BRAZIL: Controversy Over DWI Law Despite Reduced Deaths

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 25 2008 (IPS) – Although Brazil s tough new drunk driving law has been applauded for cutting traffic deaths in its first month, and is bringing about a change in habits, it continues to face opposition by restaurant and bar owners who will challenge it as unconstitutional in order to get it revoked or at least limit its effects.
Traffic accident deaths in Brazil s largest city, São Paulo, plunged 63 percent in the first three weeks after the law went into effect on Jun. 19, compared to the previous three weeks, according to the forensic medicine institute. And in Brasilia, the capital, the fall was 20 percent in the first month, local authorities reported.

Fewer traffic injuries are also being treated in hospitals, and fewer injuries caused by fights and domestic violence interpreted as a side-effect of lower alcohol consumption.

Similar results have been in other large cities in Brazil since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the amended Brazilian traffic code in late June, which stiffened the penalties for those found Driving While Intoxicated (DWI).

Drivers found with blood alcohol levels as low as 0.02 percent can be charged a fine of 957 real (600 dollar), and those with levels of over 0.06 percent, or repeat offenders, can have their car impounded and their drivers licence suspended for a year, and can even face time in prison.

By comparison, the threshold for driving while intoxicated is 0.08 percent in countries like Canada, Mexico, the United States, Britain, Paraguay, Panama, Nicaragua and Uruguay, 0.05 percent in Argentina and a number of European countries, between zero and 0.02 percent in other European countries, and between zero and 0.05 percent in Australia.
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The zero tolerance policy and the stiff penalties violate the principles of rationality and proportionality, said Percival Maricato, legal director of the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants (ABRASEL), who said the law was unconstitutional because it forces people to take a breathalyzer test or to have a blood sample taken.

Under the constitution, no one can be forced to provide self-incriminating evidence. Based on that argument, some people have obtained legal protection exempting them from breathalyzer or other tests.

According to the arguments that ABRASEL has presented in its lawsuit before the Supreme Court, in which it challenges the law as unconstitutional, the new legislation also violates other rights, like the right to free transit, economic freedom and free enterprise.

Maricato told IPS that the drop in accidents was not the result of the new law, but of terrorism that is being practiced by deploying large numbers of police along the highways and urban roads of the nation, which he said has put the country in a state of curfew.

But the broad media coverage of the new law has generated favourable public opinion, based on strong arguments about safety and the need to save lives.

This is about fighting a culture of death that costs between 34,000 and 36,000 lives a year in traffic accidents, with alcoholic beverages involved in 70 percent of the cases, Nazareno Affonso, head of the National Movement for the Right to Quality Public Transportation for All (MDT), told IPS.

In Brazil, traffic kills 100 people a day, more than the 60 people a day killed in the Iraq war at its peak, he said.

The idea of modifying Brazil s laws to incorporate the concept of zero alcohol was developed by the Committee of Mobilisation for Health, Peace and Safety in Traffic, coordinated by the Ministry of Cities, with the participation of different public agencies and sectors of society.

The aim was to achieve a strong symbolic impact in order to convince Brazilians, whose roads are notoriously unsafe, that drinking and driving are mutually incompatible activities, explained Affonso, who brought about a major reduction in traffic accidents when he served as secretary of Transport in Brasilia in the 1990s.

Traffic accidents caused by drivers who have consumed even small amounts of alcohol must be treated as crimes, because in Brazil the law does not consider beer an alcoholic beverage, which means it can be freely advertised, unlike whisky or wine, he said.

The Committee is also studying other measures to curb traffic deaths, which in Brazil compete in number with murders caused by violent crime, that number around 46,000 a year.

The targets will be speeding, which will be subject to harsher penalties and will be combated with the slogan speeding kills, and the country s omnipresent motorcycles, which are responsible for the fastest growing number of fatal traffic accidents, said Affonso.

The stepped-up enforcement and tough penalties are giving rise to new habits among consumers, and to creative solutions for bars and restaurants that, according to ABRASEL, have seen their earnings go down by between 30 and 45 percent.

One option is to make alternative means of transportation available to customers, or provide drivers who can drive them home in their own cars.

Taxi drivers, meanwhile, are celebrating the major rise in the number of evening and night-time passengers.

But Maricato complained that the new law could drive into ruin a good part of the one million bars and restaurants, which employ six million people and account for 2.4 percent of the country s gross domestic product.

Not only is the law authoritarian, he said, but it is based on hypocrisy, because it treats 90 million Brazilians who are occasional drinkers as criminals. That is why it will be short-lived, he predicted, as was a decree that banned the sale of alcoholic beverages in shops and restaurants along highways.

Carlos Muller, a reporter who works in a state-run firm in Brasilia, where he has lived for 19 years, fears that the law will take firm root because of the news of its results.

But the group of friends that he used to meet with every Thursday night to have a few glasses of wine and chat are still looking for alternatives to taxis, so that the meeting will not have to become a virtual on-line gathering.

Muller told IPS that taxis are not a solution, because he lives 20 km from downtown Brasilia, and unless he wants to deprive himself of fine wine, the ride would cost him at least 100 reals (63 dollars).

His colleague, Adelay Bonolo, a lawyer, also believes the law is unconstitutional in several respects, but says that any legal action must be carried out with great caution because of the broad public support and apparent success achieved by the law so far.

The results can be better assessed in August, after the school vacations are over, he said.

Bonolo said that when the specific regulations for the law, which must be approved by the National Traffic Council, are drawn up, some exaggerations, like zero alcohol, could be corrected.

Under the current strict limitations, candy containing liquor and even some medicines can introduce enough alcohol in the blood to constitute a crime.

Owners of bars and restaurants should also be able to claim reparations in court, to compensate for the losses suffered, said Bonolo.