Nothing goes hand in hand worse than booze and driving. Everyone knows that, even idiots. So at 9:00am this morning, when the first ever motorway pub opened it was met with an all round stunned silence. It had been in the news for a few months but I don’t think anyone really believed it would get the all clear.
Wetherspoons, purveyors of cheap booze and greasy meals for centuries have, in their infinite wisdom, opened a boozer just off junction 2 of the M40 near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.
The Hope & Champion will be serving from 9:00am to catch the rush hour traffic which is handy.
The RAC (and everyone else with a brain) is confused as to how this has happened. An RAC survey of 2000 people registered just 12% support for motorway pubs, which if anything is surprisingly high.
Brake, the road safety charity is literally spun out by the decision but what can they do?
Now, I’m no fan of the Nanny State, people should be able to do what they like as long as they don’t hurt other people, but this is a push too far. There’s thousands of alcoholics in the country who certainly don’t need any more temptation, and there’s thousands more muppets that genuinely can’t be trusted to make good decisions in relation to booze. Yeah, we have a legal limit to drive, but just one pint in your brain, travelling at 70mph will still make a difference. Especially if you’re already a bit of a mong.
Whether you think people should be able to make their own decisions or not, why don’t we turn the argument on its head: what are the positives of motorway boozers? – none, unless you’re counting Wetherspoons’ buckets of cash of an evening.
I guess if you’re a bored passenger, a halfway pint would be nice, but then you’ll just be falling asleep in the car and desperate for a wee. That’s no fun.
Wetherspoons said “we expect drivers to act responsibly…” well, we all hope they will. But that doesn’t work. There were 1,120 drink driving accidents in the UK last year and 290 fatalities. A pub won’t help those stats one jot.
So, if you fancy increasing your chances of picking up a Darwin Award by crossing the central reservation at speed, you know where to go.
