Second Irish council allows drink-driving on its roads!

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^^^^We can get nice warm sunny days in the winter,you can even wear shorts sometimes,but then it could drop to freezing and snow,it's certainly hot enough in the summer,90's to 100's,even higher at times.It's to hot to do anything but sit in the shade and drink,but you do want that beer ice cold.and if you are at the creek,so much the better.

Today was sooooo lovely and warm! Hard to believe it happened in January!

Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (5.9%) please. Cold. Ice cold in that weather.

^^^^Yup,beer and BBQ weather.Just around the coroner

Brutally hoppy beer and lovely sausages. Mmm-mmmm.

Anyone for boerewors? (My little niece hates the smell of that sausage.)

There was probably too many people over the drinking limit daily, up to and including the police and council/parliament; so if they can't enforce it, regulate it!

I love when stereotypes are shown to be right.

Keep on rocking Ireland, keep on.

Pints of Foreign Extra all round then?

I'm going to drive to the WOW liquor store right now!! !
All this beer talk has made me thirsty.

Good for them, punish reckless driving, not behavior that may lead to reckless driving.

What did you end up buying then, Misslizard?

I think some limits must be set. That driving a ton of car while drunken is dangerous to you and others, cant be related. So people also liked to drink and drive around my country, but when the police made more and more controls, people accepted it after some years. While for my fathers generation it was pretty normal as young ones to drive home drunk, nowadays you rarely see someone.

Some years ago there was a discussion because driving drunken with the bicylce would also lead to loosing your driving license, because if you take the law by word every driving of a vehicle on public street was punished the same way. When police started to control people on bicycles too, it led that people were thinking: "If I loose my driving license, anyway, when driving with the car or the bicycle, i can take the car as well." and there were more drunken driver on the streets again. But police told themself, that they are not here to fulfill the law word by word, but to make streets safer and people driving bycicles are far less dangerous (to others ^^) then people driving drunken with cars. So they tolerate it now, as long as you are not driving in snake lines.

So I agree, that some things you must accept. For example that people that have a funny night need to come home someway. But not in something as dangerous as a car, anyway which country, and anyway to the used habbits of the people. If my child gets hurt in the morning when going to school, it wont help me, that driving and drinking, are local customs. -.-

True, but in Britain and in Ireland it's lead to the closure of thousands of country pubs where regular public transport in the evening is either very infrequent or doesn't exist. If people can't go and have a couple of beers with friends on a night out in an area where other cars and pedestrians may be a rare sight, trade dries up and vanishes in all but the best food pubs and people stick to the towns and villages where they live instead.

I also live in the country, and I know of the problem that there are no busses or taxis around, like people are used to in the cities, and thats its simply impossible to visit a bar 20 km away without possibility to come home, and noone wants to be the one having no drink all night while your friends are celebrating.

Solution around here are:

Driving drunken on bicycles is tolerated. (Official forbidden, but normally police only make a small "greeting check" if you are still responding and reacting in an acceptable way. ^^ "Hello there!" - "Hello officers!" - "Everythings fine?" - "Yes, just driving home from ..." - "How much you drunk?" - "..." - "So where do you need to go?" - "*hometown*" - "Ok, so care to avoid the main street and take the bycicle path, will you?" - "Yes, sure." - "Have a nice, evening." - "Thank you, you too!") So if you are not even recognizing that they stop you, drive around like a snake, fell from the bicylce while stopping or starting, are not able to speak in a way they understand, or dont even know where you are driving to, or such things, they dont tolerate it. But as long as you are able to handle the bicycle in a tolerable way, (and the lights are functioning ^^) they tolerate it.

And Illegal taxis are tolerated as long as they focus on: "Driving home a bunch of drunken people." So people who need some money extra, tell the owner of the bars their private number, and when you need to go home you ask the Bar owner "if a friend of him could drive you home" and without any thoughts behind it you give him an extra tip, when paying. (Thats the official version. The unofficial version is: The bar owner is happy, that someone is driving his guests, so they can visit him. The guests are happy to come home and normally its really cheap. So instead of an official taxi that has to be not older than this and that years, and needs to be checked every three months and and and and... its a normal private car. For example an Van Owner we usually call, takes 4 EUR/person for 20 km if we get the van full. Thats the price of an beer. And the "taxi" driver is happy to earn some extra money. And the police is happy, that the people dont drive on their own. Normally they even know them, i mean after the fifth time on one evening when this guy passes them with other passengers its obviously.)

You'd think some enterprising soul would set up taxi stands next to those rural pubs.

Anyhow, Irish roads are a nightmare even when you're sober. Full of blind curves, very narrow, and you're often driving between two stone walls with no shoulder whatsoever. Never seems to be a wall when there's a cliff, though. You could open your car door and fall right down the mountainside.

The problem with taxis, especially at night, is that they're often prohibitively expensive here in the UK. I don't know many people, even in groups who would want to spend £40-£50 on taxis to visit a single country pub (remember, the cost of taxiing to another pub would cost more) where the beer is well over £3 a pint. The sheer cost of it and the lack of will for drivers to drink anything at all - not even the odd pint of bitter with lunch - has killed these pubs. Most of the country pubs that exist are mainly for farmers who often drink-drive, or are 'destination' pubs.

Pubs in town centres generally do a bit better because it's on easily accessible bus routes, and there are a variety of different pubs there.

Official it wouldnt function. So cars older then some years are not allowed as taxis. You have to make a check on your car every some months. To be an official taxi driver you need to have a license, that costs. If you want do drive a van for public, you need some kind of Bus driver license extra. Then you had to pay the driver extra fees for working during night. Then a taxi always has to be extra clean, so someone needs to pay that work. Then it is not allowed to work on two following week ends in my country, so one driver only was allowed to work every two weeks. Then you had to pay the taxes from your income and so and so on. And as normal taxi driver you couldnt tell people "to find some guys extra that want to drive in this direction, for special price". So I could call an official taxi, but i had to pay the price the taxi needs to get from his taxi station around 50 km to the bar, from there 20 km to my home, and 70 km back to his taxi station. At this price I can take a hotel room with spa if there was one around. XD