Drink Driving

Yesterday morning, another Mediacorp artist got arrested by the police, Christopher Lee Ming Shun, for drink driving. The last one that I remembered was Terence Cao, no injuries. In Christopher Lee's case of drink driving, injuries involved and police are still investigating on the issue. Thanks to the stringent laws on drink driving offences, MORE Lives Got SAVE! And lesser counts of road accident recorded.

Drink-Driving- Statistic Taken from Singapore Police Force Traffic

There was a general decrease in the number of drink-driving related fatal and injury accidents in 2005.

Number of Drink Driving Accidents
	2004	2005
Fatal Accident	31	19
Serious Accident	7	8
Slight Accident	199	186
TOTAL	237	213

Number of persons killed or injuried in drink driving related accidents
	2004	2005
Killed	33	19
Seriously Injured	7	8
Slightly Injured	237	215
TOTAL	277	242

No. of persons arrested for drink driving
	2004	2005
Non-accident	2,379	3,032
Accident (includ. Non-injury)	550	609
TOTAL	2,929	3,641

Drinking Hazard if you are driving.
Drinking will impair your driving to some extent and reduce your co-ordination - turning avoidable hazards into potentially lethal ones

The more you drink the slower your reflexes and this means that you will lose the ability to maintain proper control of your vehicle.

The consequence of drinking and driving don't end with legal action. How true ?
Being disqualified from driving means inconvenience and incurring of extra travel costs.

1) If your job involves driving, you could be out of work.

2) If you kill or maim someone, you'll have to live with your guilt.

3) Worse, it may just be you who are killed.

WHEN YOU DRINK AND DRIVE, you end up facing penalties that will scar you for life, and living with guilt of having put your life and other road users at risk.

Legislation

The Traffic Police highlighted that many motorists are unclear about the drink driving law in Singapore. Under the Road Traffic Act, a person can be convicted of drink driving in two instances.

If the driver is found with more than the legal limit of 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millitres of breath, or more than 80 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millitres of blood, he/she is deemed to have broken the law and it does not matter whether the driver has perfect control of the vehicle, when caught.

Penalties

First Time – Drink driver will be fined between $1000/- and $5000/- or six months imprisonment.

Second Time – Drink driver will be fined between $3000/- and $10,000/- fine or imprisonment for a term of up to one year.

Repeated Time – Drink Driver will face enhanced punishment up to 3 times the penalty, a maximum of $30,000/- fine and three years' imprisonment.

Offenders causing death or serious injuries can also be caned up to 6 strokes.

All those convicted will be disqualified from driving for at least 1 year, even if they have not caused any traffic accidents.

Even when the alcohol level is under the legal limit, the driver can still be convicted if it is shown that he/she did not have proper control of the vehicle as a result of alcoholic intoxication.