Driving under the influence of alcohol killed 280 people on Britain’s roads in 2011 – a 12% increase on the previous year – yet the UK still frowns less severely on drink-drivers than any other European Country. That’s according to a report on the latest stats released by the Department for Transport (DafT) in high-speed news organ Fleet News this week.
In the UK it’s still perfectly legal to tear about the country’s road network in your four-wheeled killing machine of choice (or, indeed, on or in the two, three, six, eight, ten or twelve-wheeled ditto) with a stinking 80mg per 100ml of brain-addling alcohol raging round your bloodstream.
That’s 30mg more than in places like Portugal and Italy – and fully four times the limit in Poland and the Netherlands. Chillingly it’s also enough to slow reaction speeds significantly and cause previously normal individuals to drool inadvertently, laugh at the stupidest things, lust after salty snacks, and take an unexpected fancy to demonstrably unattractive colleagues.
The DafT’s statistics show that alcohol was a factor in all but 85% of road deaths – prompting calls (see below) for the limit to be cut to 20mg or even (worryingly for fans of chocolate liqueurs and tiramisu – and for Bankstone News whose blood was that of a mere child the last time it contained no alcohol at all) to zero.
A zero mg limit would certainly rule out driving the morning after consuming alcohol – thereby making a 24-hour driving ban out of even the mildest flirtation with intoxicating spirits.
But alcohol is just the tip of a vast driver-faculties-impairment iceberg. A jaw-dropping 18% of those killed on Britain’s roads according to DafT stats were drug crazed maniacs (aka “tested positive for drugs” – and we’re not talking paracetamol here!) Research from Brake and Direct Line reveals, Fleet News claims, that 1 in 9 young persons now admit to driving high on drugs.
That’s why Brake is “calling on drivers to pledge never to drink or take drugs and drive – not a drop, not a drag – because even small amounts of either affect your ability to drive safely.” While they are at it, male drivers, at least, might also want to consider chemical castration.
It it is a well know fact that men think about sex every seven seconds – which is to say 8,000 times a day – leaving minimal mental capacity for other functions such as steering, braking, hazard recognition etc. One need only think back to the RTA reign of terror that accompanied the Wonderbra “Hello Boys” poster campaign to recognise the scale of the threat here.
Bankstone strongly urges all its readers to take the pledge or take the bus – where it is, of course, perfectly safe and acceptable to get out of your head on booze and drugs and entertain whatever vile and perverted thoughts you wish.
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