Bengaluru traffic police
Credit: DH File Photo
Bengaluru: The prevalence of drunk driving may have fallen below 3 per cent, but its severity has gone up to dangerously high levels, a recent report has found.
The report was compiled after a month-long joint assessment in March, when 10,810 vehicles had been stopped and 10,726 drivers and riders were checked across the city.
On Friday, the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP), Nimhans, and the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit in collaboration with the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety released the findings of the joint report.
While 4.4 per cent (471) of the drivers checked tested positive for alcohol, only 2.98 per cent (320) breached the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 30mg/100ml of blood.
The median BAC levels among those that tested positive was 69mg/100ml of blood, which is over twice the legal limit. Among the violators, an alarming 15.9% of them had over five times the legal BAC level, nearly 6.8% of whom had above 200mg/100ml of BAC levels, indicating very severe intoxication and an increase in the severity of drunk driving in the city, said Dr MS Gautham, Additional Professor, Epidemiology, WHO Collaborating Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, Nimhans.
"It is concerning because the effect of such high consumption shows with vision impairment, lack of vehicle control and decision making, leading to a very high risk of crashes affecting not just the driver, but also the occupants and other road users," said Dr Gautham.
He pointed out the need for more such assessments, especially outside the city, as one of the limitations in this report was that checks were conducted between 10 pm to 12 am every night. "There is also a need to propagate the message of 'passive drinking' so that people refuse to travel with someone who has consumed alcohol because they will be also affected by that decision," he told DH.
Drunken driving was higher among the age group of 18-24 years, as nearly 4.1% of the 161 people in this age group tested positive for alcohol.
"It is alarming that drunk driving was the highest among youngsters. The focus is, thus, to educate them and raise awareness about the effects of drunk driving. We need to take this awareness to schools," said MA Saleem, Director General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Economic Offences and Special Units, Karnataka.