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news
No alcoholA fifth of drivers get behind the wheel the morning after, survey finds
Here's a another reason to be extra-wary on your morning ride. Almost a fifth of drivers (19%) have driven the morning after a night of heavy drinking, even when they think they could have been over the limit, according to a survey by the AA.
Although everyone's body metabolises alcohol at the same rate, the survey found drivers try various approaches the morning after to attempt to alleviate a hangover.
The most popular tactic amongst more than a third (37%) of drivers is to drink lots of water, while almost half of younger drivers aged 18-24 years old will have a fried breakfast (45%).
Other techniques drivers use to try and reduce their alcohol levels include drinking fruit juice, going for a run and taking aspirin.
Hangover cures vary in popularity in different regions of the country. Nine percent of drivers in Scotland reached for Irn Bru as a hangover cure, compared to just one percent elsewhere in the UK.
In London and the South East, drivers are most likely to try water along with 69% of 18-24 year old drivers.
AA president Edmund King said; “There are many urban myths and rituals used to try to counter hang-overs and reduce blood alcohol levels but the only safe method is to drink less or give adequate time for the alcohol to leave your system.
"The same penalties, such as minimum year’s ban, for drink driving apply the morning after as they do the night before.”
The survey did find that about half (54%) of drivers try to avoid drink driving by agreeing a designated driver before a night out.
King said: “It is encouraging to see that many people are choosing to select a designated driver before a night out but it’s really important that they also consider arrangements for the morning after too.
"Alcohol levels in the body can still mean that drivers are over the limit the following morning and we want to ensure that people are fully aware of this when they are making the decision whether or not to get behind the wheel."
Younger drivers and men are less likely to arrange a designated driver. Only 43% of 18-24 year olds say that they would agree a designated driver, while the overall difference between men and women is 52% versus 58%.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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21 comments
The first person they caught with random breath testing in South Australia years ago was still drunk in the morning.
University research in Oz found that some drivers never go _below_ the legal limit (then 0.08).
That alone was justification for introducing random breath testing in my view.
Ban cars
Job done
Don't get why papers have to print where speed vans and the like are going to be, it's complete nonsense.
If I ring the police station right now and ask police movement around a few banks or in the vicinity of a quiet dark park with some pretty women walking by they'd rightly question my reason and decline to give me such information. Ask where I might get caught doing 50 in a school zone and they'll fall over themselves to make sure I'm not 'unfairly' caught being both dangerous and illegal.
Seems a classic example of one rule for motorists and their jolly escapades with death and one for everything else.
I think the problem is that the police don't do random tests, all year round, on just anybody (yes, even you in the big Audi who needs to get somewhere).
As we all know, they will pull over someone who's driving is particularly iffy, and test people involved in accidents, but other than that its just the morning and evening high publicity spot checks at around the Xmas party season.
They really need to either start installing breathalisers in cars (that can't be hacked), or do a heck of a lot more random checks.
(And when I mean random, I mean random. My local paper publishes as a 'news story' the times, dates and places where our local force will be conducting 'random' speed checks, as they are obliged to make it public knowledge. Apparently nobody speeds in our area.).
(On a lighter note, my wife always tells people the story of being pulled over as part of an Xmas drink-drive campaign (Operation Rudolf's Nose, or some such stupid name). "Have you been drinking alcohol in the last twenty four hours, ma'am?" (pause while he notices my wife's eight-and-a-half months pregnancy bump) "Ah, OK, I'm guessing not; on your way, then.")
Sorry to be a pain and I agree with you but the police cannot legally undertake random breath test in the UK. They are not permitted to.
But they do have a work around. The police have the power to stop you for any reason. It's an offence not to comply. Thay also have the power to breathalyse you if they suspect you of drink driving. They need reasonable suspicion to test you. They do have various means of creating this but it requires a couple of cops to possibly tell a fib like they can smell alcohol. It has not been unknown for them to say this even if it is not actually true in order to cover the purpose of the test. Refusing a test is an offence in itself. In other words the stopping and testing is carried out under the ancient "Police Ways and Means Act" not as a proper legal power. That's why they are a bit timid about it.
It needs to be a specific right to mount a road block and test any driver on a random basis. If they had that power then they could use random tests agressively.
And I guess you then need to think about every possible situation where the police might use the power to mount a road block ... on a random basis. Like when any law is enacted, and the government says its for a specific, good, reason, and people protest because what if the government turns evil. Which is a pity, because I really don't see how the powers that be can properly address the issue of drink driving (which is clearly seen by so many people as a non-crime) without truly random breath testing, any time, any place (but mainly roadside, obviously).
At the risk of stating the obvious "Almost a fifth of drivers (19%) have driven the morning after a night of heavy drinking" is not the same as "20% of people driving on a Sunday morning are still pissed".
Also, there's lots of talk about zero tolerance but not much (it appears to me) done about it? As I understand it, the police can stop you if they have grounds to believe that you might be DUI. Always struck me as crying over spilt milk/shutting gate after horse has bolted approach? Contrast that with Australia where they set up roadside checks and just stop whole strings of motor vehicles at random.
It wouldn't be a war on motorists - it would be a campaign against pissed killers.
I guess if society did crack down to the extent needed along with instant bans that the shocking excuse for journalism recognised as the Daily Mail would paint it as further evidence of the fictional 'war on motorists'.
I have always presumed no-one there has anyone they love or that loves them the way they seem to rally around the venomous machine like junkies at a crack convention.
Never understood this supposed battle, seems a bit like Hitler crashing through Europe on his campaign of slaughter and misery then bursting into tears crying bad sportsmanship when someone has the 'audacity' to shoot back.
Simple. Sells papers.
Stop seeing the media as information. Start seeing it as an advertising business that gains eyeballs by providing entertainment. Then it all makes much more sense.
This applies to media which don't carry advertising too by the way, since they're competing for audience with those which do.
(rant mode off)
Zero tolerance.
Nobody has to drink alcohol and certaily nobody HAS to drink alcohol and then drive.
But then how would little Tommy get to school on time?
zero is a measurable number. If you drank any alcohol even over the last few weeks you may get a reading above zero. Mouthwash, sherry trifle, the beer you had before the weekend, even non alcoholic drinks with high sugar content that might have fermented slightly will give a reading above zero.
A completely teetotal person could easily fail that test. It's not therefore even useful in terms of testing sobriety or impairment. That's why the limit is set so that normal sober people that are not impaired won't be prosecuted.
There is an argument about the level of blood alcohol that defines impairment and therefore some merit in this regard for a lwer limit but see my post above the key is not making it easier to catch the unimpaired or very marginally impaired but in actually catching the really and severely impaired that are just flouting the law completely.
I'm not talking about a zero limit, I'm talking about zero tolerance to drinking and driving which is why I mentioned that nobody has to drink. BTW I would count eating sherry trifle as taking alcohol, so don't do it (before driving) kiddies.
Why not just copy Scotland's approach to drink drive limits?
It worked with the smoking ban.
It's a bit pointless though. Very few drivers done for DD are only just over the current limit. Most are way beyond it. The vast majority of people are not drink driving and the few that are seem to be completely ignoring any limit.
It's eye catching to set a new lower limit for DD. But the real bang for your buck is getting to grips with the people flouting the current DD limit.
Almost all of Europe has that lower limit. Most of Europe also has a much bigger drink drive problem because of tacit acceptance and ipso facto low priority for the police. In places like Poland the lower limit also applies to people riding bicycles for example and half of all their DD prosecutions are of cyclists. Having been a professional driver all over Europe it would turn your hair white the absolute flagrant abuse of the law and endemic drink driving.
By all means lower the limit but don't think lowering the limit solves the problem. It is serious policing and social attitudes that does that.
The killer application (at whatever level of DD you choose) would be random breath tests set up by the police as road block style stops. Where drivers are pulled into a road side bay and breathalysed and as soon as the next bay is free the next driver happening along gets pulled in and breathalysed. You put them on major routes and their back ways a different place everyday. It not only catches drink drivers it actually affects behaviour because people see that there is actually a chance that they will be stopped and breathalysed.
Here's an example I got a driving licence in 1977. I was also a professional international driver all over Europe but also occasionally in the US and Australia. I dread to think of the miles I have covered in the last 37 years on the road. I have never once been stopped and breathalysed. I think that sends out a very bad message indeed. I think that on average motorists should think the chances of being stopped and breathalysed are reasonably high. They should see that it is random and can happen anywhere and see that other people in the traffic just like them are being routinely pulled over and tested.
Great point. I guess in retrospect its a bit more obvious if someone is smoking too!
In Scotland there is a push to get people to view drinking and driving as socially unacceptable, and the change in the limit is backing that up.
Totally agree that if people don't think they will get tested (low risk of ever being breathalysed as you said) then there is more chance that they will do it as they expect not to get caught. I've seen those russian driving youtube clips....
The problem lies in making routine testing happen.
To use an analogy (doping) the costs involved in carrying out enough testing to be confident that you catch everyone is prohibitive.
Lowering the limit has to be a good move, although as you say not the answer alone.
Irn Bru can cure everything!
Hair of the dog!
(not)
I'm not at all surprised if this report is true?
I've witnessed the shockingly bad driving of motorists early on Saturday and Sunday mornings when we go road riding, and often thought 'I bet they are still pissed?'.
"Although everyone's body metabolises alcohol at the same rate" without doing any fact checking myself - this sounds very unlikely doesn't it ??
OK I have to check .. skip the glossy pages (usually prone to repeating the fallacy) and hit pubmed and the like ...
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa35.htm
"The liver can metabolize only a certain amount of alcohol per hour, regardless of the amount that has been consumed. The rate of alcohol metabolism depends, *in part*, on the amount of metabolizing enzymes in the liver, which varies among individuals and appears to have genetic determinants"
Of course the phrase "in part" may or may not be significant , but I'm at work now
PS My pre -hangover tipple - as much tomato juice , and water as I can stomach, and two ibuprofen.. and stick to shorts , avoid beer esp Grolsch
PPS Article, seems to be confusing being hung over with still being drunk. As I understand it they are two different things. You can wake up sozzled without a hang-over , and vice-versa, or a bit of both!
I think the 20% sounds remarkably like the figure for the percentage of drink drive positives in the morning which is also around 20%.
In my opinion that's an underestimate. I would imagine that this cohort are the drivers that are involved in an incident and get breathlysed as opposed to the night time when the police are actively seeking out DD.
In Victoria in Australia they used to have random road blocks and breath tests especially in the morning and it had a marked effect. I think they should do that here as well.
http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/T95/paper/s29p1.html