Gov't split over over drunken driving law

Prime Minister Petr Nečas has found himself in disagreement with his new Cabinet over a draft amendment that would make driving after one beer no longer a penalty-point offense.

The change is part of an amendment to traffic laws proposed by the Senate that has received the Cabinet's backing, although it must go through the Chamber of Deputies first before it can be made law.

Nečas told the daily Právo that if it was up to him he would not allow any amount of alcohol for drivers.

"If you allow us - Czechs - one beer, we will have one and a half or two," Nečas said.

The proposal, one of a large number of changes to traffic penalties in the amendment, would mean drivers with less than 0.3 milligrams of alcohol per milliliter of blood would escape penalty points, and instead face only a fine of up to 5,000 Kč ($260).

The Czech Republic is one of six European countries with a strict zero blood alcohol limit. The limits for drivers vary significantly around the Continent. 

A group of Civic Democratic Party (ODS) senators headed by Jiří Žák, Jiří Nedoma and Jaroslav Kubera proposed the amendment to the drunken driving law. They said the current points system overly punishes drivers for minor offenses while not punishing them enough for compromising road safety.

Veronika Hodačová, a spokeswoman for the Police Presidium, the office of the country's top police chief, said the proposals for a 0.3 milligram level arose from a Health Ministry finding that "alcohol below 0.3 milligrams is not evidential."

However, Hodačová told The Prague Post that the police do not agree with the idea of removing penalty points from any drinking and driving offenses, emphasizing that "police see keeping zero alcohol tolerance as key."

"With [alcohol-related offenses] we would prefer if the penalty points remained, not perhaps as much as it is today [six to seven points for drunken driving], but we would decrease it to three or four points," she said.

The spokeswoman added that police believed this particular proposal would likely be altered when it reaches the Chamber of Deputies.

The current amendment would also see the penalty for breaking the speed limit by less than 5 kilometers per hour inside a village and less than 10 kilometers per hour outside a village reduced to a fine of between 1,500 and 2,500 Kč.

Driving without a valid license would lead to four points instead of seven points, under the proposals, and the penalty for holding a mobile phone while driving would be reduced from three to two.

The senators have also sought to remove point sanctions for driving without lights on, driving in a bus lane and for elderly people driving without medical certificates.

The amendment also proposes raising the number of penalty points applied for a wide range of other offenses.

These include driving without a seatbelt, driving with children not in child seats, dangerous driving, endangering drivers when overtaking, driving with a revoked license, overtaking where it is prohibited and turning around or reversing on motorways.

Hodačová said the police welcomed the parts of the amendment that would see stricter penalties on dangerous driving.

Further proposals included a ban on trucks that weigh more than 3.5 tons from using motorways during rush hour, and the introduction of a graduated driver's license system in which new drivers with a license for less than two years would face stiffer penalties.

The Senate proposal also suggested postponing the introduction of electronic toll tags from next year to 2016, something the Cabinet has also said it supports.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com