Yesterday, 20 November 2008, saw the opening of an exhibition entitled Anew the Vines have Fruited at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum. The theme of the exhibition is wine: its role and importance in the culture and way of life of Slovenia. At the end of the exhibition there is also a warning about alcohol abuse.

The police are also taking part in this project with a presentation of a selection of alcohol detectors, old and new, that police officers use to measure the alcohol content in breath. The concentration of alcohol in breath is measured in milligrams of alcohol per litre of exhaled air. Breath tests are one of the most common measures ordered out by police officers engaged on traffic control duty.

The presentation of the alcohol detectors is accompanied by preventive advice from the police, since driving under the influence of alcohol can be dangerous or fatal:

• For the safety of all road users, make a simple decision: if I'm going to drink, I won't drive.

• If you have been drinking, let someone else drive (someone who has not had a drink) or use public transport.

We should also point out that alcohol first reduces the capacity for normal judgement, which is followed by a reduced capacity of perception, misjudgements of distances, slow reactions, impaired balance, narrowed field of vision, and so on. Alcohol can remain in the human organism for up to 12 hours, which means that the morning after drinking alcoholic drinks we are still not fully capable of driving safely, or in other words a test can reveal a concentration of alcohol that is still above the permitted level.

Alcohol and excessive speed are the two most common factors in road accidents with serious consequences. In 2007 police officers ordered 348,591 breath tests, of which 27,934 were positive. That same year, as many as a third of all causers of fatal accidents were under the influence of alcohol!

Come and see the exhibition!

St Martin's Day and December festivities - Alcohol kills: most often the innocent!