On 22/12/2010 18:00, JNugent wrote:
On 22/12/2010 17:09, Matt B wrote:
On 22/12/2010 16:35, JNugent wrote:
As a parallel, only a small proportion of drivers over the drink-drive
limit on any one night are ever caught. And that's partly because most
acts of drink-driving cause no real danger to anyone and don't attract
the attentions of the police for various reasons. That doesn't mean that
drink-driving is harmless or worth ignoring, does it?

You tell me. Is there evidence that drink-drivers are over represented
in the
accident statistics? I know that a few years ago some police force
somewhere
did a Christmas campaign against drink-driving and "randomly" tested
drivers
who were not involved in accidents or traffic offences. They found a
larger
proportion were over the limit than for those in the same area who were
tested after being involved in an accident or committing an offence.
I've no
idea though how representative that was of reality or whether there
have been
studies and there is real evidence that drink-drivers cause more harm
than
sober ones.

There's so much non-sequitur there, it's hard to know where to start.

"Is there evidence that drink-drivers are over represented in the
accident statistics?"

That's not the issue (which is whether the majority of drink-drivers get
away with it - and of course they do).

You said: "That doesn't mean that drink-driving is harmless or worth
ignoring, does it?". I was exploring whether we actually /know/ if it
is harmful or not.

And to the extent that it ever
could be the issue, there is likely to be plenty of evidence showing
that cyclists are more, rather than less, likely to be involved in
collisions if they cycle along footways - whether with legitimate
footway users or at the interface between footway, footway-crossing and
carriageway (perm any two from three).

More likely to correlate, possibly, but what is the causal factor - is
it cycling on the footway per-se, or is it more to do with a reliance on
and faith in arbitrarily set priority conventions.

"... some police force somewhere did a Christmas campaign against
drink-driving and "randomly" tested drivers who were not involved in
accidents or traffic offences ... a larger proportion were over the
limit than for those in the same area who were tested after being
involved in an accident or committing an offence"

That's not data.

It's an observation.

"there is real evidence that drink-drivers cause more harm than sober ones"

That's a, possibly unintentional, misrepresentation of what I meant -
which was: "I've no idea though how representative that was of reality
or whether there have been studies and [whether] there is real evidence
[from those studies] that drink-drivers cause more harm than sober ones.".

I don't know where you get that from. It's counter-intuitive at the
least, and smacks to a degree of "Doug's "two kinds of dead".

Why would a driver who's had four pints (say) "cause more harm than [a]
sober [one]"?

If driving safety was adversely affected by drink, then one would surely
expect drink-drivers to cause more harm (through having more accidents)
that sober ones.

The answer is that he wouldn't, necessarily, or probably. He might be
more likely to be involved in a collision, but that's a different matter
and unless there's some super data somewhere out there which proves what
you say, it doesn't seem likely that accidents involving drivers with
illegal amounts of alcohol in their blood are any worse than accidents
involving teetotal drivers.

But are they more, or less, likely to have one (an accident)? If it
isn't "more", then what is the drink-drive law about?

Drink-driving is banned (FCVO"DD") in order to reduce the number of
collisions, not to make collisions less eerious when they happen (though
that might be a side-effect in some cases).

Is there evidence that drink-drivers have more collisions than sober
drivers?

I think we've done full-circle now - that's where I started from.

--
Matt B