Drunk driver dragnet, at dusk

Friday, 10 pm. Six policemen are gearing up for an «everybody blows» raid. With their glowing vests lit up by headlights, people find the brake pedal real fast.

On Pärnamäe Road, right on the Viimsi Commune and Tallinn borderline, three policemen line each line. Barely in position, here comes the initial car and gets stopped.

Ten minutes go by. Car after car come up, slow down, stop and blow. If all is okay, some pull off with trembling knees it seems – revving up or sputtering.

Bad luck and booze

Caught in the long line of cars, here comes a young scooter-man. He blows into the pipe, gets off the bike, and is promptly pulled aside.  Never resisting, he follows like a lamb.

The police car doors close behind the young man. It’s paperwork time. Meanwhile, cars keep coming up both directions, checked with greatest determination. Some bunches of youthful car-riders are quite gutsy, taking off afterwards with music blasting and tyres squealing. The check continues.

Up comes a carful of boys. The driver is sober, but the back seat has a whopping four lads on it. So it’s payment time, for the driver.

Meanwhile, a lady has driven down the opposite line intoxicated. She admits to have been drinking right before she grabbed the wheel. Hearing that, the policeman asks: «Were you thinking at all?»

No answer to that. Gloomily, the lady heads for the police vehicle. Her car is parked to the side of the road, by law and order.

Pretty soon a third one is apprehended. The four back-seat-boys are soon released to go home – or wherever. On foot, that is.

After half an hour of police-car experience, the scooter guy exits. Diagnosis was mild intoxication. He says it was only two beers from two afternoon to eight at night. 

«I thought it wasn’t in me anymore, as I was also at the beach and I thought I had sweated it all out,» he explains, adding that he also ought to have been born eight days earlier.

«Had I been born eight days earlier, I would not need a licence to drive this scooter. But now I do and I don’t have it,» moans the young man, mad at himself. «Too bad, I’ll have to push this thing for four kilometres now.»

Four drunk drivers

The policeman, standing near, says those born before January 1^st 1993 need no licence to ride a scooter. This boy being younger than that, he also got a ticket for riding without licence.

«I’ll go home now and down a rum to get over this,» jests the youth, and pushes the bike into motion – hopping on and off just for the fun of it.

So it’s 4 tipsy drivers in 1.5 hours, plus the boys who thought the car had six seats. The policemen say for such a time length and at the very start of the operation, four is quite much and there’s nothing positive about that.  

Afterwards that night the policemen caught three more drunk on driver’s seat.