New approach needed to stop New Zealand drunk drivers.

New Zealand has a problem with drunk drivers. A problem that is very dangerous, as it puts lives at risk. This problem clearly needs to be solved for the safety of the public, therefore the approach we take to stop drunk drivers needs to change.

Since the year 1990 the amount of fatal or serious injury crashes caused by an intoxicated driver has decreased significantly. The Ministry of Transport has carried out research that shows the amount of these crashes that occur annually has dropped from 1800 to 800 between the years 1990 and 2000, but, the progress has stalled if not escalated since. Although New Zealand has made some good progress the amount of drunk drivers still on our roads is appauling!

Statistics taken by police over the last 4 nationwide operations targeting drunk drivers proves that there are still a terrifying amount of drunk drivers out there everyday/night. To be precise the statistics imply that out of every 120 cars checked 1 of them is found drunk and convicted. This may not sound like very much, however, if you put it into perspective, over 100 cars will cross the Auckland harbour bridge in less than 1 minute therefore it is possible that we may have a drunk driver constantly crossing the Auckland harbour bridge! Now isn't that a scary thought?

These points lead to evidence of a system that is not working. The New Zealand government has noticed this and have a plan of action. This plan is to lower the amount of alcohol currently allowed before driving, as they believe this will have a positive outcome on the safety of our roads. Although the question is, will this really achieve safer roads or will it just decrease the amount of people enjoying a safe amount of alcohol before driving home safely? As a consequence of this, the Ministry of Transport is carrying out the right research to answer this question. Their research aims to find whether it is the drivers between the proposed legal limit and the current legal limit that are the main hazard on our roads or whether it is really the drivers that are well over the current legal limit. However, it already seems to be obvious that the majority of serious road crashes caused by an intoxicated driver is when the driver is far over the limit as apposed to being only just over the limit.

Therefore it does not make much sense to attempt to stop the drunk drivers by lowering the limit, as they already, obviously, dont care about the law they are breaking. People who get behind the wheel knowing they are completely out of their own mind, knowing that they have had far too much to drink are our problem and therefore our target! We must take the right approach to stop these idiotic people from continuing to get behind the wheel of a vehicle when they are in this state of mind and by lowering the legal limit is simply not the right way to go! We must target the consequences they will face for drunk driving as the consequences in place now are obviously not doing the trick. A drunk driver is not likely to think about too many other people, so why would he/she care about the safety of others? A drunk driver also obviously doesn't have much respect for the police or for the law, so why would they care about a fine that they can pay off at a minimum rate. We need to hit them where it hurts and not get sympathetic about it.

For a driver who is over the legal limit we need to confiscate the car they are driving and disqualify their license for 3 months. For a driver who is twice over the legal limit we need to confiscate their car and disqualify their license for 6 months and so on. This is a very straight forward way of stopping drunk driving that will show immediate results. Just think about it, what kind of person wants to run the risk of loosing the car they are driving, whether it be their own or someone elses. Loosing a vehicle for a few months is going to have an enormous effect on the people who need the car, therefore eventually it will simply be out of the question to drink and drive. People need their cars to run their lives so without them they have a problem, this is justice.

Of course with a method such as confiscating vehicles we are going to have a few side issues. One being, if the car was driven by a member of the family whilst the others didn't know it was being driven by this person drunk. The car becomes confiscated and now, unfairly, the rest of the family has no way around. The way to solve this problem is for the family victims to receive a public transport benefit which will eventually be paid by the offender. Another problem is, with all these cars the police will have to confiscate, where will they be held? Solving this problem is again simple, instead of the offender getting a $600-$1000 fine in court which they currently do for driving drunk, they will instead have to pay for their car to be held at a yard for the 3-6months it is there. Lastly, just to really hit the nail on the head, police would target lower class vehicles. This has nothing to do with poorer people being the majority of drunk drivers, because they are not, but instead, to stop any chance of people using a cheaper vehicle as their drunken get around incase it gets confiscated. By police targeting these vehicles it would stop the drunks from using this alternative and also would achieve the safety of having the more cheap and dangerous vehicles off the road quickly.

To summarize, there are many ways in which the government could change the law but there are not many ways in which the government can stop the hazardous drunk drivers. Many methods have been discussed and many of these have been trialed, all showing very little progress. However this method of confiscating the vehicle driven at the time of the offence and disqualifying the offender from driving is one and possibly the only way in which will affectively bring the days of drunk driving in New Zealand to an end. For those people who will act sympathetically towards the drivers who get their car confiscated need to think about what risk these drivers are placing the rest of the public in. They can then shift their sympathy to the families and victims of fatal car crashes caused by such personnel.