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Graham Hurdle's blog: 4 December 2012 - The morning after Christmas crackdown - how do you know if you are over the limit?
Date: 04 December 2012
It's good news that the police have put out their annual warning that there's going to be a real focus on morning after drink drivers.
Let's hope we see behaviour change this year; particularly when last year over 400 drivers failed a breath test or refused to provide a specimen between the hours of 6am and 11am. That's more than those caught for the hour before or after midnight.
But there's a particular challenge with morning after drinking, which is that many people have no idea they're doing it.
OK, I admit there are some who have downed their 10th pint at 3am and know for sure that they are over when they climb behind the wheel at 7am. But I'm referring to those people who have a dinner party, or a few drinks with friends, and don't watch their alcohol consumption too closely.
Let me ask you the question: if you've got to drive to work at 8.30am tomorrow morning, how much can you drink tonight without being over the limit when you get in the car?
I'd say most people either don't know or would never spend any time trying to calculate it.
Ask people how many drinks they can have at the pub before they get straight in the car and drive home, and I'd suggest most people have a pretty good idea of what they can safely drink.
Although please let me add that my opinion is that you shouldn't drink at all if you are driving - however for the purposes of this blog we're referring to the legal limit, not the safe approach!
So, it's all very well announcing a crackdown on morning after drink driving, but if most people have no idea they could be over the limit, then surely we need better education.
In a perfect world, I'd like to see the Government putting out more awareness about the morning after - yet in these tough times it's very unlikely that's going to happen, so I turn my attention to the corporate sector to do their bit.
At E-Training World we developed a free, easy to use, online tool to advise drivers about drinking and driving. It's called Drink Driving Kills and can be found at www.drinkdrivingkills.com. You don't need our permission to put the link on your company intranet or offer it to your customers, so please use it.
Yes, the police will do their best with depleted resources to catch people. But let's do our best in the corporate sector to stop drivers unwittingly being over the limit in the first place by raising awareness and offering guidance.
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