Breath alcohol levels in NZ are attracting discussion. The NZ Herald, in an affront to the principles of objective journalism, has already decided the level needs to be lowered and is conducting a campaign tied to that objective. Currently the level is 0.08. The same as many countries. Some have lower. Some have higher. Trying to align the level with road deaths in any country is fraught with danger. It doesn’t stop Labour’s favourite little red headed queer Darren Hughes (the son Helen never had) from jumping on the bandwagon and shooting his mouth off on the issue though.

In typical left wing knee jerk fashion Darren leaps at the chance to justify more intrusive regulation and harassment of the law abiding public while real crime in NZ rockets ever skyward. “As a general rule, the more you drink, the less capable you become as a driver. What part of this does Steven Joyce not understand?” says Darren.

He quotes Sweden (of course, soul-less socialist parody of a country) and says that the 0.02 tolerance there is behind a 10% drop in the road toll. Manifest nonsense. Sweden’s low road toll is down to many different factors, like number of cars versus number of people, road condition, weather etc etc and there is no real way Dopey Darren can tie any number to any particular measure. He even admits this himself when he states “research could throw up different results between countries.”

In fact the most critical factor in reducing accident is road design. Spending money wasted on loony tune ideas like TOW, Climate Change, and promoting the chronic disease of welfarism would all be better spent on improving NZ’s roads. In Sweden, they’ve put flexible barriers down the center of many roads and this is acknowledged by experts there as by far the most effective measure in reducing road deaths. Probably ten times as effective as reducing blood alcohol levels.

Claes Tingvall, Director of Traffic Safety at the Swedish National Road Administration says, “We were thinking about maybe getting a 60 – 70 % reduction of fatalities, but the reality is currently around 90%.”

So there is the answer Darren. If you really care about the road toll, then stop spending money on stupid socialist social initiatives (like Womans Affairs, the Climate Change scam, and fake TOW land claims for example) and fix the damn roads you painful little grandstanding commie weasel.