One thing they could do is ban all black Audi's, at least then a shed load of s would need to buy a new car, and then we could take their licences off them, that would make the motorways safer

The real knobs are all driving white ones now

If you drink drive in ANY EU STATE you are banned from driving in ALL EU STATES, regardless of the level of alcohol allowed in your home state.

You know sometimes it is very hard to work out whether you are just on the wind up, semi-literate or plain dumb. Being charitable and assuming it's one of the latter two, then you just made up "a high % of drivers". The remark was (obviously) referring to "DRUNK DRIVERS".

No you aren't. A UK court can only ban you from land within its own jurisdiction.

However you wouldn't be able to hire a car abroad, as no hire company will hire to someone with a drink-drive conviction for up to 5 years from date of conviction, and certainly not within the disqualification period since you are not during that period the holder of a valid licence entitling you to drive.

If you use your own car, then unless someone else drove it out of the jurisdiction, you'd be driving whilst disqualified in the UK, for which you could go to jail.

If you drove abroad in your own car then you would not be driving whilst disqualified, as you are not disqualified in that country, but you WOULD be driving without a licence, and without insurance.

You may be thinking of the European Convention on Driving Disqualifications of 17 June 1998 which would have the effect of mutual bans, but doesn't, as it would need all states to sign it. Oddly, they CAN agree to mutually apply it voluntarily, but the only countries so far to have done so AFAIK are the UK and Ireland. So your ban WOULD mean you were also disqualified in the emerald isle, bejabers.

It was so much simpler back in 1971.

I copped a 12 month ban after being found with 86mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood (8 over the limit), following a stop for a faulty back light. Shortly after the ban I realised that I couldn't continue in my career and departed to work the summer season on Guernsey. While there I discovered that I could take a Guernsey driving test, so I got a provisional, booked a couple of lessons and then booked a test. I passed that and continued driving while I was there.

When I got back to the UK, I continued driving on my green Guernsey licence until my red UK licence was returned to me. I knew of others who got round the ban by driving on other countries' licences and even one bloke who continued driving on his International Licence, despite the fact that you also needed a domestic licence to validate the International one.

Impossible now with the PNC of course

I suspect the most noticeable impact in the next few weeks will be a large increase in "morning after" convictions. Best get a bus or taxi to work after a night out

How's the cave painting going?

Aha I thought that had been adopted EU wide, my bad.

Give 'em a chance man, it was only 1998 ffs

A great many poor drivers could be prevented from obtaining a full license by simply adding these two questions to the written exam.

1. Which make of car do you aspire to own?
2. Do you watch Top Gear?

If the answers are, Audi or BMW and yes, then you fail irrespective of how well you scored in the rest of the exam.

Google need to finish their testing and release the driverless car asap. That'll reduce road deaths massively*

They've been driving around California for years, the only accidents being when other vehicle drivers have driven into one of them.


*I'm not saying a driverless car should ever be operated by someone under the influence. More looking at the other '6 out of every 7 deaths' stat.

The only problem with driverless cars is that they will always stick to the speed limit and unless you make their use compulsory and ban all not-driverless cars from using the same roads then you will always get some petrolhead or simpleton in a car too powerful for his/her brain who will overtake, undertake, cut across lanes, follow too close, not be watching when the driverless car in front stops or just generally behave like your average sales rep in a BMW 3 series - ie there will still be plenty of s left to collide with the driverless cars and then blame everyone else.

rlTHISrl could make it exciting.

I think you are probably right there. It will be interesting to see if there is any significant change in the number of drink-drive related accidents but I have my doubts there will be. I mean if people were careful enough not to go over the old limit were they the ones causing mayhem on the roads? I doubt it.



The SNP used to be referred to as the Tartan Tories. If Sturgeon gets her way and Scotland eventually does become independent I think you (and she) might find not every Scottish Nationalist is a socialist. Which is why I always felt voting "yes" in the referendum just to be rid of a Tory controlled Westminster was a very short sighted reason for voting that way.