AS an American who has been over here for several months, I am interested by the attitude of both the public and the authorities towards drinking and driving.

In the USA, there are many cities where the police departments pay the cab fare for the journey home on New Year's Eve between the hours of 11pm-3am so that people can go out and have a good time and not endanger themselves and others by driving home drunk.

The police consider this a cost effective and valuable way of reducing deaths and injuries and leaves them able to concentrate on the lesser amount of vehicles on the road and other crimes which can increase due to everyone being out partying.

Perhaps readers and the Home Secretary will know if this has ever been considered in the UK. And if not, perhaps it should be.

TERI JENNINGS, Delph Road, Great Harwood.

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