Christmas drink drivingChristmas time, mistletoe and wine,
Children singing Christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
And the number of drink-driving related car accidents gone through the roof. That's pretty much how it goes at Christmas these days, Sir Cliff. There's something about the festive period that really gets people drinking and driving, much worse than say the World Cup, or a sunny summer bank holiday, or the Eurovision Song Contest - though all of these occasions require a great deal of drinking to get through. Perhaps it has something to do with nauseating Christmas TV and Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' driving people out of their homes and into the relative safety of their cars. Maybe the fools are taken in by the Hollywood promise that nothing bad can happen at Christmas. Or maybe it just gets to be 11 o'clock at night, you've had a few brandies or liquor coffees and the kids need putting to bed. The taxis aren't running, it's minus five out there and home is only five miles away - and nobody needs to know! What Christmas drink-drivers (the vast majority of whom get away with it, and probably do it again at New Years) don't realise is that getting behind the wheel while unfit isn't some endearing misdemeanour, like going to bed without cleaning your teeth - it's a very serious crime and an appalling risk of life. It goes without saying that drink-driving is also a terrible idea young driver car insurance-wise. If you're caught driving whilst over the limit - regardless of whether or not you crashed or lost control of the car - expect your car insurance premium to practically double overnight. Motor insurance firms don't like drink-drivers because they represent a much greater liability than sober ones and they won't waste any time maxing-out your premium to compensate. Not surprisingly, road safety campaigners have made a variety of suggestions under the banner "What to do about the drink-driving problem". One school of thought, espoused by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (or RoSPA) advocates reducing the legal limit of 80mg (per 100ml of blood) to 50mg to tackle the type of driver who thinks he or she can get away with "just one" drink before taking to the road. 50mg, they argue, is too little to constitute 'a drink', in the sense "I'm going out for a drink". It'll cover you for a spoonful of cough syrup or an ill-advised mouthful of mouthwash but no more. This way, people can live their lives and drive their cars without fear of accidentally overstepping the mark but if they drink any more than a tipple they'll know not to risk it. Or so the theory goes. As many other people point out, exchanging one alcohol limit for another will only lead to more of the same problems we have today, as some try legitimately to guess the correct amount and fail, and others wilfully overstep the mark but plead ignorance. The only effective solution according to this second group is a blanket ban, or so-called "zero tolerance" approach to drinking and driving. Arresting people who have even a trace of alcohol in their system, they argue, is the only effective way of policing drink-drive laws. As different people have wildly different tolerances to drinking (and these highly dependant on diet, mood and a thousand other factors), the only way to be sure the drug isn't impairing their abilities behind the wheel is to outlaw it altogether. Of course this leads to a completely different set of problems, which we've hinted at above. Alcohol has dozens of innocent uses in industry, medicine and so on, and people readily drink a tiny bit without even realising it. It doesn't matter how much you've had - from a rum truffle to a bottle of Bacardi - under a zero tolerance policy all are guilty. You can see, therefore, that we're still a long way off finding a workable solution to the problem of drink-driving through new legislation. Hopefully, the inevitable Christmas road safety campaign and the threat of an expensive young driver car insurance policy will be enough to put you off - but if not, think of the three thousand people who are killed every year by drink driving. Not very Christmassy, is it?
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