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Drunken-driving deaths in decline

Safety agency: Zero tolerance is key, but so is enforcement

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 25th, 2007 issue

Source: European Transport Safety Council
Road Safety
As Prague finally shakes off winter and tour buses battle for space on its streets, beer gardens are buzzing again with Czechs and foreign visitors.
The combination of jammed roads and revelry would seem to spell disaster on the highways. It may come as some surprise, then, that a new report released by the Brussels-based European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) April 17 shows the Czech Republic leading Europe in reducing drunken-driving deaths.
Gathered from independent organizations, universities and government agencies in 27 European countries, the statistics used for the results measure the proportion of road deaths from alcohol-related accidents relative to road deaths overall in a given country.
The ETSC notes in its report that comparing the precise numbers of alcohol-related deaths is impossible due to variations in how countries measure fatalities. “We recognize the limitations of the data, but there have been the same limitations over the past 10 years, so, if there is a trend, it will still show,” Achterberg concludes.
The data show that, since 1997, deaths from alcohol-related crashes dropped 11.3 percent faster than deaths from other crashes in the Czech Republic. The country’s record stands well above second-place Germany’s 6.2 percent reduction, and Poland’s 5.6 percent. Spain and Hungary fare the worst.
“There is something to learn from them,” says Franziska Achterberg, head of communications at the ETSC. “The new European Union countries are in general worse than the old countries, so I am personally happy one of the Eastern countries comes out high in the rankings.”
Few ‘complete idiots’
Achterberg says the lessons from the report are clear. Strict blood alcohol content (BAC) limits and tough enforcement lead to fewer alcohol-related traffic deaths. The Czech Republic stands out especially for its longtime zero-tolerance BAC limit, which was written into law in 1953.   
Karel Hanzelka, spokesman for the Transportation Ministry, explains the Czech Republic’s zero-tolerance policy: “We just think, and I guess the government in 1953 thought the same way, that, when you drink alcohol, you just can’t drive properly.”
This assertion seems to match how most Czechs feel about having a drink before driving.
Dr. Jaroslav Mikulik, head of the Brno-based Transport Research Center (CDV) that provided the statistics for the study, says a combination of factors have shaped Czechs’ collective attitude toward driving drunk over the years. Repeated public campaigns with “images of drinkers behind the wheel [turning from] heroes to losers” and mass media support have dampened social acceptance of drunken driving.
For the past four years, a campaign called “The Action” has been using theater roadshows to teach young people about the consequences of driving drunk. The Transportation Ministry also claims success from other media campaigns that don’t mince words. “We had a campaign called ‘Only a complete idiot drives to the pub,’ ” Hanzelka says.
Hanzelka says the ministry is also focusing campaigns on other problems, such as speeding, that keep Czech roadways notoriously deadly. Another ETSC report from last October says road deaths per million inhabitants in the country are twice that of the United Kingdom and Sweden.
The Czech Republic, like the rest of Europe, leaves something to be desired when enforcing these laws. Overall “the enforcement of legal BAC limits in Europe is very poor,” Achterberg admits. But random checks and stricter penalties are improving the countries enforcement from low points in the early 1990s.
Allowing police officers to conduct random checks without any cause for suspicion is one element of effective enforcement but a sensitive political issue in some parts of Europe, such as the United Kingdom. Not so in the Czech Republic, where police have the right to stop and test people at random. “It is even a standard part of police checking,” Hanzelka says.
The prospects of being randomly tested and facing heavy fines may factor in deterring people from driving drunk, especially since heftier fines were introduced in July 2006. Before then, the maximum fine for being caught was 15,000 Kč, which was raised to 50,000 Kč with the possibility of a year in prison. A penalty-point system aims to deter repeat offenders.
The system, however, isn’t foolproof. A CDV report acknowledges that figures of alcohol-related fatalities could be “slightly underestimated” due to “conscious errors in reporting” — such as bribery.
Still, Achterberg says the Czech Republic deserves accolades. “I hope they will celebrate,” she says. Just maybe not with a beer.
Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com


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