Sober & Silly

In Oslo, a motorist who is overly gay when he leaves the bar is liable to be tapped on the shoulder by a policeman and asked down to the police station. Norwegian law provides that the police may give any driver a blood test if they have "fair reason" to suspect that he has had too much akevitt--i.e., more than a concentration of five-tenths of a milligram of alcohol per cubic centimeter in the blood. * Recently, a Norwegian driver who had had a few drinks but wanted to move his car a few feet into a better parking space, merely loosened the brakes of the car while a friend pushed. The conscientious motorist was nevertheless picked up by police and put in jail for 21 days.

Sometimes police do not catch up with a driver suspected of tippling until after he has left his car. In such cases, the driver often evades the law by contending that he did not start drinking until he had stopped driving. To catch such wily customers, a special Norwegian government commission last week proposed even stricter regulations, asked for a law forbidding all drivers to taste alcohol three hours before or three hours after driving. Cried a representative of the Norwegian Drivers' Association: "One cannot expect people to respect such silly laws."

* A 150-175 pounder drinking on an empty stomach reaches this limit on an average highball, Martini, or quart of beer.

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