Road crashes have killed 144 people on Bermuda’s roads since 2000 but policymakers lack the will to tackle the problem, according to CADA executive director Anthony Santucci.

The anti-drink driving campaigner pointed out that the Island had averaged ten road deaths a year over the last 14 years, with nine road fatalities so far in 2013.

Between 60 to 70 percent of road deaths are due to drink driving but the alcohol industry is too profitable for Government and the business community to really want to take action, Mr Santucci claimed.

He said money was being made while road users were “just dying off”. “More of them die from road fatalities than gang violence,” he said. “People die and we just don’t do anything about it.”

Mr Santucci said the true “street value” of the alcohol available for local consumption in Bermuda, including the duty paid to Government and the profit made by retailers, was hard to accurately calculate.

But he suggested it was many times more than the $28.9 million figure for 2012 provided by HM Customs and quoted in the most recent annual report from the Bermuda Drug Information Network.

“It’s not the real value,” Mr Santucci said. “It’s like saying the cost of cocaine [to a dealer] is the same as the street value. I don’t know any better way of putting it.”

He added: “Liquor suppliers run a quarter of a billion dollar a year industry, which invariably has led to [scores of] deaths since 2000.

“We never like to use these statistics, because we bury them, but it is a significant factor.”

Mr Santucci, a former Progressive Labour Party chairman, said he blamed not just the current One Bermuda Alliance administration but past PLP and United Bermuda Party governments.

“We have a relationship with alcohol that’s unhealthy and we don’t like to change the way we do business,” he said, adding that policymakers were mostly to blame for being resistant to change.

He said there were a few simple measures, proven to reduce road fatalities in other countries, which would work here but had yet to be implemented, for no good reason.

They include:

* taking blood samples from every person who attends King Edward VII Memorial Hospital after a road crash;

* immediately reducing the legal drink-drive limit of 0.08 percent of alcohol in the blood to 0.05 percent; and

* introducing police sobriety checkpoints on the road.

He said fact-finding inquests should also be held into every road death, despite Senior Coroner Archibald Warner insisting last week that they were rarely necessary.

The last inquest into a road fatality was in the case of Michael Kozma, who died in 2005. Since then, more than 100 people have been killed on the roads.

Mr Warner said last week that none of the road deaths in recent years had warranted an inquest or “thrown up a set of situations” that would merit him making recommendations regarding safety.

Mr Santucci asked: “It’s not a big deal that somebody drinks and dies?”

He called on the OBA to table legislation swiftly to allow police to demand and take breath samples from any motorist at roadside checkpoints, as promised, and reduce the drink-driving limit.

He said police could insist on blood samples from every road crash victim taken to KEMH without any need to change the law — but he said it would require staff other than doctors to be trained to draw blood.

Mr Santucci claimed police regularly didn’t request the samples because of the length of time it could take to get an on-call doctor to the hospital to carry out the procedure.

“I don’t need legislation for phlebotomists,” he said.

According to a recent road safety report by the World Health Organization, the global average road death rate is 18 deaths per 100,000 population.

Based on the number of road fatalities in Bermuda this year and an estimated population of 64,000, the Island’s rate is currently about 14 per 100,000.

The report found that: “Drinking and driving increases the risk of being involved in a crash, as well as the severity of resulting injuries.

“Driving starts to be impaired at very low levels of alcohol consumption, with the risk of crash involvement growing rapidly as consumption increases.”

It said the vast majority of adult drivers were impaired with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05 percent, with young and inexperienced drivers at greater risk of a crash.

Road Safety Council chairman Carlton Crockwell said he believed the drink-drive limit should be zero.

He said inquests into road deaths could be useful in “bringing closure for families”.

A Bermuda Police Service spokesman declined to comment on the road death statistics. Regarding blood samples, the spokesman said: “Under the powers of the Road Traffic Act and the new Road Traffic Amendment Act 2012, a police officer can arrest any person following a collision involving any vehicle so long as the officer has reasonable and probable grounds to suspect they were driving while impaired in any way by drugs or alcohol in the blood.

“The primary recourse once available is the requirement of a breath sample, followed by the requirement for blood or urine.”

Asked about blood samples and phlebotomist training, a Bermuda Hospitals Board spokeswoman said: “We have nothing to add at this time.”

A Ministry of Transport spokesman said “most people are making better decisions while driving on the roads” but “there will always be individuals who do not follow the rules of the road and our role is to educate them so they can make better choices”.