A community safety team will be out on the streets this weekend (Friday 11 and Saturday 12 December 2015) to promote alcohol awareness, the dangers of drink driving and getting home safely after a night out.
The Safer Harrogate District Community Safety Partnership and other agencies will be setting up opposite the Cenotaph on Cambridge Road from 6pm until late on Friday to raise people’s awareness of how many units they are drinking and how to avoid drink driving.
The team will be ‘challenging’ passers-by to guess how many units they think are in popular drinks and explaining the dangers of drinking and driving as part of the local Road Safety Christmas Campaign.
Town centre pubs, clubs and bars will be promoting the importance of people ensuring they have a great Christmas night out but that they also know how to ‘Get Home Safely’.
And a roaming ‘digivan’ will be driving through the town centre throughout the night showing films to reinforce the safety messages to the public.
The safety team will be back opposite the Cenotaph from 10am on the Saturday morning (12 December) to ensure people stay safe the morning after as well as the night before.
The team will be looking for volunteers to take a breathalyser test to give them an idea of how long alcohol stays in the body – and how driving home might still be a bad idea.
Councillor Mike Chambers is Harrogate Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Safer Communities. He said:
Our aim is firmly to make sure that members of the public have a great time in our town centres, but don’t have so much alcohol that their evening out is ruined. We want to highlight the dangers in an informal, but informative way.
“We want people to be aware of how too much alcohol can affect them both during and after a night out, so that hopefully they won’t drink and drive – which could bring misery to themselves and others and make it a Christmas to remember for all the wrong reasons.
The digivan will also be out and about in Harrogate town centre on Friday 18 December and in Ripon and Knaresborough on Saturday 19 December.
