I’ve read that more than two-fifths of adult pedestrians killed in road accidents are above the legal alcohol limit for driving. Between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am, the proportion rises to over 80%. Clearly pedestrians under the influence are putting themselves at serious risk.
So the Australians are proposing to address this problem by introducing a drink-walking limit for pedestrians of 150 mg – approximately twice the current British drink-driving limit. In practice, taking into account the absorption of alcohol over time, this would mean you might be at risk of falling foul of the law if you’d consumed five or six pints.
It is not currently illegal to be drunk in public in this country, so long as you are not disorderly with it, but this could introduce a clearly-defined strict liability threshold of what was considered acceptable in public places.
Of course such a thing is never going to happen in reality, is it? Oh yes, just like they said about the blanket smoking ban...
(h/t to Dick Puddlecote for bringing this to my attention)