Shropshire Star comment: Sobering message to drivers

‘Tis also the season for the police to catch a bumper crop of people drinking and driving, despite all the campaigns and warnings which have special relevance over the festive period.

The consequences for offenders are severe. They are taken off the road, and that in turn could result in them losing their job and livelihood. It really is not worth it, but there are still motorists who take to the road when over the limit.

So if they are too reckless, irresponsible or, indeed, drunk, to stop themselves driving, it falls to others to stop them, for their own good and for the good of other motorists and pedestriansk.

There have been far too many lives lost or ruined through criminal drink-drivers for this to be a matter to which their friends, relatives, or companions turn a blind eye.

It is a theme which is central to the Government’s festive anti drink-drive campaign this year. It has the message that people should intervene to stop their friends from breaking the law.

This is an interesting variation from the campaigns with which we are all familiar, which reach out to the motorists themselves and appeal to their consciences and common sense. Perhaps that is a recognition that although great progress has been made in changing attitudes so that drink-driving is not socially acceptable, there is still a hard core for whom no amount of reasoned persuasion will have an effect.

If they are impervious to the message, then the problem they pose has to be tackled indirectly, through the people around them. They have the power for soft enforcement in the form of a friendly word and an offer to give them a lift home so they need not take to the wheel, and failing that they also have the power for hard enforcement, in snatching away the motorist’s keys.

It might seem as though this would risk a friendship, but in reality once the would-be offender has sobered up they may, or at least should be, grateful to have been saved from themselves.

And in the final analysis, stopping somebody doing something very stupid and very dangerous is a mark of true friendship.