‘Drunk driving constitutes 10% road crashes’ – Report

As such, speakers at a capacity building workshop on road safety for journalists in Accra last Thursday expressed worry about the situation and advocated a reduction in the country’s allowable 0.08 percent of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) to 0.05 percent.

That, they said, would lead to a significant reduction in alcohol-related road crashes across the country.

BAC is a measure of the amount of alcohol circulating in the bloodstream or the percentage of alcohol in a person’s blood.

The workshop was organised by CUTS International, a non-govern­mental organisation (NGO), in collab­oration with the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) on the theme “Building the Capacity of Journalists on Road Safety Reporting”.

Mr. Isaac Yaw Obeng, Head of Research, CUTS International, stated that one of the leading causes of death and injury around the world was Road Traffic Accidents (RTC), adding that an estimated 1.3 million people die as a result of road accidents.

“About 93 percent of RTC cases and injuries occur in developing countries, and 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are listed in the top 20 RTC-prone countries for cases and casualties,” he added.

Mr. Obeng said the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that a significant risk factor for 27 percent of all traffic injuries was drunk driving.

“As a significant risk factor, drunk driving, therefore, becomes a serious public health issue since the amount of alcohol in the blood is directly correlated with the likelihood that a car accident will occur,” he added.

Mr. Obeng said the punish­ment for the violation of the alcohol consumption limit should come along with strong public awareness of the dangers of drunk driving and the existence of enforcement efforts through mass media and other stra­tegic communications.

Ms. Mavis Obeng-Mensah, Com­munication Officer, Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety Ghana (BIGRS), em­phasised that drivers with a BAC of between 0.02 and 0.05 had at least a three times greater risk of dying in a vehicle crash.

“Laws that set limits on BAC of 0.05 or lower together with effective enforcement can lead to significant reductions in alcohol-related crash­es,” she said.

Ms. Obeng-Mensah urged journal­ists to add their voices to the advoca­cy for a revision of the BAC level to help minimise road crashes recorded across the country.