Road Safety Bill [HL]

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, argued that in many other European countries, the limit is 50 milligrammes, and in a few cases zero milligrammes. That may be the case, but as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, and in my experience, it is not really enforced. Scandinavia may be different, but the further south and east you go, it is not really enforced. You see quite a lot of people knocking back quite a lot of wine or beer at lunch and driving off without worrying whether they are going to be stopped. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, the penalties are usually quite low. The argument is that even a small amount of alcohol adversely affects, to some small degree, driving performance—but so do all sorts of things. If you do not eat at all, your blood sugar level falls; if you eat too much, the blood goes from your brain to your stomach, making you drowsy and therefore dangerous. If you are up all night listening to pop music, or whatever, drinking nothing but Coca Cola, you are a real menace on the roads. That is far more dangerous than having a couple of glasses of something while listening to a Mozart symphony. The situation may be slightly different here—although I cannot believe that it is very different—but American experience shows that 23 per cent of accidents are caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. That is a very difficult offence to prove. I can think of only one case in which someone was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving as a result of falling asleep, because the police cars had followed the driver and seen him weaving around the road and noticed that his eyelids were drooping. It is terribly difficult to prove, for obvious reasons. What about the morning after? It is well known that alcohol remains in the bloodstream until the next morning. So what about single parents who have to run their children to school in the morning, there being no other form of transportation? Does it mean that they will not be able to drink anything at all with their dinner except on Friday and Saturday nights? If they have a part-time job on Saturday mornings, they could drink only on Saturday night. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that we should concentrate more on driving under the influence of drugs, and leave the limit where it is at the moment.