The French are perhaps the most civilised regarding alcohol. A meal out will usually last around two hours. A bottle of wine contains six 125 ml glasses, enough for two people to enjoy a glass as an aperitif with perhaps a few nuts and olives, a glass for the main course and a glass with the cheese. Of these three or four units of alcohol, around two will have been metabolised by the time of the drive home. Assuming average body size and a zero blood alcohol to start with, the French limit of 0.5mg per ml (lower than ours - which is out of kilter with Europe and too high at 0.8mg) is unlikely to be breached.

We often enjoy lunch out, and I usually have just one pint of good ale. Anyone caught in England (Scotland =France) is likely to be at least what is known as a 'problem drinker' and at worst a full blown 'alcoholic', with all the health and social issues that entails.

I agree that the British attitude to social drinking leaves a LOT to de desired when compared to our European neighbours, especially those from France and The Med.

I must admit that being a tea-totaller (I've tried alcoholic drinks about 5 times in my life, and apart from once [it likely was a very lemonadey Pimms], I never lied the taste), I've always found it difficult to fit in with friends and colleagues whilst out at pubs.

Many people still seems to revel in consuming as much alcohol as possible (though to be fair, drinking and driving is far less common nowadays that it was 30+ years ago, thanks to government campaigns and knock-on societal effects) when out for the evening, whereas muggins here sits there stone cold sober - difficult to hold any kind of conversation with someone who's downed half a dozen pints and more half way through the evening.

I'd be interested to know why our limit is higher than other nations.

My personal rule is 1 pint outside M25, half pint within.

Interested to know why. Is it because establishments serve weaker booze outside of the influence of London, or just the extortionate price of booze there? :-)

Edited by Engineer Andy on 28/06/2021 at 19:48

A pointless thread which can only give the suggestion that it is OK to drink and drive. Indeed, a bottle of red can have 10 units so drinking half is well into licence loss territory.

A pint of lager shandy when driving. Period.

(I was once breathalised at 11pm after an all day meeting about 150 miles away. It was less than a mile from home, I had driven nearly 300 miles in the day and had drunk 1 pint of lager at lunch. My metabolism got rid of all the alcohol in 11 hours or so but I was a long distance runner then and it worked very quickly. So blew zero.

Today I have stopped running and do more sedate pastimes so my metabolism has slowed)

A thread where posts talk about units, amounts, pints, half-pints, bottles and glasses - with no understanding of what that means against the legal limit of alchohol in the bloodstream.

No one knows if one pint of lager (might be 3% ABV, might be 5,5%ABV) or a glass of red wine (small? large?) is going to make you a drink driver if caught.

The answer - Make it zero. Everyone understands zero. No one understands where the legal limit lies in terms of measures and alcoholic drinks.

The problem with zero is that this catches people with a very small amount in their body from legit over the counter medicines and foods that they may not be (fully) aware of, that probably makes no difference at all to their driving ability.

I would say it needs to be just high enough to allow for that, but low enough so that it's lower than any standard alcoholic drink. I fully understand there would be a 'grey area' that some people may try to push by mixing alcohol with other drinks to weaken it, but perhaps the advice would then still be "don't drink anything with alcohol in it", hopefully leaving those in that situation I mentioned in the paragraph above.

The other issue is how long people stop drinking before driving, given the varied effects of individuals' metabolism, activity, whether they are eating when drinking and what, as well as their general health and what they'll be doing in the intervening period.

When I worked in the rail industry for a while, they were very strict and, if I recall, operated both a no drink for 12 hours before working (and driving [cars/vans] to/from work). They even had a ban on bringing alcholo into company premises, even if bought for another time (e.g. at Christmas) - anyone caught got the sack on the spot (and did).