On Friday I happened to be at home and I managed to catch a very thought provoking London Tonight, which was on the subject of drink/driving. The programme was not covering the effects of getting in your car after a night out, it was about getting in to your car the morning after a good night out.

I am one who would never ever consider drinking and driving, I have been breathalysed once in my life and never again. I had spent the evening at Bluewater and had ended up having a meal and had one beer, when pulled over (they police has a little road block going on they never pulled me over for how I was driving) I told them when asked that I had had one beer and they breathalysed me and I was totally in the clear, however I made up my mind from that day forward I would put a zero tolerance order on myself and I now do not drink at all if I am driving.

So whilst we are all clear that drinking and driving is not acceptable, how many of us have got in to our car the morning after a good night and driven. I bet quite a few. I am lucky as I share the driving to work with a friend and if the following morning one of us feels “under the weather” the other will drive or if we have been out together then we will get a cab or use public transport.

In this programme, I won’t go in to too much detail, it covered the very high profile case of Luke McCormick, for those of you who don’t know Mr McCormick used to be the goalkeeper for Plymouth, but earlier this year after a heavy nights drinking and a couple of hours sleep, he decided to get into his Range Rover and drive to confront his alleged cheating girlfriend. On the way down the motorway, he dropped off to sleep and ended up crashing into car carrying a gentleman (Mr Peak), his two sons, his friend and his son, all out for a day at Silverstone. Mr Peak’s sons were both killed in this awful accident and Mr Peak suffered terrible injuries. Mr McCormick was breathalysed and was twice over the legal limit.

The programme also highlighted another gentleman, whose younger brother had been killed whilst riding his scooter, by a guy who again was over the limit the morning after drinking the night before.

Both this gentleman and Mr and Peak are campaigning for our legal drink/driving limit to be dropped (we do have one of the highest drink/driving limits in Europe) to zero ie if you have one drink, you will be over the limit, end of. The programme also followed 6 guys from a local Sunday football team on a heavy night out, and then they breathalysed them the following morning, all of them read under the legal limit which shocked the reporter and the doctor as they were sure they would test over as they all stunk of booze and looked pretty shaky. All the guys said they did feel rough and they all took the decision not to drive as they felt they would not be on their game. I don’t know if this is because the cameras were with them and if really they would have taken the chance?

I just wondered what your thoughts were on the drink/driving limits? Are we too lenient? Do you know how much you can safely drink before being over the limit and does this vary from person to person? Do you think that that sentencing is too lenient in these cases?

Mr McCormick has been jailed for 7 years (the maximum sentence is 14 years) and he will eligible for parole in 3 and half years.

I agree that a custodial is definitely in order, but I also think that a person who has caused a death in this manner should be banned for life from driving, they therefore will never be tempted to be in this situation again. From my understanding Mr McCormick has become a shadow of his former self and I am sure he feels nothing but remorse for what he has done, but I guess this is little comfort for Mr and Mrs Peak.

I have been on the drinkaware website and they state “It is an offence to drive with more than 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood, or 35 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of breath. It is impossible to say how many units or drinks this represents, because everyone metabolises alcohol at different rates”. So maybe zero tolerance is needed.

Tinks X