A nationwide blitz on drink drivers has police renewing calls that the blood-alcohol limit needs lowering.
On Friday night, 26,000 people around New Zealand were stopped and police say the number of positive results shows many are unable to make judgements or drive properly even when they are under the limit.
One driver's reading would have put him over the youth blood-alcohol limit, but because he was 27, he passed.
He was okay to drive under the current adult limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 mls of blood, but not okay to drive according to the police.
"The current limit is unfortunately so high that people are so drunk that they're too drunk to know that they're too drunk to drive. And that's the sad consequence of the current limit," says Dave Cliff, superintendent national road policing.
Disappointed by the over 200 drunk drivers caught in the nationwide blitz, police say New Zealand country still has a huge problem.
"Given that the weather conditions around the country last night were atrocious we got an extraordinary number of drunk drivers once again," Cliff says.
But there's little chance the government will lower the limits down to the Australian limit of 50 micrograms.
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven says it's not government policy to lower the blood alcohol level.
"However it is something we have continually on the radar because many other countries have already done so."
Despite advertising campaigns, numbers of prosecutions for drink driving have been on the rise since 2003, with no sign of a reduction in figures to date this year.
"At the current limit, the chances of being involved in a crash are around 30 times that of a sober driver. So the risk is enormous," says Cliff.
New Zealand's limit is the same as the United Kingdom and the United States. But other European countries and Australia all saw lower carnage once they lowered their limits. That is something the New Zealand government looks unlikely to do..
from tvnz.co.nz
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