any reduction in casualties would be marginal in the extreme and would be lost in the noise of accident statistics.
The government consultation document came up with some figures (without properly identifying the source) that indicated that the additional serious accident risk in the 50 - 80 mg range could be up to 5 times that of a completely sober driver. However, my interpretation of the Grand Rapids (Borkenstein) study, which is the main source of these statistics, is that the additional risk is more in the order of 20 - 50%, and half as much again as negligible is still pretty much negligible.
It has been suggested that any new legislation might not give driving bans to people convicted of driving with alcohol levels between 50 and 80 mg, but merely impose fines and penalty points similar to speeding offences. If this were to be the case, it is likely that many who were previously in the habit of driving after "two pints" would continue to do as they did before, at least until they were caught for the first time. These people have already ignored the official advice not to touch a drop before driving and presumably are not in agreement with the limit cut, so they could well be inclined to chance their arm.
In practice you are still very unlikely to be breath tested unless involved in an accident, particularly at lunchtime, and many would probably ride their luck for a long time. (I don't propose to turn this into an examination of my own behaviour, but suffice to say I have been driving since 1976 and have been breath tested precisely once). Indeed in the past few years, the increasing replacement of traffic patrols by speed cameras has reduced the chances of being tested. Some might cut down for a while (maybe from two or two and a half pints to one and a half) but, if they escaped being stopped and tested for a few months, be tempted to revert to their previous behaviour. This further undermines the argument that an assault on the habits of the "two pint men" would make much difference to road casualties.
The other penalty option that has been mooted is to impose a shorter driving ban, say of six months, on drivers in the 50 - 80 mg range. This obviously would seem disproportionately harsh to many, and could even encourage some who previously did their best to keep below 80 mg to take the view that they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. A ban is a ban, and someone banned for six months would have to make all the same inconvenient lifestyle adjustments as they would if banned for a full year, albeit for a shorter period. The risk of losing their job would probably be just as great. While mandatory bans for 50 - 80 mg offenders would undoubtedly encourage more "two pint men" to drop down below 50 mg, they would provide no meaningful incentive to keep below 80 mg, and could lead to an increase in people knowingly driving in the 80 - 120 mg range.
They should let people live their lives in a reasonable way without hassling the basically safe and law abiding. When the government chooses to criminalise us all they are not acting in our interest, they are pushing us towards a police state.
We currently have the freedom to drive responsibly and have a pint but that isn't good enough, the authoritarians want to control and condemn every aspect of our lives, we are assumed to be a danger without reasonable proof. There will be a good chance that we will be classed as an enemy of the state when we venture out of our homes (if we eat a ripe grape).
It's a fascist regime.
-----------
From Why 50 mg is Wrong
The Two-Pint Men
These are the people (and they are usually men) who are visiting licensed premises and drinking an amount of alcohol that they believe will put them in the 50 - 80 mg BAC range. Two pints of ordinary strength beer is the commonly accepted figure of the maximum you can drink and still stay below 80 mg, but they may in fact be drinking one and a half pints, or two and a half, or even three, and indeed they may be deluding themselves. The key factor is that they believe they are staying within the law.
This is the group where a lower limit would have most effect, because these are people who broadly speaking want to obey the law. Probably a majority would change their behaviour and on most occasions ensure they drink no more than whatever amount they believe will keep them within 50 mg. Whether they did this by going to the same pub and drinking less, not going to the pub at all, or leaving the car at home and walking to another pub, is largely irrelevant here.
That may well have a major impact on the business of pubs in out-of-town locations. But it is much less clear that it would make much difference to casualties. In practice, because of the extremely unpredictable rate at which alcohol is absorbed by the body, nobody can "drink up to the limit". Either you play safe, and stay comfortably below it, or you try to drink up to the limit, and run a serious risk of exceeding it.
So the people who are trying to abide by the law are general at the lower end of the 50 - 80 mg range, where the additional risk is small or non-existent. As mentioned above, two pints of beer in the 3.5% - 4% ABV range will probably lead to a maximum BAC concentration of around 60 mg in an average sized man, and that will not occur until about an hour after he has finished his second pint, by which time he may well have driven home from the pub. The "two pint man" may in reality not even exceed 50 mg while driving. That of course is no guarantee that he won't, but it does indicate clearly that even if you succeeded in getting most of them to cut down to one or one and a half pints, any reduction in casualties would be marginal in the extreme and would be lost in the noise of accident statistics.
The government consultation document came up with some figures (without properly identifying the source) that indicated that the additional serious accident risk in the 50 - 80 mg range could be up to 5 times that of a completely sober driver. However, my interpretation of the Grand Rapids (Borkenstein) study, which is the main source of these statistics, is that the additional risk is more in the order of 20 - 50%, and half as much again as negligible is still pretty much negligible.
It has been suggested that any new legislation might not give driving bans to people convicted of driving with alcohol levels between 50 and 80 mg, but merely impose fines and penalty points similar to speeding offences. If this were to be the case, it is likely that many who were previously in the habit of driving after "two pints" would continue to do as they did before, at least until they were caught for the first time. These people have already ignored the official advice not to touch a drop before driving and presumably are not in agreement with the limit cut, so they could well be inclined to chance their arm.
In practice you are still very unlikely to be breath tested unless involved in an accident, particularly at lunchtime, and many would probably ride their luck for a long time. (I don't propose to turn this into an examination of my own behaviour, but suffice to say I have been driving since 1976 and have been breath tested precisely once). Indeed in the past few years, the increasing replacement of traffic patrols by speed cameras has reduced the chances of being tested. Some might cut down for a while (maybe from two or two and a half pints to one and a half) but, if they escaped being stopped and tested for a few months, be tempted to revert to their previous behaviour. This further undermines the argument that an assault on the habits of the "two pint men" would make much difference to road casualties.
The other penalty option that has been mooted is to impose a shorter driving ban, say of six months, on drivers in the 50 - 80 mg range. This obviously would seem disproportionately harsh to many, and could even encourage some who previously did their best to keep below 80 mg to take the view that they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. A ban is a ban, and someone banned for six months would have to make all the same inconvenient lifestyle adjustments as they would if banned for a full year, albeit for a shorter period. The risk of losing their job would probably be just as great. While mandatory bans for 50 - 80 mg offenders would undoubtedly encourage more "two pint men" to drop down below 50 mg, they would provide no meaningful incentive to keep below 80 mg, and could lead to an increase in people knowingly driving in the 80 - 120 mg range.
