It used to be my most common arrest (My record was 8 drink drivers in one night), and once the road side intoxicator was introduced to replace the old tube and bag, it became such an easy prosecution.
The problem was (and maybe still is to a certain degree) is that for too long and certainly with the older generation, drink driving has been regarded as a socially acceptable offence despite the misery is causes when a fatal or catastrophic crash occurs as a result.
Numbers showed a steady decline for quite a while, but once chief officers started to disregard roads policing as being front line policing (despite that in most cases it is a traffic cop that dies in the line of duty) and therefore numbers and training being reduced, joe public feels that the risk of being caught has diminished substantially and therefore think they can take a calculated risk, but thats another story altogether.
From an coppers perspective, doing a drink driver now is so easy (regardless of what the current generation will have you believe about paperwork).
When I started, and some of you may remember, we used to have the roadside kits where you blew into a tube and inflated a bag, and if the crystals changed to green (over the yellow line) that was a positive test and you were nicked (it was so difficult trying to check the tube in the beam of a headlight)
Anyway, once nicked, it was back to the Police station, a Doctor would have to be called to take blood which was then sent to the forensic science lab for analysis and several weeks late the results would come back followed up by either a prosecution or no further action.
A full file of evidence then had to be prepared and submitted, so it could be anything between 6 and 9 months before the case got to court and the offender has continued to drive in the meantime.
With the introduction of the electronic test it was like manner from heaven. Road side device is easy to use and see, nick the driver, put them on the machine, charge them and they could be in court the following morning with all the paperwork being proforma documents, so easy.
I personally would like every driver convicted of drink driving or dangerous driving to be required to attend the mortuary so that they can see the result (or potential consequences) of their behaviour.
Someone worked it out once that I have been to the mortuary about 300 times during my career just dealing with drink drive victims and this is before you include the victims of dangerous driving or anything else of which there have also been a few.
Trouble is you cannot have a zero level because so many everyday products have a trace of alcohol in them which does show up on the machine, so we need to go on the education path again along with the drug driving which seems to be the favoured route for the youngsters as thy seem to consider this acceptable as opposed to drink driving.
I should have added that a couple of manufacturers did trial breath test devices built in to the ignition system during the 80's and it caused more problems the-an it resolved and on a mass commercial basis had it been adopted, it would have been a nightmare.
