The country, along with most of the rest world, will ring in the New Year tonight with a good measure of joviality and also with perhaps more than a good few measures of alcohol in their system.

The message is stressed every year, but it simply cannot be stressed enough: if you have had one too many and you do not have a teetotaling designated driver, do not get behind the wheel - take a cab or public transport, walk or crawl, or just stay where you are. 

It is really as simple as that. The potential ramifications are simply not worth a gamble which, if you win, awards you with the prize of having your car outside your front door on New Year’s Day.  But, if you lose the roll of the dice, the cost can be very dear indeed, and a complete write-off of an automobile could be the least of those costs or concerns.

We are lucky to live in a country in which distances are never excessively long.  In fact, a half-hour suffices for just about any journey between any two points on the island.  And as such, taxis are not cripplingly costly and public transport is expected to run smoothly on New Year’s Eve. 

Statistics also show that Malta is among the safest countries in the world for driving – with an average of close to three deaths a year per 100,000 people, compared with the global average of around 18 per 100,000 people.

This holds true despite the fact that Malta, along with the UK, are the two EU countries with the highest legal blood alcohol limits, at 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. Calls are continuously being made to lower the threshold.  Ireland and Scotland did so recently, when they dropped the threshold from 80mg, Malta’s limit, to 50mg.  Calls have been made for years in Malta for the legal limit to be lowered in a similar fashion, but to no avail.

When it lowered its legal limit, Ireland had also introduced a number of novel concepts that should bear consideration.    Learner, novice and professional drivers in Ireland have had their blood alcohol limit set at 20mg, meaning that a single pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single measure of spirits could push many motorists over the legal limit. Malta at present makes no such distinction between categories of drivers and their blood alcohol content levels.

Studies by the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), advise that legal limits for drinking and driving in the UK should be reduced from 80mg to 50mg.

A single alcoholic drink, studies find, triples a driver’s risk of dying in a vehicle crash, and a small beer or glass of wine can increase a driver’s blood-alcohol level by more than half the legal limit.  The same studies found that even at the one-drink level, the chances of a fatal accident are three times higher than in a driver who has drunk no alcohol at all.  At half of Malta’s 80mg drink-drive limit the chances of a fatal crash are increased by at least six times. In drivers who are just over the limit, at up to 100mg blood alcohol level, the risk is 11 times higher.

The effects are particularly acute in younger people, who are generally less experienced drivers, are immature and have a lower tolerance to alcohol than older people.  The problem is that this is the precise age group that will be doing the bulk of the partying tonight.

If you’ve had too much, please keep your car keys in your pocket and find any other means to get yourself, your friends and your loved ones home…safely.  Instead of ‘one for the road’, make it a case of ‘none for the road’ tonight.