None for the Road

By early evening, Britain's streets were uncommonly empty last week, and normally brimful pubs were almost deserted. Brewery stocks tumbled on the London exchange. Government announcements on television exhorted couples to decide before going out for an evening which of them would drink and which would drive. The Daily Mail worried that Britain might change from "a friendly, sociable nation to a country of introverts."

Thus "The Test" came to Britain last week. From now on, British drivers will be obliged by law to submit to random curbside "Breathalyser" tests, blowing their breath into 8-in. glass tubes containing alcohol-sensitive yellow crystals. If the crystals turn green, the next stop is the police station for a blood test or urinalysis. Anyone showing a reading of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood faces almost certain conviction and a maximum penalty of four months in jail, a $280 fine and a one-year license suspension. Since the level is so low that some people may reach it after only two beers, Britain's millions of pub crawlers face the choice of either abstaining, getting someone to drive them home or taking their chances in the test. In some places, those who own horses created yet another choice by riding them to the pubs and home again.

Driving to Jail. Britain is joining a whole host of other European countries that, faced with the world's highest alcoholic-consumption rates and a staggering number of auto accidents, are cracking down on driving after drinking. In France, which has the world's highest per capita consumption (28 quarts of pure alcohol per year) and a test similar to Britain's, driving under the influence now carries the maximum penalty of a three-year license suspension, one year in prison and a $1,000 fine. Belgium and The Netherlands have also enacted sobriety laws reinforced by tests, and Swiss highways have blossomed with signs proclaiming ''Alcohol drives you to jail."

Poles caught driving while tiddly not only face jail and fines but must attend lectures that damn the old devil drink. In Czechoslovakia, the crackdown is aimed as much at those who sell booze to drivers as at the drivers themselves; a Czech motorist in search of a nip must thus park his auto well away from the tavern and make his approach by foot. West Germany's ten years of breath testing by police has given rise to a new industry that produces lozenges and mouth sprays to mask alcoholic fumes in the breath.

The grandfather of anti-alcohol legislation is Scandinavia, which has reined in schnapps-happy drivers for years--with mixed results. Swedes are taught from the cradle up that booze and an auto do not mix, yet one in five drivers still risks arrest by taking the wheel after drinking. About 7,000 a year go for one to twelve months to special prisons, including one outside Stockholm that is known as "the country club" because of the high social caliber of its inmates. In Denmark, where the number of arrests of drunken drivers has been increasing sharply, police are introducing breath-testing balloons and trying for tougher laws. The Finns put imprisoned tipplers in special jails and make them work their way out. Much of the hard labor in building Helsinki's new international airport was performed by drying-out drivers.

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