The province of Buenos Aires already has its own zero alcohol driving law while the debate continues on a national standard that It has already been approved in the National Chamber of Deputies and is now awaiting debate in the Senate. The Buenos Aires Legislature last night, at dawn, sanctioned the project that establishes zero tolerance for drivers of private vehicles with penalties that include fines, arrest, license retention and disqualification.
The law, which according to the project shall enter into force once published in the Official Gazette and promulgatedsomething that could happen in the first weeks of next January, establishes that during the first year of validity, people who drive with a rate of up to 0.49 milligrams of alcohol per liter of blood will only be penalized with the attendance and approval of special courses education and training for the correct use of public roads. For dosages higher than 0.5 mg/l of blood, the sanctions will be greater.
The proposal had been approved on October 27 in the provincial Senate and contemplates different types of penalties whose degrees of application will be according to the levels of alcohol in blood detected.
“It is a very important law because drink driving kills. This will put an end to the speculation of how much alcohol I can drink while driving, now it is known that nothing can be ingested. The next steps are the controls and the campaigns, that people know, understand why. You have to go out to control so that meat is made in each driver, so that it is known that this will be important not to issue fines, but to save lives ”, he assured Viviam Perrone, from the Mothers of Pain civil associationone of the promoters of the project.
Violators with up to 0.49 g/l of alcohol in their blood will receive three months of disqualification to drive, after passing the first year of application of the law. If the alcohol level is between 0.5 and 0.99 g/l the penalty will be six months; while in the cases of between 1 g/l and 1.5 g/l the disqualification will be of 12 months and greater than 1.5 g/l, from 18 months.
In this way, and when it comes into full force, the possibility of driving with up to 0.5 g/l of alcohol in the blood is eliminated. In other words, zero tolerance.
“We achieved a fundamental step to save lives in the province of Buenos Aires. With Zero Alcohol behind the wheel, we advance as a society in something as necessary as taking care of each other. With these changes, the person who drives should know that he will not have to drink a drop of alcohol to do so responsibly,” said the Buenos Aires Minister of Transport, Jorge D’Onofrioafter the sanction.
Reactions to the enactment of the law were varied and, in some cases, reflected rejection of the proposal. As in the case Fabián Pons, president of the Latin American Road Observatory (Ovilam)who considered the law as “innocuous and demagogic”.
“It is a law that does not make sense. They did not make a zero alcohol law, but zero alcohol, of the concentration of alcohol in the blood ”, he warned. “It is pure demagoguery, it is useless. No developed country in the world has zero tolerance, but there are educational projects, awareness raising, saturation of controls and tougher penalties to attack the problem”, Pons added.
The head of Ovilam gave examples: “Finland came to control 70% of the population per year (today it does so at 28%), Europe controls 20% of its population, and Argentina controls 0.7%. Here there is no driver education or awareness. This is getting rid of the problem, making demagogy. Nothing is solved by changing a number, from 0.5 to 0, this requires work and awareness. The measure is harmless.”
“When we took over as head of the Ministry, the Governor [Axel Kicillof] He entrusted us to protect our neighbors. Thanks to the accompaniment of the Legislature, the work of the victims’ associations and the important task that we carry out daily to add more road awareness, we are going to save lives”, said D’Onofrio.
According to data from the Road Safety Observatory of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Transport alcohol is present in one in four road accidents and it is the leading cause of death for children under 35 years of age. During 2022 there were 6,162 drink-driving offenses on routes, streets and roads in the province of Buenos Aires.
“This law is not the only tool with which we want to generate a paradigm shift, the Youth License program is here to stay and for our kids to be fundamental actors in raising awareness and road education,” recalled D’Onofrio.
With the incorporation of this law, the province of Buenos Aires joins Chaco, Chubut, Córdoba, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, La Rioja, Río Negro, Salta, Santa Cruz, Tierra del Fuego and Tucumán, all jurisdictions with zero tolerance for alcohol to steering wheel.
Meanwhile, the national project that establishes the prohibition of alcohol consumption to drive vehicles already has a favorable opinion in commission in the Senate and is ready to be converted into law in the next session of the Upper House.
The initiative was sanctioned by the Chamber of Deputies on November 24 by a majority of 195 votes, for which broad support is also discounted from senators from across the political spectrum.
THE NATION