The survey was carried out by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in two Chinese cities as part of a partnership between QUT's Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q) and organisations in China to promote road safety and reduce fatalities and injuries.

CARRS-Q doctoral student Keqin Jia, who grew up in China and is now an Australian citizen, said alcohol was a major contributor to road crashes in China and in May 2011 the government amended legislation to criminalise offences against the higher of its two legal blood alcohol concentration limits for drivers.

‘The amendments mean a driver caught with a blood alcohol level greater than 0.08% is charged with driving while intoxicated, translated as "drunk driving", which is now a criminal offence,’ he said.

‘Drivers with a blood alcohol level greater than 0.02% and up to 0.08% are charged with driving under the influence, translated as “drink driving”, as before.’

Mr Jia said since the new regulations were introduced there had been a drop in alcohol-related crashes, but there was concern around the limited awareness of the new limits and how that might be contributing to offending rates.

‘What our studies found is that general drivers and convicted drunk drivers showed low levels of knowledge about the legal limits for drink driving and drunk driving offences,’ he said.

‘Only 20 to 30% of drivers nominated the correct legal limits for drink and drunk driving and convicted drunk drivers were only slightly more aware with between 20 and 40% knowing the limits, despite having been prosecuted for their offence.’

Mr Jia said one of the challenges for China was the lack of definition of what constituted a standard drink.

‘The problem in China, compared to Australia, is that they have a wide availability of alcohol with a variety of alcohol concentrations, so it is difficult to define a standard drink.

‘In Australia, road safety campaigners have been pushing for drinks to display labels advising of how many standard drinks are in a bottle, but there is nothing similar in China.

‘Therefore there is very limited knowledge of the amount of alcohol that can be consumed while staying under the legal limit to drive.

‘Our studies found that less than 10% of drivers and convicted drunk drivers could say how many drinks they could consume and stay under the legal limit to drive.

‘For beer and spirits, the results were even lower with only 2% of convicted drunk drivers able to determine how many drinks were too many drinks to drive.’