The British Medical Association has urged the government to lower the legal drink-drive limit on the Road Safety Bill.

Due to have its second reading in Parliament next month, the Road Safety Bill currently places the drink-drive limit at 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

But the BMA argues that the amount should be dropped to 50mg, to match that of other European countries.

It states that 50 drink-drive-related deaths would be prevented every year if the limit was reduced and as a result ministers should see the bill as an ''opportunity to save lives".

Road safety

"It's too late to change the law for this Christmas but let's make future seasons of goodwill safer for everyone," said Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA's head of science and ethics.

''While the BMA believes that a further reduction in blood-alcohol concentration levels will prevent deaths and reduce the number of lives ruined, our overall message to drivers is don’t drink when you drive.''

The BMA has been campaigning for the lower level since 1990, but claims that a recent increase in road deaths has made the reduction all the more relevant.

"The introduction of the current limit, backed up by police enforcement and TV and media education campaigns, led to a dramatic fall in the number of deaths on the road," added Dr Nathanson.

''But over the past few years deaths and serious injuries from drink driving have increased. We need a new impetus to reduce the toll of death and injury." 
 
Don Mackechnie, chairman of the BMA's accident and emergency committee, told of his eyewitness accounts of drink-drive accidents to emphasise the point.

''It is heart-breaking to witness, first hand, families shattered because of drink-driving.''

''Everyone thinks `it won't happen to me’ but every Christmas, doctors have to go and tell distraught parents that their children have been killed or seriously injured by drivers who
continue to drink and drive.''