On the short drive from the station back home this evening I got stopped by the police for a random breath test. Because I was doing 3mph over the limit apparently that was enough to stop me, although I was told immediately that they weren’t going to do anything about it. What they really wanted was to do a breath test as part of the pre-Christmas crack down on drink driving.
It wasn’t a problem at all, not having had a drink since yesterday so I looked on the whole thing as an interesting experience. The little breath testing machine is very impressive, given the size of the tubes it takes only a tiny sample of air and then analyses it within ten seconds. I can imagine that if you had had a drink the experience would be extremely sobering (although maybe not quickly enough!) and enough to put you off drink driving on it’s own.
All in all something which I am glad that the police do.
