Madam, - SOME WEEKS ago, you published a letter from me in which I suggested, based on my 17 years' experience as a coroner, that the proposed reduction in the permitted blood alcohol count from 80mgs to 50mgs would make little or no difference to accident levels on Irish roads.
I suggested that what would probably happen is that law-abiding citizens who at present restrict themselves to one glass of wine or a pint of beer when driving would no longer drink and drive at all, but that drunken drivers would remain as undeterred by the new law as they have been by the old one. Everybody that I have met since that letter was published has agreed with me that this is common sense.
However I have been accused by a representative of the Road Safety Authority of making selective use of figures, and by a representative of the pressure group, Parc, of putting back the cause of road safety by years. The solution to this argument strikes me as a simple one.
Let the RSA, or any other authority, (the gardaí, perhaps,) give us the figures for all injuries and fatalities in which a driver with a blood alcohol count of between 50 and 80 was involved over the past few years.
This, rather than some of the disingenuous and misleading statistics being bandied about, might bring closure to this debate. - Yours, etc,
JOHN MADDEN, Coroner, Donegal North-East, Carndonagh, Co Donegal.