zero-tolerance policy on drinking and driving has helped bring the problem of road safety very sharply into focus.

There is no question that alcohol and other substances are a significant cause of road traffic accidents and reckless driving.

Nor is there any doubt that preventing all drinkers from driving would do a great deal to make the roads safer -- if only by cutting down on the number of vehicles on the roads.

Ms Delcina Bean-Burrows' proposal goes further than that and raises questions about the prosecution of offences and how we go about enforcing our laws.

Her proposal would shift the focus of prosecution away from preventing impaired driving to making the consumption of any amount of alcohol, when taken before driving, an offence -- even if the driver does not pose a threat to anyone.

That is a significant change, and one which would run the risk of creating a whole new class of driving offender. Law-abiding drivers would face the problem of having no transport at hours when public transport is almost non-existent and taxis can be hard to come by.

The bigger problem is enforcement. Under the current law, the Police must have cause before they stop a suspected impaired driver, whose breath is then tested to see if it exceeds the legal limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.

It would appear that the law as it stands is not being enforced as effectively as it should be, and that drivers are not being stopped and tested. Would lowering the alcohol level improve the situation? In a perfect world, no-one would drink and drive. But people do drink and drive in Bermuda and one of the main reasons they do is because they can get away with it. Before moving to zero-tolerance, a real effort should be made to enforce the existing law.

This could include making random checks during peak drink driving hours with on the spot testing. While it could be argued that this will result in Police stopping drivers without cause, random checks (every fourth or fifth vehicle, for example) would not target a specific group but would go a long way towards deterring drinking and driving. The Police will still have to show cause before breathalysing a driver.

In the meantime, sentencing should be varied. Instead of simply putting a driver off the road for a period of time, licences should be restored after convicted drivers have gone through a period of driver "re-education'' and, where necessary, alcohol counselling. This would give drivers incentive to clean up their acts.