London Bangla A Force for the community…
Drinking and driving will often lead to tragedy, with devastating consequences for the driver or an innocent victim. Behind the tragedy will be an insurance company picking up the pieces, paid for by the mass of motorists who do not drink and drive. Now one such insurance company, Admiral, has warned that the number of drink drivers is rising – because daytime drivers do not take into account the drink they’ve had the night before.
Admiral’s latest annual survey of motorists found that a third of the 2,000 drivers questioned had driven the morning after an evening of heavy drinking, even though they suspected they were still over the limit. This figures were higher for men (40%) than for women (25%). Just over a quarter (27%) don’t even stop to consider whether last night’s drinking is keeping them over the limit before they get behind the wheel.
Justin Beddows from Admiral, commented on the results: “A lot of people will have spent the bank holiday drinking with friends, our research suggests many of them could have still been over the limit when they got behind the wheel the next day. It’s scary just how many people are willing to drive their car despite thinking they are probably still over the drink drive limit. Not only are they risking a hefty fine and driving ban, they are putting their own lives and the lives of others at risk.”
Getting in a car the morning after a drinking session seems to be something a lot of people are willing to do, without thinking about the risks. More than a quarter (27%) of those surveyed said they don’t consider how much they are drinking during an evening out when they know they will have to drive the following morning. Two fifths of the survey sample said even if they don’t drive after drinking the night before, they have still been a passenger of someone who has.
Admiral’s study shows that many people still believe that what are essentially urban myths will deal with the drink. The most popular way people try to lessen the effects of alcohol, Admiral found, was to drink lots of water: just over a third (35%) of those surveyed said they do this. Just over a quarter (27%) said they sleep for more than eight hours, 14% said they drink coffee and 8% drink milk. In fact, Admiral says, none of these will make any difference.
Roger Singer, Managing Director of Drink Driver Education, an independent training organisation which provides drink drive awareness courses, said: “There is nothing you can do to speed up the rate at which alcohol leaves your system. It leaves at one unit per hour and nothing speeds this up – not sleep, caffeine, cold showers, food or anything else.”
That would mean if you drank six pints of beer (which is the equivalent of 14 units of alcohol), finishing your last pint at midnight, you would typically need to wait till 2pm the next day for the alcohol to have completely left your body.
However even armed with this information, many drivers could still be in danger as Admiral’s research found that few people actually know how much one unit of alcohol is. Only 20% knew it was the equivalent of 10ml of pure alcohol.
•For more information, visit www.admiral.com/survey
