MORE YOUNG DRINK DRIVERS ARE DYING ON OUR ROADS - conference report - Sunday, March 25th, 2007
TTC Group Annual Conference 2007
More young people are dying as a result of drinking and driving than ever before, revealed the Shropshire based drink drive education organisation which is pressuring the Government to take action to halt the “worrying” trend.
Half of all drink drive deaths were in the 16 to 29 age group, said Graham Wynn, director of the TTC Group, the driver training specialists which educate 10,000 convicted drink drivers each year and run fleet driver training for the corporate world.
“We are killing more younger drivers on our roads as a result of drink driving. Younger drivers take more risks and we are still not getting through to them. We need to do more,” he told their annual conference held on Saturday at the Telford University campus.
Over a six year period from 1999 there had been a 28 per cent increase in all drink drive deaths.
UK law should be brought into line with the rest of Europe with the drink drive limit lowered from 80 to 50 and more motorists breath tested at the roadside, said Mr Wynn.
More women were attending their drink drive rehabilitation course, run in 14 counties plus mid and north Wales, with figures almost doubling over the past decade. Many women now had very high alcohol readings when arrested.
District judge David Goodman told the conference that many motorists had tried to escape a drink driving ban with a host of excuses but most of them were rejected.
A recent important case involving Otis Ferry, who lives in Shropshire, was successful as he convinced the court that his single vodkas had been laced with triples, said Mr Goodman.
“Laced drinks are not a defence to a charge of drink driving. The defence has to prove that if the drink is not laced he would not have been over the legal limit.”
Graham Feest, secretary of the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers, told the Shropshire conference that driver training was very important in the corporate world which has 30 per cent of crashes involving at work drivers.
“We need to educate people and not just punish them,” he said.
TTCs National Training Manager Malcolm Jones said that companies would save money and lives if they invested in driver training.
For more information contact the TTC Group on 0845 270 4380 or visit www.ttc-uk.com
