Madam, - Both Prof Joe Barry and Dr Declan Bedford call for the lowering of the blood-alcohol level to below the current 0.8 mg per 100 ml (Letters, November 1st), in the belief that this will reduce road deaths.
Yet no one has ever produced any evidence that reducing this figure to the continental level of 0.5 has any beneficial effect.
In the case of the very few bits of research that would appear to support such a contention, lowering the limit has been accompanied by much-enhanced enforcement.
It is the latter that makes the difference.
Elsewhere you report that "since random breath testing was introduced in July last year there has been a 20 per cent reduction in deaths on Irish roads".
Moreover, media reports of road deaths caused by alcohol almost always quote drivers as being "several times over" the limit, not marginally so.
Not until gardaí are prepared, with their breathalysers, to systematically ambush drivers in large numbers as they drive away from pubs, clubs and restaurants late at night across the country will there be an appreciable reduction in drink-driving and its associated casualties.
Of course, this will also deal a mortal blow to many such establishments by frightening away customers and create outrage among a large swathe of drivers who vote.
That's why it is so much easier to make a gesture like reducing the current blood-alcohol level. It sounds good but achieves nothing and doesn't much scare the vintners or anyone else. - Yours, etc,
TONY ALLWRIGHT, Killiney, Co Dublin.