Taxi Driver Online

Burnley taxi driver in New Year's Eve drink-drive arrest

A taxi driver has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving in his cab on New Year's Eve.

Lancashire Police said the man "surprisingly" failed a breath test after being stopped at a drink and drugs drive checkpoint in Colne Road, Burnley.

The force said the driver "provided a positive sample of 56 against the legal limit of 35".

The man was then arrested, Lancashire Police's road unit added.

The force said 99% of drivers who were stopped at the checkpoint passed a breath test.

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IDFIMH

99 % out of how many tested ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I would be amazed if that number was anywhere near correct.

There is no way police breath test anyone who hasn't given them cause to do so, and usually the ones that do give them cause to test end up being positive.

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IDFIMH

Would guess the 99% figure isn't meant to be, er, statistically rigourous, and maybe a bit like 'I'm 99% certain that I won't do that', sort of thing.

And, unsurprisingly, seems like the BBC's press article above (and a similar one in the Lancs Telegraph) is based simply on a Lancs Road Policing Unit tweet, which maybe indicates why the 99% figure is just informal chat, basically.

Does look like quite full on checks, though, and I've certainly never seen anything as organised as this up here. Normally breathalyzer/drugs tests would be done on individual/ad hoc basis. Or maybe I've not been paying enough attention

And, for what it's worth, this is the tweet that the press reports are based on. Funny thing about a lot of these press reports is that they actually 'embed' the tweet on their webpage, in which case it's just easier to scroll down and read the tweet rather than the padded out rehash in the actual report


I mean, check out the report here, and compare it to the tweet further down the page. (Although embedded tweets like this often don't load, or are slow to load along with all the other pop-ups, videos, or whatever...)

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/n ... years-eve/

Absolute nonsense
Ive only ever been breath tested once
Christmas day around 2015 or so

A police random spot check(which they still insist they never do)
large line of cones set out
next 8 cars that arrive got pulled in,breath tested and allowed to go
after that the next 8 cars to arrive get pulled in
No one had given them any cause

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i started out with nothing and ive still got most of it left

That is why they are called "random".

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Grandad,

Grandad, surely the point is that they're not allowed to do *random* breathalyser tests? Can't be bothered looking it up (but I'm sure Sussex will give us chapter and verse), and it's a few years since I've thought about these things. But, as a I recall it, a breath test requires 'reasonable suspicion', or a 'moving traffic offence', or similar?

Jozef, I don't doubt what you say, but presumably that was a one off, and such operations aren't the norm?

I've had (by the skin of my teeth) a clean licence for 41 years and taxi badge for 27 years (Dundee then Fife). Drove nights in Dundee a couple of years, and St Andrews area since then, also nights. Lived in Dundee for 25 years and drove back there through the city centre at night/early hours from Fife for 20 years.

Yet have never seen any kind of exercise like the one you describe, nor like the one in the photo from Lancashire

and police insist that they never do RANDOM stops

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i started out with nothing and ive still got most of it left

im the same as you,never seen one before
it was on the A82 at dumbuck,next to jackie stewarts parents house,the road opens to 3 lanes with a fork off to the left into dumbarton and the other to travel through dumbarton,the cones were immmediately before this junction

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i started out with nothing and ive still got most of it left

I will not give chapter and verse, other than to say the police are not allowed to randomly breath test anyone.

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IDFIMH

About 20 years ago the police were doing an "operation" on the A16 at a layby between Market Deeping and Tallington. All cars were being directed into the layby but once I pulled in I was directed past the lanes of cones and back out but they definitely had breathalyser equipment

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

And I suspect they used that equipment on drivers who smelt of booze and/or couldn't speak in a coherent manner.

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IDFIMH

it was 14.30 in the afternoon

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector