“MORNING AFTER” DRINK DRIVE SOLUTION
A “morning after” breathalyser could prevent some motorists from driving when they wrongly believe they are safe to drive, revealed the head of a national driver education organisation.
It would also help to reduce the number of convicted drink drivers from re-offending, said Mr Graham Wynn OBE, director of the TTC Group which educates more than 10,000 offenders each year.
A survey of 4,000 convicted drink drivers carried out by the TTC Group – the UK’s largest provider of drink drive rehabilitation courses – revealed that 18.7 per cent were stopped the “morning after.”
“I believe there are many motorists who drive to work in the morning who are still over the drink drive limit from drinking alcohol the night before,” said Mr Wynn.
“Many who attend our courses say they had absolutely no idea that alcohol was still in their blood when they were stopped by police on their way to work. They wrongly believed that a night’s sleep would purge their system of alcohol.”
He gave the stamp of approval to the new Alcosense breathalyser unveiled at TTC’s annual conference held at the Holiday Inn, Telford, and attended by 50 of their trainers who deliver education nationwide to drink drive offenders.
The breathalyser will be recommended to offenders who complete a three day rehabilitation course in a bid to cut the number of people who re-offend. The courses have been praised for reducing re-offending rates by more than 50 per cent.
“We would like to see re-offending rates cut even more and this breathalyser would allow people to check that they are under the drink drive limit the next day,” said Mr Wynn.
Most people are surprised at how long alcohol stays in the body with, on average, one unit of alcohol being eliminated each hour. Many people are unaware of how many units of alcohol they are drinking, said Mr Wynn.
For more information on alcohol and corporate education courses for employees contact the TTC Group on 0845 260 4380 or visit www.ttc-uk.com The TTC Group, whose HQ at Hadley Park, Telford, was opened last year by the Princess Royal, also run thousands of courses for drivers on speed awareness and the National Driver Improvement Scheme on behalf of police and local authorities.
