Risk of a crash raised 154 times

SHAMEFUL: Coffs Harbour’s status as the drink driving capital of NSW has been confirmed too many times. TREVOR VEALE

THE revelation that the driver of a ute in a fatal accident last month had a blood alcohol content almost five times the legal limit should serve as a wake-up call to the Coffs Coast community.

For too long the statistics have shown Coffs Harbour is the drink driving capital of NSW and this case has left two families devastated and in mourning.

Dr Graham Starmer, from the University of Sydney, is a pre-eminent expert on the effects of alcohol and drugs on driving and said the high reading was an invitation for disaster.

He said anybody who gets behind the wheel with a blood alcohol content reading of 0.245 is fighting odds too hard to beat.

"There was a study carried out in the United States in 2002 which says that the risk of a crash is multiplied by a factor of 154 at 0.250," Dr Starmer said.

The professor has conducted a wide range of experiments on the effects of drugs and alcohol, as well as fatigue, on driving performance and the relationships which exist between the blood levels of these drugs and driving impairment.

Without knowing the details of the driver, such as size and drinking habits, Dr Starmer said a reading of that level puts a person at serious risk without even getting behind the wheel.

"People start to die at 0.25 of alcohol poisoning," he said.

Dr Ray Jones of the Doctors for a Safer Highway lobby group agreed the loss of two lives was a tragedy but he added that a safer highway would have probably meant that only one family would be in mourning now, rather than two.

"The overwhelming factor is the state of the Pacific Highway," Dr Jones said.

"If the highway had been a dual carriageway, if that bloke had been drunk he just would've run off the road or he might've killed himself but instead he hit a truck which careered through a house.

"The reality is that you will always have accidents, you will always have drunk people and you'll always have people going to sleep at the wheel.

"When you've got a narrow highway going through a built-up area, even if it was the driver of the B-double that went to sleep, then he goes through somebody's house."