Madam, - Your editorial (February 20th) regards it as a matter of grave concern that 95 per cent of people arrested for drink driving over the Christmas period were found to be above the legal alcohol limit. In order to be arrested for drink driving, one must have failed a road-side breath test. It would therefore be a matter of grave concern if the vast majority of persons so detained were not above the legal limit.
Our concern should not be for the 95 per cent correctly detained, but for the 5 per cent who were cleared by the subsequent, confirmatory test administered at a Garda station. In many of these cases the explanation is probably that sufficient alcohol was metabolised between the initial and confirmatory test to place the individual below the legal limit. - Yours etc,
Dr ANDREW & SHEILA ROUS, St. Aubyn's Court, Shanganagh Road, Killiney, Co Dublin