Drinking, driving and writing about it

When I first learned to drive and passed my driving test, the laws about drinking and diving were much more lax than they are now. In those days people would drive to a pub, get drunk and then drive home, and unless they were absolutely off their face and could barely stagger to their car, people didn’t think that much about it, and if they were caught and found to be drunk, people would sympathise with them. I wonder how many people died or were terribly badly injured through drunk drivers then? Prosecuting someone for drink-driving was too late for the family of someone who had been killed or injured by them.

My locals have usually been just  that, local, so I would walk to the pub and have a drink, so I was never in that situation. The law now is justifiable strict and I’d like to see no alcohol at all legislation brought in; I don’t think there should be any grey areas with a person having a pint, or two depending on their size and tolerance of alcohol. I really believe that alcohol and driving do not go together.

A couple of my books are not contemporary but set twenty or twenty-five years ago when things were slightly different and I find as I’m going through them I want to change the text to reflect the current situation, and my personal thoughts on the matter… but I am not my characters… and some of them, stupidly would have had a few drinks and got in a car and driven. I find that difficult to write about because it might seem as if I’m condoning what my characters are doing.

In The Stalking of Rosa Czekov, one of the characters, Luka does drive while drunk, but it is part of the story because he then crashes, which he may not have done sober… in the story he had to drink and drive, whatever my thoughts on the matter, Luka had to do his own thing!

 “Luka, I think someone’s following us.”

“Oh God, not this again!  I had all this with Rosa!”he suddenly accelerated. “Well, I’ll prove it’s no-one!”

“Don’t go mad, you don’t really want the police after you with what you’ve drunk!” Tyche observed.

“Now you do sound like Rosa.”

Tyche shut up even though Luka was driving far too fast. He turned right off the main road, climbing steeply; he didn’t stop at the junction but swung straight out and veered left heading towards Camel Wood. He was driving dangerously now, enjoying the thrill of speeding through the night. Tyche said nothing but she could see in the wing mirror that the lights were still behind them.

Something was in front of them, on the road in front of them. Luka swerved sharply, caught the bank and the car leapt in the air. It crashed down with a tremendous jarring impact, and they tumbled out of control among the trees. The car jumped and bucked and they crashed down into a hollow and the front end rose up as the car tried to climb. There was an ear-splitting roaring as the front wheels spun in the air, the back wheels stuck somehow and then they were toppling and sliding sideways; the engine stalled and they stopped with another crunching impact and there was silence.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/B008D29O5Y