Death on the Road

[fredfertang]

Death on the Road

Some places are much less dangerous than they used to be. For county cricketers the highways and byways of England are an example

 

[smash84]

A very different piece from your usual fare Fred

 

[stumpski]

Yes Graham Kersey and Ben Hollioake both in Australia of course.

I did post a comment, which 24 hours later nobody has put up, asking if you knew when drink-driving laws came in - I would guess sometime in the 1920s.

 

[fredfertang]

Yes Graham Kersey and Ben Hollioake both in Australia of course.

I did post a comment, which 24 hours later nobody has put up, asking if you knew when drink-driving laws came in - I would guess sometime in the 1920s.

The first offence of drink driving of the sort we have now (ie there was a mandatory disqualification if convicted) was introduced in 1925, although there was an offence of being drunk in charge of a carriage etc that dated back to the 1870s - the blood/alcohol limit came in in 1967 - before that the police did all those tests about walking along a straight line and picking up a coin at the end and the like, and that meaningless soundbite that they trot out to this day first found its way into common usage "his speech was slurred and his eyes were glazed". In those days you could elect trial by jury for drink driving (you can't now) and all the young barristers used to cut their teeth on drink/drive cases - rural juries tended to be rather more forgiving than urban ones