Beginning of summer cottage season reflected in spike in drink-driving cases

Four people injured in a head-on collision between two cars in Joensuu; one woman driver was seriously over the limit

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Finland has many traditional rhymes to indicate the impending arrival of the short but intensive summer hereabouts, but few of them involve drinking and driving, even if it is an extremely reliable litmus-test of the approaching summer season.
      Last weekend - when a good many people went to their summer cottages to open things up for the new season and inspect what sort of damage the winter has caused - brought a spike in the number of DUI cases as the police picked up dozens of drivers who had either simply had too much, or who had not allowed a long enough time to sleep off their drinking.
      Based on police reports, Helsingin Sanomat counted a total of 83 cases in which a breathalyser had indicated that the driver’s blood alcohol content exceeded the limit for drunken driving or aggravated drunken driving.
     
In six cases the vehicle of the drunk driver was a moped. In addition, at least two intoxicated helmsmen were picked up on the water, and a few motorists were caught driving under the influence of narcotics.
      All police communiques on DUI cases reported between 3:00 pm on Friday and 2:00 pm on Sunday were included in the HS calculation. In other words, not by any means all drunk-driving cases detected by the police last weekend were included in the estimate.
      The worst consequences of drunk-driving were seen in Joensuu, where four people were injured in a head-on collision between two cars on Saturday evening. The breath alcohol content reading of the female driver of one of the vehicles was 1.78 per mille, more than enough to qualify for an aggravated DUI ticket.
     
The largest number of drunk drivers was caught in Ostrobothnia. A total of 17 drunk motorists were caught in the areas of the Central Ostrobothnia and Southern Ostrobothnia police departments.
      The most aggravated of the aggravated drunk-driving cases was detected in Kokkola, in Central Ostrobothnia, where a man in his 50s who was caught weaving around a car park blew more than 3.0 per mille into a hand-held breathalyser.
      ”It sounds like a quite normal summer weekend”, comments Sgt. Jyrki Rautakoski from Southern Finland’s Mobile Police.
     
According to Rautakoski, the number of drink-driving cases increases every time when the cottage season begins.
      ”When there is no public transport available, people are more likely to drive in the morning, even if they still had some alcohol in their bloodstream”, Rautakoski notes.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Number of suspected DUI cases declining in Finland (29.3.2011)
  Number of drunken driving cases lowest for 15 years (18.1.2011)

See also:
  Nearly 70% would reduce blood-alcohol threshold for drink-driving cases (15.9.2010)

Helsingin Sanomat