Proposed road safety law changes

Some new road safety proposals and things came out today (or maybe jest recently), which can be found here. I had a quick squizz at the summary, which overall seems pretty good and I support a lot of the ideas, especially the increased focus on fatigue, which I think is often overlooked. But there's one proposal in there that really irritates me, so prepare for a rant on that.

The offending proposal is: Introduce a zero BAC limit for certain drivers (drivers under 20 years, adults without a full licence, and commercial drivers) (And Guptill just got out, grrr.) These proposals for a zero limit always irk me. People don't seem to understand what zero means, or how common things are that contain a trace amount of alcohol.

Among other things, the following can all contain small amounts of alcohol: cough syrup, fruit juice, and bread. With a zero limit, even the most minute amount of alcohol puts you over the limit. Sure, with current equipment means these trace amounts won't be detectable, but even so, if this law change were to go through it would be illegal to drink juice left in the sun (which had fermented a little) and then drive. How stupid is that? Sure, reduce it to a very small amount such as 0.01% or 0.005%, but not zero. Zero is just stupid.

Just to be open here, I don't fall into this category, I am not under 20, and I have my full licence, so I don't have any obvious ulterior motive. I just hate ridiculous proposals for laws, because there's always the chance that they will no longer be proposals, but get enshrined and adhered to.

I understand the purpose of these laws, to encourage people to not drive if they have been drinking, but a zero limit is not the way to do that. A zero limit may do this, but one huge side effect is that it'll make the actions of people who aren't endangering others illegal. This is when laws go to far, there is a limit to how much they can infringe on the rights of the people. So while I'm in favour of reducing the blood alcohol limit, NZ's is one of the highest in the world as it stands, but I cannot support a zero limit.

I plan on making a submission on the previously linked to site, and possibly even writing a letter to the editor, though I'll need to organise my thoughts a lot better for that. I had more ideas before, so I might add them to this if they come back in an arbitrary manner.