by Stephen Tomlinson

Created on: September 04, 2007

Ah, I have heard this question a million times and always deliver the same answer...

Just because there is a car park to a pub, doesn't mean that everyone who enters the pub will have an alcoholic drink and then illegally drive-think about families having their pub lunch on a Sunday with their children, employees who drive to work and taxis who pick up the people who have been drinking.

If there were no car parks for pubs then there would be taxis, employees cars, customer's cars on the streets adding to congestion and drunks trying to make, oh sorry I mean stumble, their way through the traffic to get a taxi or get into their own cars.

So, even though people will drink and drive it is their own choice and will face the consequences in the end. But you cannot turn the streets into an inevitable gridlock for the sake of trying to monitor drink driving. Think about it, the drunks will park their cars on the streets and cause more of a danger!

Pubs do have a lot of traffic flowing into and out of car parks everyday and a good response would be to allow staff to report suspected drink drivers to police.

It is a sad way to be and I fully understand where people are coming from when they say pub car parks should be abolished but it simply would not be practical!

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