Stats, Spin & Common sense
I am always amazed at how, when someone starts quoting stats from some unknown source, people’s brains just switch off.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not drink at all when I am going to drive...NONE (it’s my personal preference to live as long as I am able!), however, as Tim Spence points out, all stats can be made to say absolutely whatever you want them to dependant upon the verbiage laid around them.
"1,050 17-19 year olds involved in drink drive accidents in 2005, compared to 810 a decade ago"… in that time, the population has grown, which erodes the difference between 810 and 1050. Also, there has been a large increase in the numbers of cars on the roads, this too eroding the difference proportionately. Also, as others have noted, the stats in the article conspicuously omit to mention whether the “17-19 year olds INVOLVED in drink drive accidents” were driving. For all we know, half of the difference in the two figures, 10 years apart, could be including pissed pedestrians, previously omitted, that walked out in front of a stone cold driver.
Finally of course there is the proportionate increase in incident detection that the home office are so keen to harp on about. Take all these things into account, peel back the layers of stats and spin, and I think we’d see that proportionately,…
nothing’s realy changed.
Youth will drink,...that's the way it is. If you take away alcohol, they'll only use somthing else (which is just as bad and harder to detect at the road side). I think a little common sence and less legislation is called for.
Shop keepers and landlords need to show a little more considreation for their customers and a little less for their profit(greed) margin,.. Parents should be being more responsable for their children,.. and with a little more public education and peer presure, who knows what could be acheived.
Our local village copper used to take pissed pedestians in his car a few miles out into the sticks and make them walk home. Our local publicans would ask groups entering the pub who the drivers were and hold their keys, so that they would know that if they saw them drinking at all during the evening they'd keep them till the morning. Because of these responsable, moral and adult methods, we had an almost zero drinking incident level, very few fights, no broken bottles laid about on the street, and zero drink related driving offences.
I know this isn't much use in a blacked out squlid little basment club somwhere in the arse end of manchester, but it does show that things can be done on a practical level that affect the problem.
...Besides, reducing the blood/alchohol level by a tiny little bit isn't going to stop the offender who is 4 times over the limit. He'll just be over the limit by a tiny bit more!
So who do they think they're kidding!?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
