Police and driving instructors in Japan have adopted an unorthodox approach to road safety in the hope of reducing incidences of drink-driving — by allowing drivers to consume alcohol before getting behind the wheel.
Chikushino driving school in the south-western city of Fukuoka recently began offering controlled drink-driving experiences as part of a police campaign to convince “overconfident” motorists never to drink and drive.
The initiative was launched around the 17th anniversary of the deaths of three children from the city — two boys aged four and three, and their one-year-old sister — who died when their family car was struck by a municipal government employee who was driving under the influence of alcohol.
Photo: AP
Drivers taking part in the recent experiment included two reporters from the Mainichi Shimbun — one who drank and drove, and another who observed her colleague as a sober passenger.
The drivers were first asked to negotiate three sections of road — a slalom, an S-bend and a series of tight curves — while sober. The newspaper reporter, Hyelim Ha, then drank a 350ml can of beer, as well as a cup each of umeshu plum wine and shochu spirit — both mixed with water — over the course of about an hour.
A breathalyser test on Ha detected 0.30mg of alcohol per liter of breath, twice the threshold of 0.15mg, the newspaper said.
Despite having cold hands, a raised heart rate and red face, Ha said she felt able to drive — a sentiment reportedly expressed during questioning by the driver who caused the fatal collision in 2006.
Ha’s confidence was misplaced. Her fellow reporter, Rokuhei Sato, lurched back and forth as Ha repeatedly accelerated and slowed down unnecessarily along a straight section of road. She managed to clear the bollards on the slalom course, but was brought to a halt by the school’s vice head, Shojiro Kubota, before she took on the S-bend.
To Ha’s apparent surprise, Kubota told her she had entered a curve at a higher speed after drinking, and at one point had strayed into the opposite lane.
“Even though [drinking] impairs the skills people need for driving, such as cognitive capacity, judgment and vehicle maneuvering ability, the driver assumes they are driving safely — that’s the danger of drink-driving,” Kubota said, according to the Mainichi.
Japan’s national police agency says that many drivers who drink and drive without incident develop a sense of invincibility and continue to repeat the same dangerous behaviors.
It cited data showing that the probability that a road traffic accident will involve a death is seven times higher when the driver has drunk alcohol compared with accidents in which the driver is sober.
“We are calling on people to properly manage the risks before drinking, such as not driving to the pub in the first place, on the premise that once they are drunk, they are unable to make normal judgments,” Yoichi Furukawa, deputy chief of the prefectural police’s traffic enforcement division, told the newspaper.
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by