Drink drivers willing to put lives at risk for selfish reasons
Drink drivers are willing to risk their lives and those of others on the road by getting behind the wheel if they are close to home, need their car the next day or they have no other way to get home, new research by the NSW Centre for Road Safety reveals.
Half of NSW drivers think it’s okay to drive drunk if they are on a “quiet road”. One in three say they would drive home intoxicated because they need the car the next day, and half will do so because it is their only way to get home.
The frightening attitudes are revealed in new research conducted for the NSW Centre for Road Safety and which contributed to the deaths of 68 people last year in accidents involving alcohol.
The study, which involved “a sample of more than 2500 NSW licence holders who were representative of the NSW driver population” exposes how people are overwhelmingly drawn to drink drive if they are close to home, putting themselves, and other drivers at risk, every single time.
“These findings don’t surprise me, but they do disappoint me that we are still at that level — I thought as a community we had moved on and the social acceptance of drink driving had passed that point,” the centre’s executive director, Bernard Carlon, told The Sunday Telegraph.
“The key here is we had 68 people killed last year from drink driving and 55 of those were in country areas. We also know that 60 per cent of those country drink drivers crashed close to home in their local area, and just over half of people involved in fatal drink driving crashes in metro areas were also close to home.
“They think ‘I’m okay to drive home, it’s not far away’ and ‘I should be all right because I know the local roads and how to get home’ — but what the evidence says is there is no guarantee that you won’t be in a crash that will kill someone — in fact, you’re likely to be in a crash that will kill someone.”
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He said people thought they won’t be caught close to home — but police are everywhere, and drivers needed a sensible plan B.
“For 30 years we’ve been talking about having a plan B when you have a drink — we are really serious because it’s still killing people, and seriously injuring hundred of people every year,” Mr Carlon said.
“People get it — they know it’s dangerous, but a lot of people think ‘it’s not so dangerous if I’m close to home’.
“In the country there are less options for Ubers and taxis but even then, they are making the choice to get in the car rather than sleeping it off or staying at a friend’s house or having a designated driver.
“They need to be making a sensible choice.
“The consequences of being involved in a crash that tragically loses someone else’s life, changes your life.”
Out of 5.2 million breath tests performed every year on NSW roads, about 18,000 people are caught drink driving. Roads Minister Andrew Constance said the state’s new zero tolerance approach to the deadly crime meant that anyone caught drink driving in NSW would lose their licence on the spot for at least three months, as well as face a fine of $561.
“What we do know is that one in five road deaths are alcohol related,” Minister Constance said.
“One of the things, particularly in the country, is people think they can have a drink and drive a few kilometres away — and that’s where the deaths are.
“You shouldn’t even drive your car in a car park if you have been drinking — you just don’t have the benefits of your full senses when affected by alcohol — you could back over someone and hurt other people or yourself.
“It’s just crazy. It’s not worth even having alcohol in your system at all.
“We are not doing this for fun, we want lives saved and families kept together.
“We are not being over zealous — we are fed up with emergency services pulling people out of cars.”
Longtime paramedic, acting superintendent Steve Vaughn, said there should be no reason someone who was drinking should get behind the wheel.
“There is so much education out there at the moment, in part with the change in drink driver laws, there should be no reason why you drink and get behind the wheel,” he said.
“It can have devastating impacts on yourself, your family, and the lives of other people around you.
“I can recount numerous accident scenes where you can smell alcohol on the person, police are in attendance and have done a breath test that comes back positive and you ask a patient for an address, or see their licence to find they are two or three blocks from home.
“They think ‘I live around the corner, it will be okay’.
“And it’s not going to be okay.”
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