Amazed they don’t just tax Fun and leave it at that!

Once again the British Politically Correct nanny-state lobby seems about to pounce by reducing the drink-driving limit to 50 mg. This is yet another fatuous knee-jerk “Let’s give the image that we are responsible and doing something” initiative.

No, I do NOT favour driving while drunk, but at 80 mg per ml you are not “drunk” or even impaired. The introduction of the 80 mg limit was a great step, but more would be a mg too far.

I know for an absolute fact that if I drink one pint of beer I am in no way more dangerous than if I drink nothing. Don’t ask me how I know; I just do. I’ve been driving all over Europe for 40 years; and experience counts for something after all.

Yes, I do want to see road accidents reduced, but let’s see something REALISTIC and EFFECTIVE. Why are most accidents caused? (apart from people way over the limit, unlicenced or driving unroadworthy cars and so on)

• arrogance and lack of imagination: “It can’t happen to me.”
• impatience: overtaking dangerously to save 45 seconds on a two-mile journey
• driving too fast in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• driving without consideration for others
• not driving as if every other driver was an idiot
• failing to give yourself enough of a margin for error
• failing to understand statistics

The last two points are perhaps crucial. Drive on the périphérique in Paris and you’ll see examples of both. Of course, the French are, in general, brilliant drivers and 99.9% of the time they can get away with driving up someone’s boot, but statistics tell us that there is 0.01% of the time when this will NOT be OK.

What steps COULD be taken instead of clobbering the one pinter?

• Start with the apparent ONE MILLION people in Britain driving either unlicensed and/or in uninsured or unroadworthy cars.
• Ban rich Daddy’s boys from driving high-powered sports cars: nobody under 25 should be able to drive anything over 80 bhp for a start.
• Where is the logic in manufacturing cars that can drive at three times the speed limit? BAN THEM. BE LOGICAL.
• Make the viewing of video of the aftermath of accidents a compulsory part of the driving test so that people came reeling out of the room white and vomiting at the sight of accident victims with their faces smashed up and/or their heads severed. This is the REALITY of accidents. Let’s GET REAL.
• Prevent people from driving for TOO LONG. Tiredness is a MAJOR factor in accidents, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over the hours that private motorists can drive. Modern technology could do something here.
• Make the punishments for careless and/or dangerous driving SEVERE.
• Make people AFRAID of causing an accident.

The truth is that a car is as dangerous as a gun and people should treat them as such. Sadly, familiarity breeds contempt and people too often forget the basic principles.

Every time I get in my car I tell myself the following:

• Drive with as much care as when you first drove so nervously and gingerly on your first trip with your new licence.
• Every journey could be your last. Just because the last n days have been trouble-free it doesn’t mean that today will. (statistics again)
• There could be an idiot around the next corner, so drive defensively. (there is always a percentage of idiots, so statistically you are CERTAIN to meet one now and again)
• Going too fast in the wrong place and/or conditions isn’t worth the risk. (stats again)
• You have no right to maim or kill anyone else by bad driving and causing “an accident”‘.
• Be afraid – think of what a serious injury or even your death would mean to your family.
• It’s no good being “sorry” afterwards ……

Let’s hope the new British government has a bit of commonsense about this.

PS The Police could do their bit, too. A significant number of people are killed by policemen rushing about.

By Chris Snuggs

A P.P.S. from the Editor. In fact, one of the best things that could be done is create an

incentive for passing the Institute of Advanced Driving driving test.  I passed the test in 1966 and it has been the best investment I have ever made.

Why doesn’t the UK Government give a free year’s road-tax for every person who passed the IAM test.  All this proposed change in the drink/drive limit will do is to put yet more British pubs out of business.  G’rrr.