NEARLY 10,000 people were caught drink-driving in 2009, police said yesterday following the latest incident at the weekend when a 17-year old girl was nabbed without a licence and driving over the limit.
Traffic Police Head Demetris Demetriou said: “We are setting new records with the number of arrests for drink driving. The more checks we carry out, the more drunk drivers we catch.”
“The police will continue to carry out checks, and we will be enforcing the law even more strictly”, he added.
The problem of unqualified car drivers was given a disturbing twist in the early hours of Sunday, with the arrest in Limassol of the 17-year-old girl who had no driving licence or car insurance and was over the legal limit for blood-alcohol.
The underage driver was stopped by a police patrol in Anexartisia Street, one of Limassol’s main thoroughfares, shortly after she left a venue where she had been out with a group of friends. After failing a breathalyser test, the girl was asked for her details.
She then reportedly “reeled off a series of lies without hesitation”, giving the details of the friend whose car she was driving illegally. As the police officers had already stopped and checked the friend shortly beforehand, they quickly established that the 17-year-old was driving without a driving licence or car insurance.
The friend whose car she was driving had taken charge of a car belonging to another member of the group, who had been too drunk to drive.
The 17-year-old was charged and held overnight, then released yesterday pending her appearance in court. Demetriou told the Mail that the owner of the car she was driving will also be charged with allowing her vehicle to be driven uninsured.
On top of that, it was revealed yesterday that an increasing number of young drunks are being taken by their friends to hospital Accident & Emergency (A&E) Departments at weekends, and in some cases ambulances are being called needlessly, Nicosia General Hospital A&E Head Costas Antoniades said.
“Most cases come in on Friday and Saturday nights, but numbers are continuing to rise. They are mainly young people, and mostly men”, Antoniades said. He added that those brought in are often quarrelsome and aggressive, and some have already been injured in drunken brawls.
In many cases, their friends take them to hospital either without thinking or after panicking, when the best thing to do would be to take them home to sleep it off, Antoniades said.
