Minimum drinking age of 21 saves lives, study finds

[slofox]

Typical politician bullshit. Self-preservation and gravy-train continuance far more important about doing anything positive.

He is my local MP - guess he gets one less vote this time round huh?.....

[Flatcap]

The bread analogy is a bit daft for one very simple reason; eating bread does not impair one's ability to drive.

Unless said bread is wrapped around a pattie and you are driving with your knees while stuffing it in your cake-hole

[Genestho]

The bread analogy is a bit daft for one very simple reason; eating bread does not impair one's ability to drive. Drinking alcohol does.

But the majority of the points you raised are entirely right; raising the drinking age will have absolutely zero effect on the drink-drive incidents. The under-21s who want to drink will obtain alcohol from other places and drink it regardless. Evidence from countries that already have high legal drinking ages shows this; with supporting evidence that lowering the age makes alcohol consumption less of a rebellious act, and therefore something that isn't done to impress.

One method of reducing drink drive rates would be to lower the acceptable blood alcohol level down to a level that effectively means you cannot have a drink and drive, rather than the existing system whereby you can have a beer or maybe two, possibly three, before being rendered unfit to drive.

I have no evidence for this, but I imagine that many drink drive convictions are not the recidivist drunk driver types, but plain ordinary Joes who had a couple of drinks after work and thought they were OK to drive home. Doesn't take much mis-calculation to go from being just under the limit and pretty much sober to a bit over the limit and a little bit impaired. Obviously, this change would have to co-incide with an education campaign aimed at re-inforcing the message that one drink = conviction. Increased enforcement during the same period (and possibly in the run up to it) would also pay dividends, especially if enforcement was targetted towards educating people in a positive way.

Take this for example. The law is passed to make any blood / breath alcohol level illegal. The date on which the new rules come into force, say three months from the time the amendment to the Land Transport Act is passed, is heavily advertised on television, radio and in print. In the preceeding thress months, the cops step up their anti-drink drive enforcement campaign. Where drivers are detected with alcohol on their breath, and the evidentiary breath alcohol test shows them to be existing under the limit, they are not prosecuted (obviously; they've done nothing illegal) but are told that as of the date the new rules will come into force, had they been caught in identical circumstances, they'd be prosecuted, face loss of licence, plus increased insurance costs etc. Some leniency may be shown after the date too, so the rule change comes acros not as an excuse for the cops to remove licences and generate revenue, but a safety measure.

There could also be some more measures taken:

• Free shuttle buses back from clubs or entertainment areas, together with free parking for the cars of inebriated drivers.
• Many clubs stamp your hand on entry as a proof of age or entrance check. Have a designated driver stamp, entitling the driver to free drinks, but no alcohol.
• Double rego fees for anyone with a drink driving conviction, which expires five years after the date of the conviction. If no further conviction has been recorded, the excess is refunded.
• Make alcohol awareness courses easier to come by, along with mandatory (and enforced) attendance following a drink drive conviction.
• Jail for recidivist drivers. No home detention. No community service. Jail.
• Make presentation of ID to buy alcohol mandatory no matter the apparent age of the purchaser. Only NZ driving licence and proof of age card acceptable. Should a drink drive conviction (possibly more than just one conviction) be recorded against the person, that information is prominently displayed on the licence / proof of age card and no alcohol can be sold to that person. it won't stop them obtaining alcohol, but it will make it more difficult to obtain.

I'm sure there are more ideas out there too. Essentially the trick is to effect a culture change, as that's the only thing that will lower the drink drive rates, and therefore casualties, in the long term.

You are correct in many areas, the numbers of dd offences are 29000 convicted with a third being recidivists. So there are two types to deal with

I have bought up the idea of dd details on licenses at Parliement, with repeat offenses or disqual details restricting access to purchase of second hand cars, much like the idea of handguns with projectiles - too expensive.
I have bought up getting rid of cars and selling them - targets too many people - a vote looser.
Zero tolerance? Too hard to Police.
Severe punishment? Prisons are full
I also support cheap subsidised public transport. And If I can get a hand with BADD, the idea is to have membership with discounted public transport for members.
Education should be pushed on whats in a standard drink and the amount per glass both by milligrams of pure alcohol. I have seeked help from Alac in this area and they have been extremely minimally forthcoming (50 brochures for - going by last years run numbers of 400 riders) and when I asked for graphics on whats in a standard drink my email was ignored...

In a review about to be conducted by the Govt looking into section 65 of the landtransport acttheyre looking into A and D treatment programs being more readily accessed by first and second time offenders, amongst other iniatives.

I bought up many of your exact ideas, and then some at Parliament, and the answers were too expensive, targeting majorities or vote loosing iniatives..

I suggest a novel idea being that we sentence according to our laws we have already, but we dont see that very often either..

However, please do write to your local MP or Newspaper with your ideas, all help is much appreaciated.

[avgas]

Noooo...but you do see habitual bike-binners, rugby injured and other similar repeat claimers of ACC..

Do they continue if the personal policy costs continue to increase?
Rather than say increasing the whole country's policy? aka notice rego costs lately