Ed Morrow: Motorway pub sends out a deadly message

Alcohol therefore accounts for around one in six deaths on roads in the UK; and each one of these deaths causes a huge amount of trauma to families left behind, yet is completely preventable. Let’s remember that driving after drinking alcohol is a risk no one ever needs to take.

As well as encouraging everyone to make a personal commitment to never drive after drinking alcohol, policy makers can help eradicate drink drive crashes and casualties by making sensible policy decisions that send out the right message and discourage drink driving. Allowing a pub to open at a motorway service station is an example of the opposite.

Drivers stopping at Beaconsfield Services – drivers otherwise doing the right thing and taking a rest break – perhaps on a long, stressful journey, may be tempted to have “just one drink” in the mistaken belief that it is safe to do so. The presence of a pub at a motorway service station reinforces this belief.

The UK already has an archaic drink drive limit – far higher than research indicates is safe. At 80mg alcohol per 100ml blood, the current UK limit is the highest in Europe, alongside Malta. Governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland are taking urgent action to reduce their limits, leaving England and Wales behind. Every other European country has already reduced its limit; many to a zero tolerance limit of 20mg, as academic research showed just how dangerous it is to drive on even small amounts of alcohol.

Even small amounts of alcohol have been shown to severely worsen your reaction times, judgement and co-ordination, as well as making you overconfident and more inclined to take risks. Drivers with even 20 to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml blood, under the current legal limit of 80mg, are at least three times more likely to die in a crash than those with no alcohol at all. But sadly, many drivers mistakenly believe if the law says the limit is 80mg, then they can have a drink or two and still be safe to drive. These drivers present a needless danger, which is why Brake is calling for a zero-tolerance drink drive limit of 20mg per 100ml of blood.

Having opened a pub at a motorway service station, the operator has a responsibility to make sure messages about the dangers of drinking any amount of alcohol before driving are as strong and clear as possible, and to attempt to restrict the sale of alcohol to its stated target market of coach parties and passengers. But why take the risk? In practice, designated drivers still drink and passengers are unwilling to stop them, as shown by a recent survey conducted by Brake and Direct Line.

There is also evidence to indicate that the temptation of drink near drivers leads to more crashes; a study in the USA has shown that states that ban open alcohol containers in passenger areas of vehicles have fewer alcohol-related crashes than those that allow it.

Pubs that serve alcohol for consumption on site are not the same as petrol stations that serve alcohol in bottles and cans; these can be taken away and opened once safely home, although this too is sensibly banned in other countries, including France. A pub at a motorway service station gives you no such option, and has no other reason to exist than to serve people alcohol before they get into vehicles.

If you risk driving after drinking even one drink you’re risking causing a catastrophic crash that could kill you or cause death or serious injury to someone else – especially true if you’re on a high-speed motorway at the time. Yet our outdated drink drive limit, and policies which allow pubs to open on motorways, sends out the message that it’s OK to risk it. Brake’s advice to drivers is absolutely clear: don’t drink a drop of alcohol before getting behind the wheel. It’s not worth the risk.

Visit www.brake.org.uk to read about Brake’s “not a drop, not a drag” campaign.

Ed Morrow is campaigns officer at Huddersfield-based national road safety charity Brake.