Police crack down on drug use while driving

Police nationwide are busy examining the license database of coach and truck drivers and comparing it with the database of registered drug addicts, to prevent drug use among drivers.

The move came as an investigation blamed a crystal meth-taker for a fatal crash in April that killed 14 people and injured 20 others.

Once the police detect any match that indicates the driver was, or still is, a drug user, police will immediately stop the person from driving.

If further investigation finds that the person is still addicted to drugs, the person's driving license will be revoked, according to a statement provided to China Daily by the traffic management bureau of the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, police in North China's Tianjin municipality announced that since they received the ministry's order in late April, they had revoked 34 driving licenses because drivers were taking or injecting drugs.

In addition, there will be more police deployment at key road sections and expressway service areas to conduct checks on coach and truck drivers, in order to prevent dangerous driving - including drug use - on the road, the ministry statement said.

The ministry is also considering suggesting that the top legislature make drug use while driving a crime and stipulate criminal punishment for that, it said.

The ministry's campaign to fight drug use in driving, which was launched on Tuesday, will run until June 30.

On April 22, a coach collided with a truck on an expressway in East China's Jiangsu province, killing 14 people and injuring 20 others.

A police investigation found that a urine sample taken from the coach's driver was positive for drugs. The driver was believed to have taken crystal meth on April 20. He had slept for only four hours before he started driving on April 22, the day of the crash, an earlier statement from the ministry said.

"Compared with drunken driving, drug use in driving is very difficult for the police to discover and confirm," Jiang Jing, a press officer for the Beijing municipal traffic management bureau, told China Daily on Wednesday.

"The drug addict drivers usually look the same as the normal drivers, and we don't have convenient test devices for drug use at checkpoints," she said.

"At present, we can only cooperate with the anti-drug department to make comparison with the databases, then to find whether they once had a history of drug abuse," Jiang said. "But the database might be incomplete, and many drivers' registered personal information is not even real."

Ministry figures show that by April 24 this year, the number of traffic accidents involving coaches was 40.4 percent higher than in the same period last year, and the casualty rate in such incidents rose by 158.2 percent.

The increases have exposed safety loopholes and management problems, the ministry said on its website in late April.

zhangyan1@chinadaily.com.cn