Drink driving should be treated as a crime regardless of whether the driver causes a crash, a panel of legal experts has told the country's top court.

The Supreme People's Court invited the experts to put forward suggestions on drink driving at a meeting last Friday, following heated debate about loopholes in the legal system.

The majority of the panel believed that motorists who were over the legal blood- alcohol limit "disrespect the lives of others" and that their behavior is "indirectly intentional", Wang Zuofu, deputy director of the research center on criminal law at Beijing Law Society, told China Daily yesterday.