MOTORISTS CAUGHT over the alcohol limit or driving dangerously may be subject to a new range of sanctions, including retraining or the requirement to fit an alcolock or speed monitoring system to their vehicle.
Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar said the Government was considering legislation to widen the options available to judges and address the issue of drivers who repeatedly commit serious offences.
He told the Road Safety Authority’s conference on Recidivist Behaviour and Driver Rehabilitation in Dublin Castle yesterday that international evidence showed extra sanctions, in addition to fines, disqualification or imprisonment, were required.
The proposals would see judges given the power to order a driver to resit their test, attend additional training, fit an alcolock – to prevent a vehicle starting if alcohol is detected in the driver’s breath – install a speed limiter or impose a curfew.
Such measures would seek to balance the requirement for sanctions to punish and deter and the need to retrain to reduce recidivism, he said. Varadkar said retraining options, which would result in a reduction in the period of disqualification or the penalty points allocated for an offence, must take account of what is acceptable to public opinion. Offenders will be required to pay for retraining.
The measures, which will require primary legislation, have been discussed by the Cabinet subcommittee on road safety.
Varadkar said research suggested awareness courses could be considered for low-end speed offenders as an alternative to prosecution. Noel Brett, chief executive of the RSA, said the authority was planning to introduce three different types of training courses for drink, drug and dangerous driving. He said the RSA would license service providers to deliver the training.
The department is also considering legislative changes to target drug driving. The Medical Bureau of Road Safety is currently examining the efficacy of new drug testing equipment as part of a bid to improve the detection of motorists driving under the influence.
It is also considering a legal change that would see each drug given a level, above which a driver would be convicted if that drug was found in their system. Currently, prosecuting authorities must prove both the existence of a drug and that the drug caused impairment.
The penalty-point system was designed to tackle recidivist drivers with the twin sanctions of potentially losing their licence and higher insurance premiums.
However, retired judge Michael Pattwell said penalty points were not a punishment “until you get to the magic number of 12”. To date, 1,473 drivers have been disqualified for reaching this number of points.
Road-safety expert Sir Peter North, whose recommendations led to the introduction of a rehabilitation programme for drunk drivers in the UK, said a motorist who completed retraining would see a reduction of up to 25 per cent in their disqualification.
He also cited research from the British Transport Research Laboratory which showed attendees were three times less likely to reoffend than offenders who did not attend.
North said most road offences were due to “carelessness, inattention or incompetence”, so remedial courses for relatively minor offences were important, either as an alternative to prosecution, or to mitigate the sentence.
In the UK, attendance at a driver rehabilitation course does not remain on a motorist’s record, nor does it have to be declared to insurers. North added that drug driving was the “road-safety elephant in the room” as its prevalence far exceeded public concern about it.
Prof Oliver Carsten, from the University of Leeds, highlighted the ongoing problem of speeding and said road fatalities would halve immediately if current limits were observed.
He said research on an intelligent speed limiter – which uses GPS to tell the driver the limit on the road they are driving – indicated such a system could cut fatal crashes by 50 per cent.
Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer with the Department of Health, said alcohol-related crashes cost the HSE approximately €530 million in 2007.
