OBLIGING us now with more detailed figures on its month-long Christmas and New Year blitz on drink-driving, Lancashire Constabulary discloses that out of more than 32,000 motorists stopped at roadside checkpoints, just five failed breath tests.

This is a startling outcome - whichever way it is looked at.

For, in terms of catching offenders, it signifies a huge waste of police time and resources that might have been employed more beneficially against other crimes - in that this exercise had a "success" rate of just 0.0156 per cent.

But in terms of deterring drink-drive crime and tragedy, it might also be regarded - in line with the force's viewpoint - as a tremendous triumph for the police effort to educate motorists against drinking and driving and risking an accident or being arrested.

We do not doubt the potency of the fear factor, even if there is no firm way of quantifying it, to support the evident conviction of the police that the astonishingly low rate of arrests is proof that they really have got the message across to motorists.

But either way, the other important aspect of this issue which cannot be overlooked - even in the light of the indisputable need for the lethal menace of drink-driving to be prevented - is the worrying intrusion on the liberty of thousands of law-abiding citizens in crackdowns of this magnitude. And, despite allusions by the force of strong public support for this kind of operation, we are concerned that many motorists will have been seriously antagonised by it and against the police if they conclude that they have been harassed or inconvenienced for no good reason when there are plenty of criminals deserving of such zeal.

The police are rightly taking independent soundings on this front.

But it is the fact that - along with our concerns that they may be overstepping the mark in regard to the infringement of individual liberties - this operation can either be regarded as a huge success for deterring drink-driving or a hugely expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut that makes it unsafe for the force to assume it can be wholly justified.

Elsewhere on this page today, the Chief Constable envisages a debate before any future campaign.

There is clearly a need for such discussions - beginning with one in Parliament on the right of the police to pull up innocent people willy-nilly by the thousand, particularly when the value of doing so remains in doubt.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.