Administrative measures, without a legal basis, alone cannot check drink driving effectively, says an article in Yangtze Evening Post. Excerpt:

The Ministry of Public Security's transportation administration bureau plans to check drink driving through administrative measures, including canceling driving licenses of people who commit the offense more than a certain number of times.

Drink driving is an offense and the offender should be punished according to law, which means we need legal, not administrative, measures to check it. Some people even wonder why drink driving cannot be checked by strict application of traffic laws.

Drink driving is difficult to check because the criteria to identify drunk drivers is not very clear and law enforcement against them is lax. Some drunk drivers escape punishment through backdoor dealings, which to some extent encourages the rich and influential to ignore the rules. Hence, the best way to deal with drink driving is to strengthen the law and ensure it is applied strictly.

But still, preventing a person from driving when he is drunk is a better way of ridding our roads of killers than punishing them after they are caught.

Authorities in Nantong, Jiangsu province, have implemented a policy: In the city's urban areas, drivers who should not be driving to avoid violating rules, including being drunk, can ask any traffic policeman to drive for them. This method could prove more effective in checking drink driving than taking drunk drivers to task.

We may not be able to apply this measure throughout the country because of different social conditions in different areas, but the Nantong example shows there are many ways in which drink driving can be checked.

(China Daily August 14, 2009)