Targetting the Wrong Group

Sometimes there are ideas which just strike you as stupid the moment they are mooted. Ideas such as spending £100m on a football team to get to the Champions League for instance, but quite often, so-called government advisors also come up with suggestions which don't exactly stack-up.


The government's 'Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' has suggested reducing the legal 'drink-drive' limit from 80mg to just 50mg, completely doing away with the "two-pint rule" and making it practically impossible to legally be able to get behind the wheel after having any alcohol. On the face of it, that seems a good idea. Reducing the drink-drive limit will surely reduce drink related accidents (or increase convictions)? But that's where the good idea turns to a catastrophic failure. The ACMD want the limit reduced, but only for Britain's public enemy number one; the under 25-year old motorist. Oh, and they want to ban us from driving at night as well.

Without opening a whole argument on age discrimination or even Human rights, the ACMD probably haven't realised that they are preaching to the converted.
Drink driving was 'the done thing' more than 40 years ago until the introduction of the breathaliser in January 1966 and even then, the chances of actually being caught were minimal. Pub car parks were always full to bursting on Friday and Saturday nights and even today, pub's that attract the "older" clientele still have fairly sizeable car parks. Even today, most people of 'that age group' (i'll be carefull how I word this!) still believe firmly in the 'two-pint rule' and some just blatently ignore it.

Contrast that to Britain's most hated demographic. We've been brought up to a point where drink driving is despised in our eyes. From an early age, we've been subjected to hard-hitting marketing about the consequences of drink driving, both from a legal perspective and a safety perspective and in many respects, we're have a rare situation where the younger are telling the old how to behave.

Thankfully, the government has dismissed the idea out of hand. If you are going to reduce the limit, then do it properly.
This Labour government have played with young people before and got their fingers burnt. Blair and Co have so far 'pushed their luck' with young people, particuarly with the introduction of University top-up fees thinking that it was a 'safer' way of raising funds working on the pretence that young people don't vote. They came unstuck, certainly in Leeds anyway. The Headingley Ward and Hyde Park & Woodhouse wards combines to create one of, if not the, biggest student areas in the country. Of Leeds' 220,000 students, the majority live in Headingley, Hyde Park or Woodhouse and Labour eventually realised that, losing it's seats to the Liberal Democrats.

Now it seems, they are being careful. Young drivers do lack the experience but they still hold the same qualification as every other (legal) driver on the road, despite having to go through a much more stringent testing system.
Depending on who you listen to, it's only young people who are ever involved in accidents. Come on people, give it a rest please.