Stop taking the piss over drink driving

There are plenty of normal Australians – normal being defined as prone to uncharacteristic lapses of judgment – who have a dark tale involving an incident of drink-driving where they could easily have killed themselves, a friend, an unsuspecting stranger.

Whenever I see former British Prime Minister Tony Blair I’m reminded of mine. Unlike most of my mates I got through my teens and most of my 20s without ever drink-driving, in large part because I didn’t bother getting my licence until I was 22 and escaped the road-related rattiness that comes with youth.

All except for the day of the 1997 British election, when with friends I’d attended a dawn breakfast at the National Press Club in Canberra to watch the BBC coverage, where we ate a hearty English breakfast laid on by the British High Commission, washed down with English beer. Lots of English beer.

So much English beer that, by noon, I was half-cut and keen to kick on, shamefully telling my mates I was fine to drive the short distance to lunch, and some four hours later, by which stage none of us knew what we were doing, fine to drive the short distance to my apartment to continue the carry-on.

If one of the drunkest moments in your life can also be the most sobering, I will never forget the look on my wife’s face when she arrived home to find us listening to deafening music and drinking tequila, and said above the din – “I thought you took the car today and, if so, why is it in the driveway?”

The two good things that came out of this reckless act, in order, are that nobody got hurt and I’ve never done it again. And nor would I.

It’s hard to imagine more selfish and extraordinarily dangerous behaviour than putting a car in motion, especially one with other people in it, when you’ve had a skinful. But for all the shock ad campaigns, RBT blitzes, tougher penalties, there’s evidence that in some states the number of drink-drivers is going up, not down. In NSW last year there was a 10 per cent spike, with 27,548 drivers caught, up from 25,284 in 2007. Read full story here...