Drink driving arrests up dramatically on last year

DRINK driving arrests in Cork are up dramatically on last year.

Around 100 more motorists have been arrested on suspicion of drink driving compared to the first 11 months of 2004.

Many more are expected to be caught in the garda Christmas crackdown.

Figures released yesterday by the head of the regional traffic corps - which covers Cork, Kerry and Limerick - show the biggest rise in arrests is in Cork city.

Inspector Billy Duane said that over 730 people had been arrested so far this year in the city and suburbs, which is a huge increase on the same period last year.

The second highest recorded arrests were in the Limerick division with around 480. There were more than 460 arrests in Kerry, approximately 370 in north and east Cork and a further 260 in west Cork.

In total there were 2,300 arrests in the southern region up to the end of last month.

Inspector Duane said that in the first week of the Christmas crackdown 50 drivers had been arrested in his region, most of them last weekend when the party season kicked off.

“People are simply not heeding the message. They are mainly middle-aged men. They go out drinking and forget the consequences. Reason just goes from them,” he said.

Gardaí are not just mounting visible patrols but also using covert operations to target those who are drinking and driving.

Inspector Duane also stressed that some people are being caught “the morning after the night before.”

He was referring to people attending late-night parties who come home in the morning in a drunken state and believe they are fit enough to drive to work at 8am or 9am.

“There have been 61 people killed in the [southern] region in the past 11 months. A total of 26 were young people involved in single vehicle accidents. These were mainly as a result of a combination of speeding, drinking and tiredness,” the inspector added.

He said even small towns had good hackney or taxi services and drivers should be using them.

Apart from that he stressed that partygoers not using public transport should nominate a designated driver who didn’t drink.