It Helps Me Focus

"Oh yes," said Luisa, "it helps me focus."

She was explaining, last night, on Police, Camera Action (to which I'm slightly addicted) how a bit of alcohol - - just a couple of shots of spirits and a few lagers - helps her to drive better.

Funny thing, alcohol. It helps you to drive better in exactly the same way that it makes all the men in the room more attractive suddenly, and all the jokes funnier.

Luisa was one of a group of five people who said that they regularly drink and drive and expected to carry on doing so, because it doesn't harm their driving, and they're under the limit anyway, and if they're not, by any chance, they're very unlikely to get caught.

Ah yes, the limit. It's thirty-five, apparently. Thirty five what? Furlongs per fortnight? Anyway, whatever it is, if you're breathalysed and you're over thirty-five, that's it, you're pissed and shouldn't be driving.

So how many drinks does it take to get to thirty-five? Well, that's the trouble. It varies completely, depending upon how big you are, and how much you've eaten, and all sorts of other things.

They tested the five drink-and-drivers. One stupid cow (yes, I know, not very balanced writing, but it's my blog so I don't care) said she regularly drives after drinking eight - - that's EIGHT - - Malibu-and-Cokes.

But, surprisingly, after her eight Malibu-and-Cokes she only registered four on the up-to-thirty-five scale, probably because she drinks such a lot that she's accustomed to it, or something.

Meanwhile, giggly it-helps-me-focus-better Luisa was found, after her usual night out's worth of drinks, to be three times over the limit. "Oops," she giggled. Hilarious, eh?

But being under the limit isn't the whole story. They tested everyone on a driving simulation machine and even the people who were way under the limit were still driving much more badly and much more dangerously than when they were sober.

Meanwhile, we viewers saw professional footballer Luke McCormick - who had been driving along the M6 at about ninety miles an hour with twice the driving limit of alcohol inside him - in a police station. His car had forced another car off the road and he had killed two boys age eight and ten. We saw him as he got the news that they had died. It was hard to watch: though harder to watch the two boys' parents talking about it.

At the end of the programme they took the five habitual drink-drivers outside, blindfolded, and then got them to take their blindfolds off and look at the horrific state of the actual car in which the two boys died.

They were shocked, and said lots of things like "Oh no, I'll never drink and drive again."

Now why, why on earth, do people need to see the actual car to realise that driving whilst drunk can KILL PEOPLE TO DEATH? Are we a nation of unimaginative morons?

Anyway, the conclusions the programme drew were these:

a) that it's impossible to tell whether you're over the limit or not, as it varies so much from person to person

and

b) that even if you're under the limit your driving is very likely to be impaired

So, putting these two things together, surely the thing to do is to cut the drink-driving limit to nil. No alcohol. None at all.

An easy legal limit to understand, even for Stupid Malibu-and-Coke Cow: or for it-helps-me-focus moron Luisa: or for the unpleasant five-pints-and-a-Range-Rover man, or for anyone else, no matter how dim or misguided.

If you've drunk alcohol, you don't drive, because it's illegal. Simple.

Then everyone would know where they were. And for some people, where they were would be sitting at home on the sofa watching The Snowman on television, instead of lying in a crumpled heap in the road, or lying all nice and straight in the mortuary.