Zero tolerance to alcohol. The European Commission has asked Member States to introduce greater penalties for “novice drivers with a blood alcohol level above 0.0 g/l”, is reading the EU’s new proposal on road safety. In other words, the European executive wants to ban the consumption of all alcoholic substances, even in small quantities, for those who start driving within the first two years of obtaining their license.
The proposal calls for new penalties for novice drivers to be “effective, proportionate, dissuasive and non-discriminatory”. But the news for young drivers does not end there. “Member States may set additional rules applicable to novice drivers on their territory during the ‘two-year’ probationary period to improve road safety,” so the proposal remains, which opens up other additional penalties for novice drivers.
The number of drink-driving penalties in the 27 EU Member States is estimated at 1.2 million cases in 2019. At European level, around 26% of all alcohol-related offenses are estimated to be serious and possibly license revocation is a consequence. The new EU proposal requires “a probationary period of at least two years after passing the test for inexperienced drivers and a zero tolerance rule for drunk driving”. note “While young drivers only make up 8% of all drivers, this is very important as 2 out of every 5 fatal crashes involve a driver or motorcyclist under the age of 30,” the Commission’s Palazzo Berlaymont said.
The commission’s proposal also aims to adapt driving training and testing to better prepare future drivers for the presence of vulnerable individuals on the road, such as pedestrians, cyclists and drivers of e-scooters and e-bikes. It also aims to provide a more focused assessment of medical fitness, taking into account advances in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes. Drivers will be encouraged to update their driving skills and knowledge to ultimately keep up with technological advances.
Among the innovations of the Brussels package is the introduction of a digital driver’s license, which is kept on the smartphone and renewed entirely online, and will be recognized throughout the EU. In this way, the administrative procedures and the replacement, renewal or replacement of the driver’s license will be simplified, given that the whole procedure will be possible to carry out online (to renew the driver’s license in Italy today, it is still necessary to go to the agency or go to the Vehicle registration). The Directive sets minimum requirements to allow interoperability between digital driver’s licenses across the EU. After an adaptation period, the digital driver’s license will be issued by default, but drivers may also have a physical driver’s license or both.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
