Drinking & Driving is equal to murder **UPDATED*** (Drink and Drive?!)

Member Name: Biffa

Product:	Drink and Drive?!
Date:	30/05/01 (248 review reads)
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***SEE BELOW FOR AN UPDATE THAT WILL SHOCK*****

Drinking and driving - two words that shouldn't go together but quite often do. But it's not just Christmas that brings on the idiotic habit of downing several bevvies and driving all your mates home - it's summertime too. Let's all pop to the pub for a quick pint or two, no, let's make it 3 and don't worry of COURSE I'm okay to drive.

When I worked for the Police, part of our training involved a visit to the RTA Investigations Unit. We were shown pictures of accidents on the motorway as a result of fog; bad driving conditions and worst of all, drink-driving. The results were horrific. We're not just talking about a bit of a swerve and "Oops, there goes my wing mirror", more like "Oh dear, I appear to have hit a big immoveable object such as a tree or wall and now I'm dead"

WHY??? What's so difficult about phoning a taxi to get a safe lift home? But of course, the taxi fare could be spent on another round of drinks, and your own car is sat in the carpark waiting to be driven home again. It'd be SO much hassle to come back in the morning to fetch it, and just this once isn't likely to hurt anyone is it? Or is it?

So why do so many people do it? Personally, I think there's some confusion over the legal limit to drink before driving. Being a somewhat wimpy drinker since having the kids, I know that after a pint I'm slightly squiffy, and after 2 pints....well, forget it. The average-build bloke would probably be able to have 3 pints and still get away with being under the legal limit and feel fine to drive. What affects me is different to what would affect you if you get my point. I know damn well that after 3 pints, despite average bloke feeling fine, I'd be all over the place BEFORE I got behind the wheel of a car.

My point to this somewhat all-over-the-place waffling is simple. In fa
ct, my idea for reducing the number of drink-drive related deaths and accidents is simple. It's two-fold and works like this:

1) Bring the legal limit down to zero. Anyone who has so much as a sniff of a bottle of shandy shouldn't drive. How simple is that?? Let's just cut the waffle, reduce it to a zero-tolerance and have done with. No more excuses like "Well, I've only had two pints, I thought I'd be fine".

2) Treat convicted drink-drivers as murderers. Let's face it, murder is classed as a pre-meditated killing - ie: you've thought abouti t and then done it. Drink driving should be treated as the same. You know you shouldn;t drink and drive, but you've chosen to 'risk it' just this once to save the £20 taxi fare and the aggro of collecting your car in the morning. In the process of saving aforementioned £20 and aggro, you've written off your prized possession; smashed into two other cars before ploughing through a garden wall and killed one of your passengers. Hello???? Can someone please explain to me how that can be worth it?

How would you feel if, at best, you wrote your car off, increased your car insurance premiums and added a few points to your licence for being such a lazy and ignorant so-n-so? Still worth £20?

How would you feel, at worst, lying in a hospital bed recovering from multiple injuries inflicted by your own shear stupidity, knowing that your best mate is dead and having to face his/her family to explain what you'd done, especially if said now-dead best mate was mother/father to young children; married, etc? Still worth the £20 taxi fare?

What about the poor policeman, just coming to the end of a shift when he get's an Immediate Response to an RTA 2 miles away? He not only has to mop up your literally bloody mess, but complete the initial accident reports, identify who you are and THEN, an hour after the end of his shift when
he/she should be back home with their families, has to explain to your distraught parents/partner/children that you've wiped yourself off the face of the planet by thinking you were ok to drive?

Have I got my message across? Probably not - because out of all the people who eventually pop by to read the insane ramblings of a mental woman, there's bound to be one complete prat who thinks he/she is superhuman and still ok to drive. I hope not - I'd like to think of everyone who participates in dooyoo to have more brain cells than an amoeba, but the fact of life is that drink-driving happens. It happens everyday - so until it's given the same sort of treatment as murder, it'll probably keep on happening. More people will die; innocent as well as stupid; and more heartache will affect families up and down the land.

**Still think it couldn't happen to you???***

Thank you for reading this far!

***UPDATE***

How's this for shocking? On the same day that I wrote this, a chap that works as a HGV driver at my husbands place of work was arrested for drink driving in the company vehicle - a 17.5 tonne (unloaded) wagon - one of the big things you see tanking down the motorway to deliver your groceries to Tesco's and the like. What a moron!Can you imagine the damage that would have been caused if he'd drunkenly carrerred out of control down a busy high street? Or lost control on the motorway whilst doing 65mph?

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