A GRAPHIC illustration of a car wreck is to be featured on the back of fire engines and on posters around the county in a bid to cut drink-driving.

The campaign entitled 'Don't Get Smashed Tonight' is being launched by the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety (LPfRS) ahead of the festive season.

It will start today and continue through Christmas and the New Year until January 4, 2005.

Police throughout the county will be on heightened alert for suspected drink drivers not only in the evening but during the morning rush to work.

This year younger drivers will come under particular scrutiny because figures from 2003 showed that of 216 drivers charged with drink driving offences in Lancashire, 78 of them were aged between 17 and 25 years old and most of these were men.

The same figures recorded 96 deaths and/or serious injuries in drink drive related crashes.

Linda Sanderson, communications manager for the LPfRS, said: "In Lancashire the biggest offenders for drink driving are young males.

"Young men tend to have a lot of confidence in their driving abilities. Even though someone may feel that they are okay to drive, they may still be well over the legal alcohol limit and no amount of cups of coffee, cold showers or other sobering up techniques will rid the body of alcohol any faster.

"There is no failsafe guide as to how much you can drink and stay under the limit. Any amount of alcohol can affect your judgement. By how much depends on all sorts of things such as circumstance, weight, food intake and metabolism.

"If you are going to drive, don't drink a drop."

The legal limit in the UK is 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. At twice that limit statistics show people are at least 50 times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident, with one in seven of all road deaths involving drink drivers.