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Italy offers free taxi rides to stop drunk drivers
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, has proposed that inebriated people should be given free taxi rides home from nightclubs in order to curb incidences of drink driving.
The proposal, supported by several night entertainment venue associations in Italy, is that people leaving nightclubs intent on driving home will be breathalysed, and if their alcohol levels are found to be above the legal limit for them to be operating a vehicle, a free taxi or shuttle ride to their home will be provided.
In a tweet, Salvini, a Meloni ally and leader and secretary of the far-right Lega party, shared: “The idea, born after meetings at the ministry on road safety with influencers and content creators, provides for the payment of transport to those who, undergoing an alcohol test when exiting discoes, exceed the limit set for getting behind the wheel.”
A trial of the scheme will roll out at six venues across Italy from this month until mid-September.
“Not only fines and rules,” Salvini added. “To stop the slaughter, we need to involve everyone in terms of prevention.”
Some critics have suggested that the scheme “rewards” excessive alcohol consumption, while others appeared to resent that their taxes would contribute to funding this transport.
According to data from 2019 from the Carabinieri and police published by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), around 8.7% of the 58,872 road collisions with injuries reported in Italy involved at least one driver under the influence of alcohol.
A different report published by the ETSC cited a Social Attitudes to Road Traffic Risk in Europe (SARTRE) survey from 2012 that found that Italians have one of the most relaxed attitudes in the continent when it comes to drink driving, with 32.7% of respondents claiming to have driven while being above the alcohol limit. The only country in the survey with a higher figure was Croatia (34.4%).
In 2010, Italy altered its Highway Code to introduce a 0.0g/l Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) limit for young, novice and professional drivers. The legal limit for drivers not in these three categories is o.5g/l BAC. The limit in the UK (excluding Scotland, where it is 0.5) is 0.8g/l BAC for all drivers, the highest of any EU (or former-EU) nation, according to the ETSC.
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