One for the Morgue
So:1/44E- popular newspapers have recently made quite a practice of stressing the dangers of One for the Road before Bank Holiday week- ends. They rarely feature the subject quite so boldly before Christmas, when such a campaign might be considered in poor taste. But it is at Christmas--and in the days leading up to Christ- mas, when office parties disgorge their hilarious inmates on to the foggy, icy streets—.That the risks of driving under the influence are greatest; and there is still no sign that the Home Office is preparing to take steps to control the inevitable epidemic, of accidents and deaths. No two people, admittedly, agree on what the Government ought to do. Certainly it would be useless simply to increase penalties; juries are reluctant enough to convict as things are. And in a sense juries are right; it is next to impossible to .prove that an accident is caused by drunken- ness, and even . if it were, driving under the in- fluence is not a crime in the same way that, say, theft is a crime. What is needed is another kind of penalty for offences of this nature, to differen- tiate them from what the community has come tc regard as criminal. But so long as men can be charged with drunken driving in the ordinary courts it is surely sensible that every means known to science should be employed to ascertain the extent to which they were under the influence of alcohol. In a debate this month Lord Taylor told the House of Lords that it would be 'terrible' if accused drivers were to be given physical tests for the amount of alcohol in their systems, be- cause they might get let off with a light test in one part of the country and a harder test •itl another. But this is precisely what happens todaY , --except that the tests vary from police station to police station, rather than regionally. 'Breath- alysers' and `bloodalysers. may not be 100 per cent. accurate, but they are by any standards more useful than the subjective Leith-Police- _,V dismisseth-us and walking the chalk Hoe methods, whose reliability has long since been discredited.
The defect of physical tests is less the ri4 of inaccuracy than that they tell relatively link about the actual fitness of the driver to control his car. One driver may be a menace after a single glass of, whisky (or indeed after no drinks at all); while his neighbour remains cautious and safe even when he has consumed a bottle. It would indeed be very foolish to pretend that by measuring alcohol on breath or is blood an informed verdict can be reached on whether or not a man is drunk. But at least the objective test will give one additional fact to go on—and eliminate the traditional 'two small sherries' defence.
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