BY removing risk from society, the powers that be will take the joy out of life, writes Stuart Waiton
The Scottish Government plans to reduce the drink-driving limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml blood to 50mg – whatever that means. Essentially it appears to mean that whereas at the moment most people can drink a basic pint of lager without cause for concern, under the new regulations this would no longer be the case.
As usual, the wisdom of this move is based on our safety and the need felt by the authorities to protect us from yet another “risk” in society. Specifically, the new move will save 17 lives, not 16 or 18 but 17 – or so says the statistician with his clipboard. The scientists and risk managers have spoken once again and another part of everyday life that was relatively unproblematic until now is to be brushed aside by these experts and our safety-obsessed politicians.
With this new measure about to be introduced you would imagine there is a growing problem with drink-driving. Why else would you introduce a new law that further polices people’s behaviour? In fact, the opposite is the case. According to the website DrinkDriving.org, not only have convictions for drink-driving fallen substantially, but drink-driving “accidents” have plummeted from 19,470 across the UK in 1979 to 8,640 in 2008. In the same time period “serious casualties” have declined five-fold from 8,300 to 1,630.
John Watson, of the Scottish Libertarians, has pointed out that statistically there are many reasons given for road accidents occurring – of which drink driving is one of the lowest. Drink driving is connected to 5 per cent of accidents compared with 68 per cent being related to driver error or inability to react in time.
The biggest single form of behaviour given by the Department of Transport report in 2007 for road accidents (35 per cent) was the “failure to look properly”. Most of the 5 per cent of drink-drive accidents relate to people who have drunk at least twice the recommended amount, rather than stuck to the current limit. Countries like Norway and Sweden have tighter restrictions on drink driving limits but higher drink-driving fatalities, so there is no necessary automatic link between the two factors.
Indeed the argument about the present limit has not even been won within the safety/health profession itself with many professionals arguing that the current limit is safe – which is why, perhaps, we have had it for so long. The key appears to be whether you are a responsible driver, not whether or not you have had a pint, and judging by the constantly decreasing number of people arrested for drink driving, it appears the vast majority of us are indeed being responsible drivers already.
There is no excuse for excessive drink driving but there are concerns about why this aspect of behaviour “drinking” is specifically being targeted – even at the level of safety. A Facebook “friend” suggested we banned driving when it rained or when people have a cold and are on medication.
Interestingly, 15 per cent of accidents are said to relate to “road environment”. I am unclear if this includes not only the poor state of many roads but also the poor standard of them – but it should.
The proposed increased regulation of drinking and driving clearly fits into a much wider, and relentless development on the politics of behaviour, and the unceasing increase in the attempt to regulate what we do in our spare time – how much we drink, how much, where and when we smoke, what we eat, how we behave towards our children and so on.
It also fits with a new and rather dangerous form of victim advocacy politics, where especially mothers of victims are used to promote almost any policy, an approach that, ironically given the supposedly “evidence-based” nature of most new policies, feeds off emotion and crushes rational discussion and debate.
Most of all, perhaps this safety approach is a problem because it reduces the framework for considering how to develop society to a form of risk management. Everything becomes about damage limitation. But if life is reduced to “safety”, what happens to “life” itself. If the argument that “if it saves one life” becomes the unquestioned good, are we not in danger of creating a modern form of Puritanism? Should we ban Hogmanay for example – after all, if it saves one life?
Sometimes we need more than baseline statistics to understand what is good for society. Some things are difficult to quantify but are nevertheless worth defending. It is hard, for example, to measure misery. How much more dreary will people’s lives become if they stop having a pint with friends, colleagues, team mates, or lovers after work, a match, the theatre – or whatever? How much less social and sociable will people become, how much less pleasure will there be in people’s lives. None of these things seem to matter when all you can see is risk and safety. Indeed through this myopic prism almost every interaction between human beings can be interpreted in a problematic fashion.
Having a pint is no big thing – but it is quite pleasurable and something millions of people enjoy doing. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the vast majority of people do not exceed the drink-driving limit and have come to understand and adhere to current limits, they are, if this new drinking restriction is passed, going to have to understand that their behaviour is now a serious problem, dangerous, criminal even and indeed is the kind of behaviour responsible for KILLING 17 PEOPLE EVERY YEAR.
Reducing the drink-drive limit not only undermines an accepted common practice that most people recognise and adhere to, it also elevates the idea that any level of drinking is dangerous and that anyone drinking any amount is a danger to others. Hardly the basis for creating trust or happiness in society.
With a reduction of 30 per cent of alcohol being drunk in pubs in the UK now since 1994 it appears that we are already retreating from “public houses” to drink in our homes and yet politicians and sociologists witter on about the decline of “social capital” and the loss of public life. Perhaps they should take a look at themselves and their obsessive regulation of “life” before introducing yet another Puritanical life-less law.
