Call to extend zero drinking laws for new drivers until age 21 years

Imposing a zero blood alcohol limit on drivers until the age of 21 years can significantly reduce the number of alcohol-related road crash deaths in young Australians, according to an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Prof Wayne Hall, from the Centre for Clinical Research at the University of Queensland, and co-authors write that extending the existing zero-tolerance laws for newly licensed drivers until the age of 21 years would reduce alcohol-related road crash deaths in young adults on a similar scale to that achieved in the US by increasing the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) to 21 years.

“In the US, policy experiments over a 20-year period have demonstrated that road crash deaths among young adults can be substantially reduced by raising the MLDA to 21 years,” they said.

“Given the major political obstacles to increasing the MLDA in Australia, we propose a policy that would require licensed drivers to maintain a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of zero until at least the age of 21 years – close to the current policy of zero BAC until age 22 years in Victoria – and preferably until 25 years.

“This would allow young Australians to drink or drive but not to combine these activities for the first 3-5 years of driving.”

Prof Hall said if all Australian jurisdictions had required a zero BAC for drivers until the age of 21 years in 2003, then 17 deaths could have been averted in young Australians as they aged from 18 to 21 years.

“If we had increased the age to 25 years, as many as 50 deaths could have been averted by the age of 25 years,” Prof Hall said.

He said the policy would be part of a more comprehensive policy package that would include increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages, restricting the promotion of alcohol to young adults, and building support for more moderate alcohol consumption by sustained education campaigns directed at parents and young drinkers.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.