Morning Bagging

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

v240gltse

hi,

I have no problem with breath checks in the morning or at any other time of the day or night. However what I do have an issue with ( I stand to be corrected) is that there is no accurate self breathalyser kit available to the same standard as the ones the Garda use.

I have used ones bought over the internet and they're next to useless, the one bought in a chemist failed to work,crystal's didn't change colour, the electronic one said I was fine after 4 whiskeys ( drank at home and not going anywhere the next day ) .

If accurate one's were available cheaply then it would help to remove the am I / aren't I safe to drive debate before you ever get into the car.


If any one knows of a publically available model then please let me know
regards

brendan

craichoe

v240gltse wrote: »

hi,

I have no problem with breath checks in the morning or at any other time of the day or night. However what I do have an issue with ( I stand to be corrected) is that there is no accurate self breathalyser kit available to the same standard as the ones the Garda use.

I have used ones bought over the internet and they're next to useless, the one bought in a chemist failed to work,crystal's didn't change colour, the electronic one said I was fine after 4 whiskeys ( drank at home and not going anywhere the next day ) .

If accurate one's were available cheaply then it would help to remove the am I / aren't I safe to drive debate before you ever get into the car.


If any one knows of a publically available model then please let me know
regards

brendan

In Continental Europe the limit is .5, in Ireland its currently .8

Its nothing to do with how much its safe to drink, the .5 is there as a tolerance reading. Not so you can have a pint and drive home.

Have a gargle of some mouthwash and blow into a breathalyser, it will say your pissed

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/a-gargle-of-mouth-rinse-can-put-you-over-limit-1207060.html

Just don't drink at all if your driving, or have to drive the next morning .. simple as

ballooba

milltown wrote: »

I never said anything was anybody else's fault.

If you pay attention and try and take in the whole post, you will see that one of my points is that anyone found to have broken the law will get what they deserve. Me included.

My other point, and the original point of this whole thread, was that there is no statistical evidence, apart from what the RSA have made up, to suggest that morning breath tests are a good use of limited Garda resources.

If you got down off your pious soapbox and read what people are saying, you might see that nobody is condoning drink driving here. Instead, you are like a tabloid newspaper trying to sensationalize what people are saying.

I'm not on any pious soap box. You attempted to justify your behaviour by saying you are no worse than certain drivers undertaking certain other behaviours. Don't worry about what others are doing, you're not responsible for them.

ballooba

craichoe wrote: »

I don't get it ... what is a "morning after" fatal road crash

The article is confused. They mean that 1 in 5 fatal accidents between 6am and noon is a 'morning after' crash. They also state that 2 in five of all fatal accidents are drink related. No wonder the road safety message is so misunderstood.

Note that while this is not the worst time for drink driving it is one of the so called 'killing zones'. Other time periods at the weekend have higher instances of drink related road deaths. presumably they feel they have made gains at those times but not in the morning after category.

craichoe

ballooba wrote: »

The article is confused. They mean that 1 in 5 fatal accidents between 6am and noon is a 'morning after' crash. They also state that 2 in five of all fatal accidents are drink related. No wonder the road safety message is so misunderstood.

Note that while this is not the worst time for drink driving it is one of the so called 'killing zones'. Other time periods at the weekend have higher instances of drink related road deaths. presumably they feel they have made gains at those times but not in the morning after category.

So where did the other 4 go.

I don't know, i'd prefer to see some kind of numbers they were expecting and some detailed statistics with an explaination of what gains we'll get and where their taking the resources away from.

ballooba

Which other 4? The other four drivers did not have alcohol in their system.

4 out of 5 morning crashes do not involve alcohol.

craichoe

ballooba wrote: »

Which other 4? The other four drivers did not have alcohol in their system.

4 out of 5 morning crashes do not involve alcohol.

"and one in five "morning after" fatal road crashes is alcohol-related"

If that was the case wouldn't they say

"and one in five fatal road crashes that occur in the morning is alcohol related"

Doesn't saying "morning after" imply they were all under the influence, its a bit of an ambiguous statement I think. Were the other 4 high on drugs or something, what were they after doing the night before ?

I mean, the statement implies that there were 5 "morning after" incidents

I wouldnt mind reading the original report

ballooba

Here ya go:
http://www.rsa.ie/NEWS/News/Christmas_and_New_Year_Anti_Drink_Driving_Campaign_Launched.html

peasant

Can I get a bit provocative here?

If Ireland actually had a "drinking culture" instead of a "drunken culture", the morning after breath test wouldn't be such a bone of contention.

In most other countries people manage to enjoy alcohol responsibly and in moderation but it seems here a "night out" is not a night out unless you return home absolutely legless.


As the guards can hardly go into a pub and fine you for drinking too much ...well, they have to catch you the following morning if and when you're driving..

The message "don't drink and drive" has been hammered home as well as it can be ...people are starting to heed it and take alternative transport when on the piss. The message "don't drive drunk" on the other hand hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Therfore I think that a well flagged and well publicised "morning after" campaign is necessary and good and by no means a waste of garda resources.

ballooba

peasant wrote: »

If Ireland actually had a "drinking culture" instead of a "drunken culture", the morning after breath test wouldn't be such a bone of contention.

In most other countries people manage to enjoy alcohol responsibly and in moderation but it seems here a "night out" is not a night out unless you return home absolutely legless.

This is exactly what I was getting at. Morning after checks only become a problem if you have had more than 4 pints the night before. In other words binge drinking.

craichoe

Has anyone read where the RSA are referencing all this from !?!?!?

http://www.rsa.ie/publication/publication/upload/Alcohol%20In%20Fatal%20Road%20Crashes%20in%20Ireland%202003.pdf


Its a load of stuff thrown together, theres actually very little in relation to stats on irish road safety. Any stats they did used were from 4 years ago !

The rest is all about what these people in the HSE think ?!?!

Why can't we just see the frikking stats for ourselves and not get their impression of what the numbers are !!!

ballooba

Craichoe, you're clutching at straws. The methodology for the HSE report was flawless. Read the report.

craichoe

Clutching at straws, I think your gone off the point, your talking about advertising, im talking about validating public spending.

I've read the report and i've seen that report before.

Declan Bedford - Population Health

Nuala McKeown - Some student

Akke Vellinga - Her latest work is:
Is breast feeding a risk factor for eczema during the first year of life?.- In: Pediatric allergy and immunology, 18:5(2007), p. 410-417

Fenton Howell - Is on the board for ASH Ireland (Anti Smoking)

My point is:

A. They've only referenced the Traffic Corps but no information on where they are or who provided them, how they were taken, what was the sample number, how many samples were tainted, without this any statistics are rubbish
B. I don't see how any of them are qualified on the subject.

Just a point to note here, I'M NOT CONDONING DRINK DRIVING, in fact someone got banned earlier on in this thread for implying that.

My point is allocation of resources ..
Yes the report makes sense, but without references or qualified people doing this research how do we know our taxes are being used to save lives.

Original stats please, that i can read myself and see the numbers is all i want.

unkel

Dammit, craichoe, I just found that report myself. You beat me to it

As you state, the data was from 2003 - years before random breath testing was introduced. I'll go as far as to state the whole drink driving culture between 5 years ago and now has changed for many people - indeed partly because of the random testing

ballooba wrote: »

The methodology for the HSE report was flawless. Read the report.

The report considers an accident alcohol related even when the blood alcohol level was only about half the legal limit!

ballooba

I guess you'll have to either trust that they haven't lied about the Garda reports or ask the RSA for the raw statistics.

peasant

What do you need stats for?

Shouldn't his whole thing be as much about prevention as actually catching people?

Even if they caught not a single drunk driver, a massive operation where almost the whole country got to blow in a test tube one random morning might serve to make some people think twice about driving while drunk ...even if they were sober that particular day when they were tested.

In other threads everybody is alway bleating on about existing laws not being enforced ...now that a campaign to enfore ONE law is announced, half the population of this forum is bleating again how unfair and what a waste of resources it is.


I don't get it ....

ballooba

unkel wrote: »

As you state, the data was from 2003 - years before random breath testing was introduced. I'll go as far as to state the whole drink driving culture between 5 years ago and now has changed for many people - indeed partly because of the random testing

Not with regard to morning drinking. The report is not dated in that regard.

unkel wrote: »

The report considers an accident alcohol related even when the blood alcohol level was only about half the legal limit!

As was said above the limit is there to provide a margin of error. Not to allow you have one drink. The legal limit is irrelevant.

For inappropriate speed to be a factor in an accident and listed in a garda report the driver does not have to be exceeding an arbitrary posted speed limit. The posted speed limit is irrelevant if the driver is going too fast.

unkel

The legal limit is 0.8g/l blood. In the report the limit above which an accident is considered to be alcohol related is 0.2g/l

ballooba wrote: »

the limit is there to provide a margin of error. Not to allow you have one drink. The legal limit is irrelevant

I disagree. Either 0.8g/l is deemed to be unsafe and the legal limit should be set down to 0.2g/l. Or 0.8g/l is deemed to be safe and the report should base whether an accident is alcohol related or not to that level

milltown

ballooba wrote: »

I'm not on any pious soap box. You attempted to justify your behaviour by saying you are no worse than certain drivers undertaking certain other behaviours. Don't worry about what others are doing, you're not responsible for them.

JEBUS!

No I didn't. I didn't attempt to justify anything.

What I said was there is no statistical evidence (the whole point of this thread!) to say driving with due care and a hangover makes me any more lethal than various other types of driving behaviour.

Having a quick scan through the RSA report it looks like a classic example of statistics being used to prove what they want them to prove. Their methods are far from "flawless". An alcohol related crash in that report includes a crash where the driver had no alcohol taken but his passenger or the pedestrian he hit had. It also states that the presence of alcohol does not mean other factors were not the cause.

8% of all fatal road crashes were pedestrian alcohol related. When are we going to see these lunatics bagged and taken off our roads?

ballooba

So what about speed limits? Should we remove all responsibility for maintaining an appropriate speed? Just have speed limit signs every few metres?

craichoe

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, so please don't think that.

Not with regard to morning drinking. The report is not dated in that regard.

It should be.

As was said above the limit is there to provide a margin of error. Not to allow you have one drink. The legal limit is irrelevant.

Being a little bit pedantic about it, the RSA and HSE refer to the Limit in Units, a percentage of a pint of beer, or a certain amount of wine. In Holland its not referred to in this way at all, its said, "do not drink at all"

Measuring the limit the irish way sends a conflicted message

For inappropriate speed to be a factor in an accident and listed in a garda report the driver does not have to be exceeding an arbitrary posted speed limit. The posted speed limit is irrelevant if the driver is going too fast.

The speeding argument is a whole different thread I believe

peasant

unkel wrote: »

The legal limit is 0.8g/l blood. In the report the limit above which an accident is considered to be alcohol related is 0.2g/l



I disagree. Either 0.8g/l is deemed to be unsafe and the legal limit should be set down to 0.2g/l. Or 0.8g/l is deemed to be safe and the report should base whether an accident is alcohol related or not to that level

I'm a bit hazy on the exact limits (it's been a while) but in Germany it's done like this.

if you get checked with:

< 0.8 and haven't drawn any attention to yourself otherwise, you can drive on

> = 0.5 but were stoppend for erratic/unsafe driving, you can still get done for drunk driving even though you are under 0.8

> = 0.3 but involved in an accident ...you will get done for drunk driving.

ballooba

milltown wrote: »

JEBUS!

No I didn't. I didn't attempt to justify anything.

What I said was there is no statistical evidence (the whole point of this thread!) to say driving with due care and a hangover makes me any more lethal than various other types of driving behaviour.

Maybe that is where the misunderstanding stems from, I apologise. I beleive that the people you mentioned should be tackled also. I believe that penalty points should be distributed in proportion to the damage caused by those behaviours. The statistics are there but they are ignored.

milltown wrote: »

8% of all fatal road crashes were pedestrian alcohol related. When are we going to see these lunatics bagged and taken off our roads?

This does have to be addressed also. Far too many accidents have pedestrian alcohol as a factor. It's fairly sad to hear of young men falling asleep drunk on the road and dying. It's probably no more sad than other drink related deaths.

Victor

ballooba wrote: »

You need to have drank a lot of alcohol the night before to still be over the limit.

Imagine someone crawling out of a nightclub at 3am and getting up for work at 7am, skipping brekfast and then trying to drive?

unkel

peasant wrote: »

in Germany it's done like this.

if you get checked with:

< 0.8 and haven't drawn any attention to yourself otherwise, you can drive on

> = 0.5 but were stoppend for erratic/unsafe driving, you can still get done for drunk driving even though you are under 0.8

> = 0.3 but involved in an accident ...you will get done for drunk driving.

Interesting approach. There's something so say for it, especially if you have a look at this table. Altough based on US data, it shows that a middle aged person with twice the (Irish) legal limit of alcohol in their blood is less likely to be involved in an accident then a young person who is under the limit

ballooba

Victor wrote: »

Imagine someone crawling out of a nightclub at 3am and getting up for work at 7am, skipping brekfast and then trying to drive?

I've done it. I did not feel clever afterwards. Never again!

johnoreilly

Why dont the government bring out some sort of a free or minimal breathalising system, where you can test your self in a pub, or at home and you will then be able to judge for your self safely instead of winging it and saying ah im ok!! I think that would help save more lives if people can actually see it for them selfs.

Victor

johnoreilly wrote: »

Why dont the government bring out some sort of a free or minimal breathalising system, where you can test your self in a pub, or at home and you will then be able to judge for your self safely instead of winging it and saying ah im ok!! I think that would help save more lives if people can actually see it for them selfs.

The problem is reliability of meaurement.

ballooba

Your not supposed to drink at all if you are driving. Having machine in pubs would contradict this. Even though they are already in existence. Flannery's had one for years.