ALCOHOL INTERLOCKS AND BINGE DRINKING

14/10/2008  

Alcohol Interlocks must be embraced by this government as soon as

possible to curb alcohol related deaths and injuries.

The answer to this problem is staring them in the face and yet they

refuse to look at it. 

  Alcohol Interlocks are the seat belts of the seventies. 

This device will save many many lives and prevent injuries.

It will save the government billions of dollars each year. 

Do we have to have this fight for another twenty years like the fight for

seatbelts? 

The government still feeds off being the first state in the world to bring

in seatbelts yet many innocent people died before they were willing to

introduce seatbelts. 

It took road safety campaigners of the day to force the issue. 

  The drinking culture they are so concerned about spills onto the roads

in the most horrific manner and yet they would rather continue with the

sparse policing of the problem than knock it on the head.  

They cannot continue to disconnect the two.

Are they waiting for alcohol Interlocks to look pretty before they install

them in cars?

Contrary to what they tell us they do not need to be checked every few

months if they are not installed as a punishment device.

  They would not be any more of an inconvenience to drivers than

putting on a seatbelt. 

Their introduction would in fact create a whole new industry. 

There isn’t anything surrounding these devices that cannot be worked

out very easily right now! 

The drinking culture has also been an accepted part of driving and the

government is now complicit by allowing this to continue.

There isn’t any evidence in the world that gives a safe level of alcohol

for driving a motor car.

Mobile phones are banned completely because evidence shows that a

driver is four times more likely to crash when using one and yet alcohol

has the same levels of risk at .05 and that’s ok   Why?      

The government has to re assess the alcohol laws in this country.

You cannot accept there is a binge drinking problem in our young

people and still continue to wonder why so many then on the roads due

to alcohol.  Next time you hear the premier tell you they are doing

everything they can to prevent road trauma, don’t believe it for one

minute.

Money rules what is done to prevent your child, or wife, son or

daughter from dying on the road. 

Money decides how the drivers who risk your life are processed.

Money decides that the courts are full of driving offenders and rather

than acknowledge there is a problem they are reducing the penalties for

the very offences that cost innocent people their life.

Greed has become a winner over preserving human life at all costs.

  Somewhere along the way a decision at high level has been made to

‘accept’ a certain amount of deaths and injuries on the roads. 

 They call it  ‘The cost benefit’    They budget for it. 

They budget for drivers to err and they budget for drivers to kill and

maim, and as long as we stay under that budget nothing will change to

prevent these horrific deaths and injuries from occurring. 

  This is why we do not have driver training.  This is why we do not

have drink driving courses before the licence. This is why they keep

‘dumbing down’ road penalties to free up the courts.

 This doesn’t have anything to do with road safety; it is purely because

the courts are full of drivers who are prepared to risk your life. 

 Doesn’t that tell them something?

 Doesn’t that tell them that what they are doing now isn’t working?

We wish the government was honest about the management of road

trauma, at the moment it is a big con and we, the innocent public, are

the bunnies.

The bunnies caught in the headlights.