Dr. Declan Bedford:

The drink and driving offences and the crashes are at night time, but there are peaks in the afternoon as well, particularly on Sundays. There is data available, if memory serves me right, to show the peaks on Sunday. There is one other advantage of having an occasional breath checks apart from that in the afternoon or at other times because it creates awareness. People will say that they are testing for drinking and driving. Many people would be reassured by that. They will say that if they are doing it in the daytime, they will definitely be doing it at the night-time as well. Several years ago I spoke to gardaí at the introduction of the random breath testing and said it was a matter of getting the message out there, without causing grief. If gardaí set up a road traffic check point on the verge of a motorway on a Monday morning and had a big sign, stating random breath testing check and they took all their equipment, all the cars are sneaking by the first time before they have set up. They are thanking God they had passed it. All you would have to do is take it down straight away and those who would see it would thank God the had arrived too late. They did not have to stop anybody but the message is getting out. I know they have done that elsewhere. The message is getting out that gardaí are doing checks in the morning and a person would want to watch what they drink on Sunday night. There is a problem that some people do not realise how much they drink on a Sunday night. When they are driving to work at 6.30 a.m. or 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, they are over the limit. Crashes occur and people get injured.