ABSTRACT
Earlier chapters of this book gave an account of the law on various driving offences, then Chapter 6 explored what the criminal law ought to be striving to achieve in criminalizing bad driving and what is known about those drivers who currently out the law. This chapter will rstly attempt to employ the knowledge provided by researchers in the eld of criminology and psychology in order better to dene the general offences of dangerous and careless driving and increase the potential for the law to achieve the aims set for it in improving road safety. The focus here is on the offences discussed in Chapter 2 which, from the empirical work conducted by the author amongst others, appear to cause prosecution lawyers the most difculties in bringing drivers to justice. Whilst the law on drinkdriving can be improved, primarily by way of reducing the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level from 80 mg/100 ml to at most 50 mg/100 ml and by introducing random breath testing in order to increase drivers’ perceptions of the likelihood of getting caught, it is generally accepted that attitudes to the law on drink-driving are positive, and that drivers recognize normative motives for desisting from drink-driving (although a caveat should be added in that there is a need to maintain and reinforce the message directed at younger drivers).
