24
-
Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 1995
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Transport, Mr Haider Barma, in moving the second reading of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 1995 in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I move the second reading of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 1995. The main purpose of this bill is to strengthen legislation aimed at tackling drunken driving.
The present legislation on drunken driving is extremely difficult to enforce, since it does not specify a blood alcohol limit and suspected offenders are not required by law to provide samples of their breath, blood or urine for testing. As a result, prosecution for the offence is possible only in the most extreme cases.
The Road Safety Council has been deliberating this problem for some time. The amending bill now before Council seeks to incorporate the recommendations put forward. The Transport Advisory Committee has strongly endorsed the proposals and, indeed, there has been support from the general public and the media. The LegCo Transport Panel has also been briefed.
Mr President, the Police now have firm evidence, based on autopsy reports on drivers killed in traffic accidents, to show that excessive drinking is a significant cause of serious traffic accidents. We propose to prescribe limits for the concentration of alcohol in a driver's blood, urine and breath, and to require drivers to provide samples for testing in certain specified circumstances. We recommend that the limit should be 80 milligrams of alcohol in one hundred millilitres of blood. This is the standard adopted in most European Union countries and also in Singapore.
Clause 7 of the bill makes it an offence to drive with an alcohol concentration above the prescribed limit. Whilst we do not propose to introduce random breath testing for drivers, Police officers will nonetheless empowered so that they may require a driver to take a screening breath test if he is involved in a traffic accident, has committed a traffic offence, or if a Police officer has reasonable cause to suspect that he has been drinking.
If the screening breath test reveals that the alcohol level exceeds the prescribed limit, or if the driver fails to provide a sample, then the suspect may be arrested and required to provide samples of blood, urine or breath for further analysis. The bill sets out the conditions under which the various types of specimen should be required, and where and when they should be provided.