Drinking, driving then dying .

Re More die under lower booze limit (Stuff, Feb 21), apparently ‘‘more Kiwis are driving drunk to the grave following the lowering of our alcohol limit’’.

However, first, for drawing this conclusion we are given the usual sort of statistics: in 2015, fatalities had an involvement of alcohol (14 per cent) or of alcohol+drugs (18 per cent) to a total of 32 per cent. Involvement was defined as greater than 6mg/100mL blood.

Second, in the article the Ministry of Transport (MOT) estimated the lowered limit resulted in three fewer deaths a year and admits this number is ‘‘impossible to detect in the data’’. It seems unlikely any of its statistics could be this accurate so we should also be asking: what is the relevance of such numbers and why bother lowering the alcohol limit at all? Third, previous research at the DSIR showed reaction times and driving actually improved up to around 20mg/100mL. Additionally, the current ‘‘acceptable’’ limit is 50mg/100mL.

Again I ask: what relevance do such statistics have to the conclusion? And lastly, in the 1970s Dr John Bailey of the then DSIR issued a report concluding that the MOT should be concentrating their large resources on sorting the ‘black spots’ (dangerous parts of the highway) instead.

Hospitals could do with a few of the millions paid to the MOT put in their own budgets, to save more lives than the at present very expensive MOT campaigns. Dr NEIL McCALLUM Martinborough