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I'm pleased that drug driving has finally reached the political agenda and looks set to be tackled.
Yet I wonder what the rationale was behind the Government plucking that of all issues out of the causes of death and injury on our roads and making it their top priority.
RCGB 2010 data (Road Casualties GB) shows that impairment by illicit or medicinal drugs was a factor in just 565 of the almost 209,000 reported crashes involving injury [0.25%].
Predictably, the proportion of drug impairment as a cause rose among the most serious injury groups, 39 deaths [2%] and 158 serious injuries [1%].
And while these figures are not acceptable, they represent a much smaller problem than the 5293 casualties attributed to 'impaired by alcohol', or even the 1766 casualties attributed to 'fatigue'.
I am all for any action that will cut down on drug driving, but my concern is that it's only being addressed due to public outcry and for political, rather than safety reasons.
If safety was the Government's main priority, we wouldn't be targeting this issue at a time when the number of breathalyser tests is reducing.
The harsh reality is a vast amount of time, money and effort will be put into this even before we see anything implemented and, rather than be treated in isolation, I'd have preferred to have seen it being introduced as part of a number of measures to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.
However, regrettably I'm too accustomed to Government's disregarding the KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) statistics and simply using road safety as a political flag waving exercise.
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