Official review of Section 65 of the Land Transport Act 1998

[Genestho]

Hey Jos, I did an interview on Prime news about this today thanks to our m8- was Ok but edited to max plus strung together in a hurry as they only had pinned me down late in day. I caught the Barnetts on 3 and 3 did a GOOOD job with no compromising to keep Govt onside.

Heres some useful info for days ahead. Govt is trying to "drown out" and distract by currying public support for what will be presented as an alternative better measure - lower limit.

Most important was Harrys soundbyte sounding dubious that "it might save a couple of lives but I'm not convinced there aren't more effective options". Sneaky, insidious, dangerous hint of the Govt plan of action.

An anti alcohol group Alcohol health watch is conspiring with ACC and other Govt agencies per a Press Release carefully timed for today, by forming a 0.05 saves lives campaign group. Pretty bad when a Govt has to drum up its own fake grass roots movement to silence others with real world experience and genuine evidence based suggestions.

This is what is motivating them - ballpark figures mind.

Combining info in the Breen Report for MoT and MADD stats (60% of recidivism nipped in bud not 50% per our Govt) interlocks for all second offenders would prevent 6 deaths, 24 serious injuries and save 30 milion in social costs. Cost of interlocks for all reoffenders caught at checkpoints yearly ='s 30 million. Reduced fines revenue from 60% less convictions on recidivists yearly ='s 4 million so net loss of 4 million to save 30 from death or serious injury. It doesn't stack up for Cullen.

Whereas taxing all those not likely to be dying or killing on roads who have one glass of wine with the reduced alcohol limit is likely to rake in 6 million at the barest minimum with much less hassle. It will have no road safety benefits per decade long studies of other jurisdictions like South Australia which is now thinking of lifting its limit back to ours so Police time won't be wasted - but what the hell.

.

Interesting, so they will have a go at everyone by going for a lower limit, instead of the hardcore bunch, must be why alac are keeping away from me, dont want to dirty themselves..Funny - you'd think we're supposed to be on the same side.

I can actually see some sense in lowering the limit if only to lower the road toll numbers, but wont this just up the drink drive conviction numbers, strain our booze buses and target the everyday Joes? I remember that was the reaction when Leon, Si and Toni were killed...and how would a 0.05 limit have prevented that tragedy? It wouldnt have.

I dont think Harry realises the significance between the everyday drink driver versus the hardcore drinkers, hes trying to put them all into the same square box.
Ah well my bonvoyage cards are ready

If Harrys not convinced that theres not better options - In all this time this crowd have been in Govt - I wonder why its taken for us to lean on him to consider any at all, and just before elections?

National is in on this too...I got a contact off for a meeting next week. Interesting times....

[candor]

Call me cynical but I would not imagine Harry even thinks about the issue let alone the difference between the everyday drink driver, the drunk driver or the hardcore one. He is simply a front person tasked with implementing Govt policy after all.

Lower limits (apart from teens) have never saved lives anywhere - and the media fodder suggesting this is distorting the studies re quite a complex matter. Poland and czechoslovakia have around the lowest limits like 0.03 and top the tolls btw.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/...ving/s15p3.htm

This link one is one of dozens of studies saying lower limits have no benefit after an initial short term effect. People wise up and decide that since its non criminal and like a speeding ticket they'll just take it on the chin if going out for a meal and a wine. Still States retain the 0.05 as it's a cash cow.

You'd think they'd use the profits to fund useful initiatives like alcolocks, drug tests etc but even when they do the drain on Police time as ticket dispensers is lately being seen as painful, so at least one state (the one in link) is looking at raising the limit back up.


A mass of studies like the one referenced is why ALAC was long against lower limits, only losing their integrity to ignore the best evidence & support the Govt campaign to engineer public consent this year. One wonders what inducement was offered...

[Genestho]

lol, funny.
Dont forget this is an official review, and its on section 65 for indefinately disqualified drivers, repeat drink drivers and IID's.
Its actually happening. They may not like it but theyve been told to do this.
Dont be discouraged, hang in there.
We'll find out in September what the findings are, if there is another side issue and its lowering bac? Well that will take care of itself.
The only comment (If im asked) Id make on this is how would a 0.05 limit have saved 4 lives, instead of being a 4x repeat, perhaps he wouldve had a few more offences? And one question Id ask, is if theres a lowering of bac, is there any intention to subsidise cheap travel alternatives?
IMHO not a very smart move unless backed by other initiatives..

[sunhuntin]

saw that on the dom yesterday... well done to you!

harry needs a smack over the head. i dont see him coming up with ways to keep repeat drunks off the roads. if its used in the states and canada, it must be ok.

if national gets in, does harry get booted out? if so, who gets his job?

[scumdog]

This link one is one of dozens of studies saying lower limits have no benefit after an initial short term effect. People wise up and decide that since its non criminal and like a speeding ticket they'll just take it on the chin if going out for a meal and a wine. Still States retain the 0.05 as it's a cash cow. ...

If 'taking it on the chin' was a lot more painful people would certainly pay attention.

They do that with the present penalties - that's why younger ones are now getting picked up for drink driving, the penalties are so yawn.

Even if caught over the adult limit (i.e. about three times over the youth limit) their fine is not much more than the one for breaching their learners licence, BFD.

[candor]

Yes agree they should subsidise alternate travel for unfit drivers. I'm not really negative about the review, as you say it's progress - but these politicians only go through motions of democracy before dictating.
Yes the current penalties are a joke, cars are the Kiwi murderers natural choice

Whereas taxing all those not likely to be dying or killing on roads who have one glass of wine with the reduced alcohol limit... .

Under 0.05 innocent drivers will be fined as the breathalysing equipment is not of evidential standard. It is 20% inaccurate, which is why Labour changerd law to say the test used need not be "conclusive" beyond doubt but rather just one approved by the Police Minister.

The manufacturer had threatened Police Comm Rob Robinson to withdraw the product from the market if defense lawyers were to be allowed as they sought to have the courts scrutinise their technology. I can't imagine any law change would permit doubtful offenders to seek confirmatory blood tests.

Alcohol Health watch has misinfo on its website saying the gear is accurate - despite all the effort to cover up that intoxilysers are not.

[Indoo]

Yes the current penalties are a joke, cars are the Kiwi murderers natural choice

Its not only the penalties which are a joke, but the entire judicial process when it comes to convicting drunk drivers. On the one hand we have huge amounts of money spent on advertising and attacking drunk drivers while on the other we have a legal system that has allowed the creation of an industry of defense lawyers who specialize in keeping drink drivers on the streets and free of convictions.

The merest of irrelevant technicalities are often deemed sufficient for a judge to dismiss the charge, the processes and practices have become so overly complex that it allows drink drivers to escape the consequences of their actions. If the Police can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person was driving on a road while above the legal limit then the charge should be proven and a conviction entered, whether or not it took x amounts of minutes for the person to be given an evidential test or they only got to speak to a lawyer 3 times rather than 4 times during the process or if some piece of paperwork wasn't filled in correctly, should not as in the present system be sufficient to dismiss the charge.

The system has become beyond a joke, and it makes a mockery of the good work done by groups such as BADD when the judicial system treats drink drivers with such a ridiculous degree of leniency given the serious consequences of their actions.

[Genestho]

saw that on the dom yesterday... well done to you!

harry needs a smack over the head. i dont see him coming up with ways to keep repeat drunks off the roads. if its used in the states and canada, it must be ok.

if national gets in, does harry get booted out? if so, who gets his job?

Yea Harrys gone if the Nats get in, Im pretty sure his replacement would be Maurice Williamson, and Chester Burrows would replace Annette King, (good thing for you guys to know, especially pre-elections)

Did Harry say "What a silly name for a lobby group re: Cheesecutters? If so theres another reason I find he appears pretty professional at missing the point.

[Genestho]

Its not only the penalties which are a joke, but the entire judicial process when it comes to convicting drunk drivers. On the one hand we have huge amounts of money spent on advertising and attacking drunk drivers while on the other we have a legal system that has allowed the creation of an industry of defense lawyers who specialize in keeping drink drivers on the streets and free of convictions.

Ive been advised by Roger Brooking (one of NZ's leading A and D assessors) that only 5% of drink drivers are reccomended for treatment programs by our court system, if thats the case - how are we supposed to assertain a potential threat on our roads and intervene early?

[Genestho]

The lowering of 0.05 has got me thinking, its quite concerning, I have no doubt with whose backing this, and comparitive to BACs worldwide, that it quite possibly could go through. There is a rise in alcohol related fatalities from 0.05 - 0.08 readings

For the purposes of debate.... compare lowering the bac from 0.08 to 0.05 - to setting a speed limit of 100, but we've removed the speedo.
How do you know how fast you go? (I know, I know the revs are an indicator)

How do you test your bac even now at 0.08?

What measures have this govt taken to educate us publically how to know whats in a standard drink? Or to inform us you drink more pure alcohol in a bigger glass.

I see no public awareness campaign on residual alcohol (the morning after bac reading - where last night you didnt drink and drive, but get pulled over at this point and your now well over)
Theres no public awareness campaign informing you, that only if your liver is healthy can it remove a standard drink from your system, per hour...

We'd need to have every bar and liquor store with recalibratable alco testers

Definately reliable public transport susidised. In london you can get 17 miles on the tube and this is one of the fattest night spots in the world!

I see no public awareness going on except to be told we're bloody idiots.

So maybe if they stopped spending money on telling us we're bloody idiots, and spend money in the more appropriate areas.

IMHO lowering to 0.05 really does seem like an easy out, it still doesnt fix recidivists, and if they were really serious, and really didnt want us drinking and driving, with it not possible for us to know our limit - a serious fix would be 0.00. Then we know exactly where we stand.

[candor]

From discussions I heard - the National alcohol policy is to push no drinking at all if driving - that is why no useful info is on offer any more. Some hope a 0.05 would effectively force us to go abstinent due to the ease with which you'd be found over. Those hoping that have links to fundamental churches but are very active in anti alcohol lobbying.

Of course the founder of MADD Candy Light left because the anti alcohol brigade got involved whose agenda and interest was not road safety.

We have a little info on drink rations on the Candor website with pics. For those who do drink a little and drive home breathalysers are avaiilable. A friend has one and has used it before going home from the pub every Fri night for 20 years. Cheap disposables are avail overseas or on the web.

I don't think there is any sustained rise in deaths at 0.05-0.08 - they are incredibly low regardless at 2, 3 or 4 yearly versus the numbers who'd be driving at that level. Compare that to the dozens of deadies with residual alcohol levels under 0.05 and the problem area iis clearly hangover driving.

As for tricky defence lawyers - they are the blight of every serious case.
Did you know that when dealing with rapes, murders and even car homicides their textbook (which I've read) actually has a chapter on how to objectify the victim so that judges and juries will not relate or empathise. I call it psychopathy training. Unethical, and should be criminalised. Defense lawyers who act for the badly guilty are defineately down there with other pondscum.

[Sanx]

Harry Duynhoven is a blithering idiot with the three active interconnected neurons he possesses ties up with repeated Labour phallacies ad nauseum.

[Genestho]

From discussions I heard - the National alcohol policy is to push no drinking at all if driving - that is why no useful info is on offer any more. Some hope a 0.05 would effectively force us to go abstinent due to the ease with which you'd be found over. Those hoping that have links to fundamental churches but are very active in anti alcohol lobbying.

Of course the founder of MADD Candy Light left because the anti alcohol brigade got involved whose agenda and interest was not road safety.

We have a little info on drink rations on the Candor website with pics. For those who do drink a little and drive home breathalysers are avaiilable. A friend has one and has used it before going home from the pub every Fri night for 20 years. Cheap disposables are avail overseas or on the web.

I don't think there is any sustained rise in deaths at 0.05-0.08 - they are incredibly low regardless at 2, 3 or 4 yearly versus the numbers who'd be driving at that level. Compare that to the dozens of deadies with residual alcohol levels under 0.05 and the problem area iis clearly hangover driving.

As for tricky defence lawyers - they are the blight of every serious case.
Did you know that when dealing with rapes, murders and even car homicides their textbook (which I've read) actually has a chapter on how to objectify the victim so that judges and juries will not relate or empathise. I call it psychopathy training. Unethical, and should be criminalised. Defense lawyers who act for the badly guilty are defineately down there with other pondscum.

Dude, looking at the NZ study of drivers involved in fatal crashes stats kindly provided by MOT, there is a significant rise in relative risk of alcohol related fatalities in 3 age groups from 0.05 - 0.08, the facts stand for themselves and Im sure they'll be used.

I can't see what time period they cover, but they're being used as current, I have a feeling these are the same stats used in the 2002-2003 report, in that case these stats need to be spread a little more accurately to the current time period. Then we would get a true reading.

The breathylisers we are sold in NZ are not accurate, or if they are to start with they soon appear to lose accuracy.

I have had a few in my home over the years and they were way out, very dangerous.
There are some available in the States that can be re- calibrated.

Say "Pizza Delivery Guy" ( the dehumanisation of Micheal Choy a classic illustration to what you've said) and in Harrys case; the tearfull jury not allowed access to Silas violent history, who then found it impossible to come to a decision over a few days whether this Sila was guilty or not. But I digress...

Anyway Ive dragged my own thread waaay off topic now. Thanks to everyone who has supported us, bloody chuffed to have even got this far.

[old git]

Try the swedes method of stopping drink driving, no limits are set............its a case of no driving for 8hrs after the last drink.......and if your caught its a 4 months compulsory jail term with no early release, ...............second offence is 2 years minimum.

[candor]

Sorry to debate on, but have done some heavy analysis on this in the past... looking for the truth... and all is not as it seems. Never trust MoT not to mock up studies. In my researching there has been several times I've had to consult experts as it is easy for Govt to put things over those lacking a PhD in all this. Results so far -

What Govt lackeys are calling a significant rise in drink drive risk for 15-19 year olds is not in fact significant. They are dreaming. This group has had a major downward trend in drink drive deaths over 10 years. A tiny blip up (of a couple of deaths in one or two years, that was not altering the general massive plunging trendline is what a song and dance was made of. No self respecting academic would call this "significant" unless they were applying for Govt funding...

Fluctuations in one or two years results when looking at a set involving such small numbers can not be called statistically significant by a real scientist. Not my call, this was checked with a field expert.

Frith at MoT did a relative risk at certain blood levels study in NZ for MoT which made the relative risk (versus sobre drivers) look really bad for youth at lower levels. But this research was crap and the charts he created are just so scientifically wrong. Bad politically motivated junk science which a University Board somewhere ought shoot him for..

Here are the types of figures his averaged risk curves were drawn from. And why the presentation within the charts can not be taken seriously.. let me count the reasons.... but source data (or later but "same same" stuff) first.

2006 deaths

Of the 15-19 year old drivers killed with alcohol at the levels we're discussing
-21 were at 0.01-0.05 only 2 were at 0.05-0.08

Of the 20-24 year old dead drivers
- 9 were at 0.01-0.05 only 3 were 0.05-0.08

Of 25-29 year dead drivers
- 5 were at 0.01-0.05 only 1 was at 0.05-0.08

Of all the 30-100 year old drivers killed in 2006 NONE were at 0.05-0.08

His flawed "study" further missed controlling for 2 majorly important factors.
1. Extremely high drug use by youth who have also drunk is proven in NZ by a current ESR study. So the risk Frith is claiming in his averaged graph that come from say a 0.04 reading in a youth is plenty of cases (over half) not based on deaths of people JUST at 0.04 but on deaths not due to sole alcohol at all! ='S INVALID CONCLUSIONS

Also the study is about NIGHTTIME RISK, and yet it does not control for added risk exposure to other dUI drivers given higher night presence - remember his graphs are not about culpability, but about mere risk of being in a fatal crash! A very important distinction.

2. Studies which any self respecting traffic scientist should know about show that under half of people dying at 0.05 BAC were to blame. Usually they were victiims of other impaired drivers with high BACs as the low bac victims are just on the road in socialising hours where threat risk is high. See this research -

The alcohol-related accident risk in Germany: procedure, methods and results H. -P. Krügera and M. Vollrath, ,Center for Traffic Sciences (IZVW), Psychological Institute, Wuerzburg University, Wuerzburg, Germany
b Center for Traffic Research (IFS), DLR Braunschweig, Lilienthalplatz 7, Braunschweig D-38108, Germany
Abstract
This paper presents the first reliable estimation of the alcohol-related accident risk in Germany by comparing a representative sample of accidents to a representative sample of trips not leading to a crash. The information about the trips was taken from the German Roadside Survey 1992–1994 (n=9087) conducted in Unterfranken, part of Bavaria. These data were weighted according to a representative study of driving in Germany (KONTIV 89). The accident study comprises a representative sample of accidents in Unterfranken in 1993 (n=1968). Relating accident risk to BAC, the global risk function indicates an exponential increase of accident risk for BACs above 0.05%. Controlling for correlating factors leads to an overall lower estimation, indicating that alcohol is consumed by drivers in circumstances which further increase the risk introduced by alcohol. Analyzing the attributable risk (AR) shows that about 12% of all accidents are attributable to alcohol. Over 96% of these happen with high BACs

Where BACs are not high and other factors like youth or being on the road at risky times are "controlled for" the best recent research shows the SOLE (no drugs) low alcohol driver has less or similar chance of coming a cropper than a sobre driver! Whether it is a similar or less chance is largely sex dependent. Women have half the crash odds at any BAC than men.

These statistics re who dies at what BAC in NZ (given our legal framework with lower limits for teens) and recent quality International studies leave no doubt that there is really no significant or perhaps even added risk of a crash for otherwise sane adults between 0.05-0.08.

And viewing them raw should help show how Frith twisted and manipulated input data to produce his intellectually dishonest age related risk ratio line graphs. He let the high numbers of youth below 0.05 average out his curves so that risk betwen 0.05 and 0.08 for youth appears higher than it is. The area of concern is the cluster of deaths below 0.05. Those above 0.08 have been well reduced by current policies. Those in the middle are unremarkable ie no evidence of an overrepresentation in any age group.

When the ESR drink / drug driving study final results are released showing that concommitant drug use is what is pushing up youth hangover + low low BAC crashes, and that there is no direct correlation to a raised relative risk at 0.05 - 0.08 at all Frith will have to eat his relative risk curve. Not that it is not already mocked by self respecting traffic scientists.

Why do I know this study so intimately - because the Govt requested we use it in our materials. After checking it out - no way!

Ok well this section is called RANT. But anyway that all said which may have folk thinking I'm soft on drink driving, I agree with old git. A zero limit would be perfect - but no good for revenue. I just believe the evidence shows that tinkering with current adults limit won't save one life - could indeed result in more deaths - by distracting Police from real work targeting true hellraisers.