I’ve noticed my previous post has got a bit of traffic recently so I thought I’d do a bit of a follow up. I work as a firefighter in Belfast and thankfully I haven’t had to deal with too many road traffic collisions (RTCs). I’m not sure what the statistics are but there are a lot more crashes out in the countryside than in the city. This means that any drink driving incident could happen in a remote place i.e. somewhere it will take a while for fire and ambulance crews to get to.
There is a thing called the “Golden Hour” which is the hour immediately after a life threatening trauma occurs. If a trauma victim gets to significant medical care (i.e. hospital) within that hour, they have a far higher likelihood of survival. Outside that hour and your chances fall dramatically. If we have to cut people out of car wrecks we are trained to do so as quickly and safely as possible but the clock is always ticking.
Drinking and driving leads to accidents. The bigger the accident, the longer it could take to get someone out and the shorter the time left from the Golden Hour. Is it worth the risk? If you have to think about the answer to that, you shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel.
