To prove a point. the school’s instructors let local residents experience drink driving by getting them intoxicated before completing a test circuit. - Screengrab from FBS/YouTube
TOKYO (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): After a spate of drink-driving accidents in the western Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, a driving school thought of a novel method to educate motorists about the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol.
The school’s instructors on Aug 21 let local residents experience drink driving by getting them intoxicated before completing a test circuit, Japanese media reported.
During the experiential learning session at the Chikushino Driving School, participants were told in a lecture by instructors that drunk drivers tend to be overconfident in their ability to safely manoeuvre a vehicle.
“We’ll let you experience how much your driving changes before and after drinking,” a school official told the participants, as cited by the Mainichi Shimbun.
Participants were then given beer or shochu to drink before taking a breathalyser test to check if they were over the permissible alcohol limit.
Fukuoka Broadcasting System reporter Yuichiro Kodama had a beer and five highball cocktails in around 90 minutes before starting the driving test, which comprised three stations – the slalom, S-turn and a series of “crank” turns.
His was at nearly five times over the alcohol limit of 0.15mg per litre of exhaled breath. The threshold in Singapore is 0.035mg of alcohol per litre of breath.
With a driving instructor in the passenger seat, a bleary-eyed Kodama attempted the slalom and crank turns.
He flattened a traffic cone and collided with some barriers before the car went off the driving path altogether.
After the test, his instructor said Kodama would “definitely, 100 per cent” have caused an accident if he had been on a public road.
Another reporter who attempted the test at twice the alcohol threshold was told she entered an S-turn faster than she had before she drank, despite her perceiving otherwise.
Driving school vice-chief Shojiro Kubota said: “Even though (alcohol) impairs the skills people need for driving, such as cognitive capacity, judgment and vehicle manoeuvring, the driver assumes they are driving safely. That’s the danger of drunken driving.”
The driving lesson was also held in part to mark a fatal car accident in August 2006, when a drunken civil servant rear-ended another car, killing three child passengers aged between one and four.
The driver who caused the accident on the Uminonakamichi Bridge over Hakata Bay had reportedly told investigators: “I was drunk but I thought I could drive all right.”
Of the 672 people arrested over drink driving offences in Fukuoka from January to July in 2023, more than 76 per cent of them were found to have exceeded alcohol thresholds, according to local police.
In July alone, 295 people were arrested on drink driving charges, an increase from the same period a year ago.
Analysis by Japan’s National Police Agency also showed that the probability of road traffic accidents involving fatalities was seven times higher involving drunk drivers than when drivers were sober.
Yoichi Furukawa, deputy chief for Fukuoka police’s traffic enforcement division, said: “We call for people to make thorough risk management before drinking, such as not driving to izakayas in the first place, on the premise that once they are drunk, they cannot make normal judgments.”
