At least 10 people decided to get behind the wheel of their car while heavily intoxicated in the past three months.
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The spike in high-range drink driving offences during the coronavirus pandemic had 10 people charged with being above 0.15, and 56 people in total charged with driving while under the influence of alcohol across Northern Tasmania.
Northern Police Commander Brett Smith said it was time for people to wake up and realise their actions affected others, with the figures only revealing the ones who got caught.
"Whilst drinking at home is your business, you are making it everyone else's business when you hop behind the wheel of a car," he said.
"It makes absolutely no sense that people are still doing it when we have been banging on about drink driving for years and years, it just shows a disregard for their own safety, and the safety of other people."
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Of those 56 charged, 30 were in Launceston, two were caught in the St Helens area, 11 in the North-East police division and 13 in the Deloraine area.
Police nabbed more men than women, and 21 of the 56 drivers were aged 31 to 40.
The 10 people charged with high-range drink driving were caught in Launceston, Deloraine and in the North-East region.
Five blew between 0.15 and 0.20, and three drivers blew between 0.20 and 0.25.
In what police described as "very high readings", two drivers were caught and found to be between five and six times over the legal limit.
One of those drivers was a Trevallyn man, who allegedly crashed into a parked car on Bain Terrace while driving drunk last month.
The man blew 0.325 after members of the public took his keys and called the police.
A few weeks earlier, A Riverside man was caught after allegedly crashing into a parked car at Kings Meadows while nearly five times over the legal limit - blowing 0.233.
Launceston Inspector Ruth Orr, who is the Officer In Charge of Northern District Support Services, and is responsible for Road and Public Order Safety, said the issue of drink driving remained a priority for police.
"Drink driving is one of the fatal five factors in terms of contributing to fatal or serious road crashes," she said.
"Alcohol affects judgment and physical skills, which are both essential for drivers to keep themselves and others safe on our roads."
RISK TO ROAD USERS
Road Safety Advisory Council chairman Garry Bailey said while the state's testing numbers showed the majority of Tasmanians understood the risks of drink driving, a "selfish, ignorant" minority remained.
"These people are weighing up the risk of whether they will get caught or not, they know they are over the limit and yet they roll the dice and continue to drive," he said.
"The risk they should be weighing up is the risk of death or serious injury, not only to themselves but to others.
"We see the consequences of drink driving in our death and serious injury numbers every year, and alcohol and drug use has been a consistent theme in many coroner's reports into deaths on our roads."
One of the coronial reports referred to by Mr Bailey was released just last month.
Coroner Andrew McKee released his findings into the death of a 31-year-old East Devonport man, who died after crashing his car in the middle of the night last year.
He had a blood alcohol reading of 0.261 when he died, and had been speeding while not wearing a seatbelt, and without his headlights on.
As part of his findings, the coroner referred to a toxicology report that stated "it has been estimated that the relative risk of a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.180 g/100ml being involved in a crash is approximately 50 times that of a driver with nil blood alcohol".
The Road Safety Advisory Council's latest road safety strategy, Toward Zero Action Plan 2020-2024, revealed 175 people would be killed on Tasmanian roads over the next five years if nothing changed.
But if the state managed to match the national road safety performance, 66 lives would be saved.
So far this year, 17 people were killed on Tasmanian roads, and 130 people were seriously injured.
TESTING FIGURES
In the last financial year, nearly 2000 Tasmanians were caught drink driving, with more than 438,000 random breath tests conducted across the state.
Of those drivers caught, 213 crashed their cars, 82 were pulled over due to their manner of driving, 873 were nabbed during targeted patrols, and 380 were charged after stopping at a random breath testing site.
While Tasmania Police was still developing its COVID-safe plan to bring back static RBT sites, most drink drivers in the North were caught during mobile patrols.
During 2018-19, 221 Northern Tasmanians were charged after being pulled over by officers doing targeted patrols, and 71 were stopped at a dedicated site.
In that same period, there were 31,226 "high-risk traffic offenders" recorded on Tasmanian roads.
Police pulled over 117 people statewide for other offences, only to charge them with drink driving as well.
REPEAT OFFENDERS
In 2017, an issues paper was released by the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute responding to the problem of recidivist drink driving in the state.
"Most of the time, people caught at these kind of high-range levels generally have a whole lot of other issues, including issues with alcohol," Commander Smith said.
"These people would have families, they would have friends, so what are they doing to try and curb their behaviour? By not saying anything, family members and friends carry some of the moral blame.
"Let's get everyone involved in this and start looking out for people."
The issues paper found the majority of drink drivers in Tasmania were men, nearly 85 per cent had a history of alcohol abuse, and 70 per cent of repeat drink drivers were unlicenced or disqualified.
More recent data from the Sentencing Advisory Council revealed nearly 50 per cent of drink driving cases before the Magistrates Court of Tasmania within the past five years resulted in a fine.
About 30 per cent of those drivers who fronted court were handed a prison sentence, but that sentence was fully suspended.