No more drink driving

The Daily Sail talks to the RYA Edmund Whelan about the Railways and Transport Safety Bill

Driving the boat home after some lengthy post race analysis in the pub will take on a new complexion in the future once a new government Bill becomes law. The new legislation proposed in the Railways and Transport Safety Bill published on Tuesday will give the police the right to breathalyse not only professional seamen, but also the skippers of private craft.

Such are the consequencies of this that The Daily Sail felt compelled to discuss the matter with the RYA's Head of Legal and Government Affairs, Edmund Whelan.

"The reason for it being introduced to shipping was a result originally of the Marchioness incident on the river Thames when it was implied that alcohol might have had a part to play in that accident," says Whelan of the collision in August 1989 between the Marchioness and the Bowbelle when 51 people lost their lives.

"Questions about alcohol were certainly raised in the course of the Inquiry but I don’t think they were ever satisfactorily answered. The answer is probably 'not a lot', but you only have to ask the question to start the hare running, don’t you? It was then raised by the Inquiry team, that wasn’t it surprising that nowhere in British legislation is there a requirement for professional people on boats or ships to have to comply with alcohol rules." The Bill once law will mean that the crews of ships will have to stay off the juice in the same way as the crews of aircraft, trains or buses, But there is more...

"They went further and said there was seen to be no reason to treat private craft differently," Whelan continues. "Our response was 'well there are several reasons - for a start private craft will often be tied up, moored, anchored at the end of a sail and people will be down below having dinner and they don’t want to be faced with a policeman with a breathalyser in their hand.'" This would be the equivalent of being nicked for kipping in your car while under the influence.

Whelan says the RYA scored a coup here and the bill differentiates between professional and non-professional sailors. "Non-professionals will only be at risk of being breathalysed if their vessel is underway at the time, so we are pleased they listened to us on that score." Whether a 'professional' includes the paid skipper of a pleasure yacht at present is unclear.

"We also said we were worried about having a general breathalyser test for all craft over all waters and they have listened to us there because they have actually left it open for the minister to make regulations for certain places, certain sizes and certain power of craft," says Whelan. "Our response said that the real problem seemed to be in some harbour, beach and river areas. We don’t want the police being able to board boats several miles offshore, without obviously good reason."

Once the Bill is passed, the police will have the power to stop and breathalyse yachtsmen and no doubt this will lead to police patrol boats being viewed by yachtsmen with the same suspicion as panda cars. This being said, police boats are hardly prolific. In the Solent for example the marine division of Hampshire constabulary run launches out of Cowes, Gosport and Southampton.

Already most existing local byelaws for rivers and confined waters state that it is illegal to be in charge of a vessel while drunk or stoned. Clause 24 of the byelaws for Hamble River for example state "a person shall not navigate any vessel in the River whilst under the influence of drink or drugs to such an extent as to be incapable of taking proper control of the vessel" which would be an interesting one to prove.

Interestingly while byelaws for confined waters are very specific about the use of booze and drugs, it is a different story when it comes to the byelaws for coastal waters. "About three years ago the government carried out a comprehensive review of all the coastal byelaws," says Whelan. "They said byelaws around the coast - there are so many different agencies and so many different byelaws, let’s have a look at the whole lot. And they came up with a review of coastal byelaw powers. Not once in that big thick document does the word 'alcohol' appear."

The next step obviously is that we can expect to see speed cameras on the river Hamble...