Police reveal drink driving statistics for Christmas period | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

Police reveal drink driving statistics for Christmas period

During the 2011/2012 winter anti-drink drive operation, preliminary figures indicate that police detected and arrested 408 motorists for drink driving (up from 364 during 2010/2011 operation). The figure includes motorists who were unfit to drive, or who were unable or refused to give a sample.

Announcing the figures, Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay said: “It’s disappointing that despite our warnings, 408 people still took the risk of killing or injuring themselves, their family, friends and other innocent road users by deciding to drive after drinking.

“Our aim with this and every road safety initiative is to save lives and reduce injuries, which is why we ran operations day and night throughout the festive season and not just during the weekends or key dates.”

“During this operation, we stopped and performed roadside preliminary breath tests on 6,426 drivers. While that’s over 7% more than during last year’s operation, however we should highlight that during the 2010/2011 operation, traffic levels were greatly reduced due to the treacherous weather.

“These 408 people across Northern Ireland have begun 2012 with the prospect of going to court where they will almost certainly lose their driving licence. They should count themselves lucky. They could have lost their own life or destroyed the lives of others had police not stopped them.

”While we welcome the fact that the vast majority of right thinking people realise that drink driving is shameful and unacceptable, clearly there is still an irresponsible minority who ignore all advice and warnings. Whilst the current publicity campaign has ended, the detection of drink driving will remain a year-round priority for police.”

Assistant Chief Constable Finlay concluded by reminding all road users: “If everyone slowed down, did not drive after drinking or taking drugs, wore a seatbelt and drove with greater care and attention then together, it will be possible to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads.”

Below is a breakdown of statistics for each district, with Newry and Mourne falling under District E:

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Posted by on Jan 22 2012. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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