Who's taking you home?

[CrisisWolf]

I do of course agree with the sentiment - and I like the fact that Coca Cola have a BOGOF offer when you show your keys are participating retailers BUT I still think more can be done. Earlier in the year when out for a meal at a curry house I jokingly said something about the price of soft drinks. I think my indian import Cobra/Kingfisher was £4 and the pint of coke was £3.50!!! Not exactly a cheaper night out for those driving and not drinking. I am sure if it was £1-2 it would help. Its not exactly encouraging for people to go out and not drink - albit if you plan to drink don't drive of course prevails - the alternative is far more severe. Just don't think the pricing helps things. If I ever go out - I always get a bus/taxi. I very rarely go out and don't drink therefore I never drive on a night out.

[dombanks]

Id rather have a few people getting nicked with minty fresh breath and know. Y kids are drivibg on roads with fewer drunks on....

 

i dont agree withh ha zero limit, i think in line with europe at 50mg is fine. however i do agree with zero tolerance. over the limit = book thrown. problem is there are too many people who get off due to money and lawyers.

 

a zero limit is not unenforceable in OZ its 0 for the first 3 yrs (according to swmbo) 3 but i think you run the risk of criminalising people too much with it. plus there are cases where certain drugs will raise your level so it cant be zero.

 

 

 

I do of course agree with the sentiment - and I like the fact that Coca Cola have a BOGOF offer when you show your keys are participating retailers BUT I still think more can be done. Earlier in the year when out for a meal at a curry house I jokingly said something about the price of soft drinks. I think my indian import Cobra/Kingfisher was £4 and the pint of coke was £3.50!!! Not exactly a cheaper night out for those driving and not drinking. I am sure if it was £1-2 it would help. Its not exactly encouraging for people to go out and not drink - albit if you plan to drink don't drive of course prevails - the alternative is far more severe. Just don't think the pricing helps things. If I ever go out - I always get a bus/taxi. I very rarely go out and don't drink therefore I never drive on a night out.

 

your right and then the cheeky pubs go and  put 2/3 glass of ice!

 

i think one of the biggest issues is people don't understand the limits, what can/cant be drunk, and times involved

 

in England and Wales, the alcohol limit for drivers is 80 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, 35 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of breath or 107 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of urine.

In most other European countries, the limit is less, usually 50 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood

a unit of alcohol is 10ml of pure alcohol (100%) which takes ~ 1hr for an AVERAGE adult to process. the ABV of your drink states the amount of pure alcohol. so 13%ABV means a measure is 13% so roughly speaking 77ml (small glass is 125) is 1 unit.

so you can see it doesnt take much to get there. this is also not a cumulative effect. its not how much you drink then from when you stop its how you drink it. if you drank our 77ml glass of wine every 70 mins chances are (given normal adult metabolism in good health) you wouldn't be over the limit and an hour after your last glass you would be zero again. (very roughly speaking).

 

i think this campaign is a good think and people shouldn't be unaware of the fact that you can be over the limit, neither do i condone drink driving but it seems like there is a massive reaction to this next day thing with calls for mandatory 24hr driving bans after consumption etc. the simple fact is if you do go out and have a Christmas dinner with a glass of wine and bit of rum sauce on your pudding wait 2 hrs and you will more thank likely be fine. if you go out and drink shots of vodka till you cant walk and stumble home @2am you probably wont be.

 

IF you are worried about it buy a breath test device although they are reported to be a bit inaccurate or dont drink.

[alexander72]

Dom, good points well made but your last two words are what reflects my point of view - dont drink.

 

In the case of someone who has elevated naturally occuring alcohols in their metaanolism they can get a doctors note as we do working at height - if the levels make us unfit for work we dont work.

 

I honestly believe that if it saves one life of someone killed by a driver  because they had a cheeky half and feel fineor a skinfull last night it is for the better.  People will still have accidents but IMO it should be any drinky no drivey....

[Dibby]

Dibby

 

Is that true?  I thought the breath test was an indication and if marginal fail you can have a blood test which is more accurate. Also reflects the old whisky bottle in the car get out where if stopped and marginal, before being asked to give a test you wash some whisky around your mouth and spit out.  You fail breath test and have spoiled the test.  So by the time you get to give a blood test an hour or so later more likely to pass. 

 

Having said that I don't drink / drive at all and agree with James on that.

 

David

 

Yep, he did have a skinful and he's about 8-stone wet through but we've all thought a good night's kip and a big brekkie, you're ready to go. The officer arresting him said he felt sorry for him thinking he was doing the right thing but over the limit is still over the limit, nothing he could do. I'm aware a breath test is just an indicator and they can't convict off a roadside breath test. It has to be a pee test or a calibrated breath test at the station (correct me if I'm wrong) but when that machine gives you the red light, you're done for.

 

He scared the life out of me, I used to have no trouble driving home in the morning from works dos and beer festivals in the summer feeling a bit worse for wear but now I'd much rather spend a fiver on a train ticket and get the train back in the morning from these things. So easy to get picked up and it only takes once to lose a licence, not only would it cost me my job, worse than that: Not being able to drive the Westie for a year!!

 

The worrying part is drugged driving. Good they have started testing for the mainstream dope, smack, ecstasy, crack and coked up drivers but there are so many synthetic drugs out there now, they will never develop reliable tests in time to keep up with them all and who knows whether they might actually be performance/ concentration enhancing.

[dombanks]

dibby your forgetting one of the other major driving issues. drugs i would say if a very small proportion. how about the one we ALL do which is to drive tired??

[alexander72]

Good point dom

[dombanks]

i would say that some nights when i have been out with mates in chester the 25 odd miles home hopped up on sugar from coke and tired is probably just as dangerous as if id had a couple a pint over the 4 hrs

[jeff oakley]

Drink driving is a problem still in some demographics, but the bigger problem is drugs, which are much harder to spot. Young guy's who have smoked cannabis are just as impaired if not more than a drunk driver and yet within the yoof's they see no problem with a spliff or two. And unless they are seen commiting an offence or a officer can smell the cannabis they are hard to spot.

I think the limits for drink are okay at present, however, every person is able to process alcohol differently, so one person may be fine in the morning, another not so.

Good idea the picture, but it must be a middle class area as buses are not shown as a means of getting home.

[Dibby]

I'd disagree Jeff, from being a student, much over 4 pints and my Gran Turismo driving skills on the Playstation would take a sudden tumble (probably more like 2 pints now) and was nearly impossible to control a car. Having a smoke, you could still razz the virtual cars round a race track as well as if you are sober. Heavy smokers who built up a tolerance wouldn't be impeded at all whereas people who rarely smoke would be struggling to spell their own face within 10 minutes. It does impair you, but in different ways, reactions didn't fade but the ability to concentrate did. Drinking just puts you on your A*** without being able to control your own body to drive these cars. I don't think, even after people have been smoking since the 60s, we still know enough about the effects and the effects on different people.

 

And it's not just the young guys, I know just as many plenty of professional older people who enjoy a smoke as I do young guys. Watch the tarring of the yoof with the same brush, older generations who grew up in the flower power 60's and 70's are just as likely to still be doing it and the older generation that have grown up drink/ stoned driving and think that because they're older they are somehow wiser and will make it home fine in the car. Just because they've been lucky in the last 40 years doesn't mean they will be next time they get behind the wheel after a few splifters.

 

 

dibby your forgetting one of the other major driving issues. drugs i would say if a very small proportion. how about the one we ALL do which is to drive tired??

Good call. Yep, we've all done it, it's a horrible feeling when you feel yourself nod.

[jeff oakley]

I have never had cannabis so from my personal experience I do not know. What I do know is people used the same defence when the DD laws came in, "they drove better after a pint or two" was a well used phrase, but having spent a few years removing cars and bits of bodies from the road side I never believed that then.

Some police I know tell me it is a problem with all the drugs out there, again something I have little knowledge of, but they lament that unless they can get blood tests it is hard to be sure with many of them.

[Dibby]

I've never taken cocaine, but be all accounts it makes you more aware and sharpens the senses. I found weed to have less of an effect on driving than beer and would welcome a study to see just how bad the different types, amounts and what the effects of mixing them are so we can reliably test for them and proportionally apply a punishment based on how impaired you are. A computer game of racing cars in a student living room isn't really a scientific test.

 

I think the government and the police; the people in charge of making and enforcing the laws don't really understand drugs and have made their mind up before they read the reports put in front of them, they all have to be seen to toe the party line of 'all drugs are bad, mmmmkay kids'. Who knows, some of them might even be performance enhancing and might help alertness and concentration.

[dombanks]

whichever way you cut it tho dibby weed is a suppressant and THC has been shown to block the receptors in the brain that processes motor skills. it HAS been clinically proven to slow these skills so im pretty sure the GOVT etc will be privvy to this info.

 

in its favor people who have smoked weed are more likely to know they are impaired and so will act with more caution to compensate. other drugs that "highten" the senses also suppress the cognitive realisation that they are in the wrong, i.e when p******** people think they are invincible so do stuff that makes them fall over.

 

your comment about the the authorities is naive at best. they may have decided to ignore the science and put in laws etc that is blunt but be rest assured they have the info

[Lyonspride]

Just to address the "price of soft-drinks" thing mentioned a few posts back.....

 

The price isn't usually determined by the pub, but by their supplier or brewery, In order to buy drinks they have a contract to purchase from a set brewery at a set price, the brewery gets alcohol nice and cheap, but has to buy in the soft drinks to sell on to the pub, so the pub is buying in soft drinks that cost around the same price as beer because they are tied to a contract with a brewery. If the pub breaks the contract by getting drink elsewhere, they face losing their pub.

 

This ^^ applies to "chain pubs", like Martsons, Enterprise, Chef and Brewer, etc etc etc and there aren't many truly independent pubs left these days. Whetherspoons differs because each is run and managed by a whetherspoons employee and not by someone renting a pub, more like a branch than a franchise, which is why drinks/food is cheaper.

 

They do usually get the option to source their own drinks, but this carries a cost of increased rent on the pub (up to double) itself and a large initial payment to do so.

 

So it's not usually the pubs being greedy, it's actually them just trying not to make a loss. If you ask for a cup of tea (my mate does this) in a pub, it's usually much cheaper than a glass of coke.

 

The govt is trying to change all this, but as with everything the govt does, it'll either be a load of bureaucratic nonsense or it'll just make things worse.

[Dibby]

whichever way you cut it tho dibby weed is a suppressant and THC has been shown to block the receptors in the brain that processes motor skills. it HAS been clinically proven to slow these skills so im pretty sure the GOVT etc will be privvy to this info.

 

...

 

your comment about the the authorities is naive at best. they may have decided to ignore the science and put in laws etc that is blunt but be rest assured they have the info

 

Oh for sure, it's a suppressant (or depressant, whatever the correct medical term is ... an anti-stimulant). So is alcohol but we have a 'safe' driving limit for alcohol. As cannabis is notoriously difficult to break down in the body and can stay in the system for well over a month, I hope someone who passively inhaled a bit walking through a park doesn't get stung for drugged driving. I'd like to see drugs treated the same as alcohol, if we have a zero tolerance on one, why not the other if they both impair you to similar extents? Because one is on the list of allowed and taxable items and makes the government money? That's no grounds to compromise safety and say there is an acceptable limit for booze.

 

The David Nutt story (the great Nutt-sacking) makes me inclined to question the government's approach to research and not believe everything the government tells us as gospel truth.