IT’S ONE OF the biggest problems across the country at Christmas – people who’ve had a few drinks deciding that “chancing it” and driving home is a good idea.
Likewise, there are those who decide to drive the morning after having a bellyful of alcohol at the myriad Christmas parties and meet-ups that come over the horizon during the festive season.
It can lead to horrific accidents, sometimes nothing happens, but there is one constant – it’s against the law.
284,000 people, a huge number amounting to one driver in ten, have admitted to drink driving in the last year according to a Road Safety Authority (RSA) survey.
This year the gardaí and the RSA are approaching their anti drink driving campaign from a slightly different angle; they’ve produced a video of just what happens when someone is stopped by gardaí in his or her car the morning after a heavy night:
It’s uncomfortable viewing. As anyone who has been through the experience can attest, being stopped by the guards when behind the wheel, for whatever reason, is a nerve-wracking experience.
This video serves to show just what being processed by the system when you’ve committed a drink-driving offence is like. The guards are polite, firm, and no-nonsense.
And all the time the protagonist complies with their wishes, perhaps hoping the experience is just a nightmare. Then he emerges into the cold light of day from a Garda station, and makes the dreaded phone call.
The threat of losing your licence is enough to stop most people from doing something silly. Perhaps the intimate details of the indignities that come with being arrested for drink-driving will have a similar effect.
This year the gardaí will apparently be targeting drink driving the morning after. You have been warned.
“If you are heading to an office party or socialising over the Christmas and New Year period, make sure you plan ahead,” said Moyagh Murdock, chief executive of the RSA.
Murdock was also at pains to warn drivers of the perils of driving the morning after drinking.
It roughly takes you about one hour for your body to get rid of one unit of alcohol, that’s a half pint or standard glass of wine. If you got to bed in the early hours and didn’t get a good night’s sleep, this will magnify the impairing effects of any alcohol in your system.
“The powers of An Garda Síochána enable us to breath test any driver who has committed a road traffic offence,” said chief superintendent Mark Curran of the Garda National Traffic Bureau.
If you are detected driving in a bus lane, or using a mobile phone you can be tested for the presence of alcohol.
The gardaí will be targeting drink driving the morning after. This still remains a danger time zone as 12% of all drink driving arrests occur between 8am and 2pm. Of those, almost a third happen on a Sunday, peaking between 11am and 2pm.
Of those prosecuted for drink driving offences in the last 12 months the overwhelming majority, 85.4%, were male.
55.3% of those convicted were aged between 20 and 39.
The red alert times for people arrested for drink-driving are Sunday morning (16%) and Saturday morning (10%). Fully 45.7% of convictions come as a result of arrests made between midnight and 6am.
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