How long after drinking can I drive?
3rd Jun, 2024
Right off the bat, we should start by saying that if you’re planning on driving, then by far the safest course of action is not to have any drinks at all. That said, technically it is legal to drive after drinking. However, you must ensure you’re under the legal limit. In England, Wales and Northern Island, that’s:
- 80 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood
- 35 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath
- 107 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of urine
You might be wondering how many drinks this equates to, and the truth is, it’s different for everyone, and it depends on what you’re drinking. The consequences for being found driving over the legal limit are pretty severe; you can face time in prison, get banned from driving for a year and face a pretty hefty fine. So if you’re ever in doubt about what’s considered ‘too much,’ then it bears repeating: it’s always safest to avoid drinking if you know how to drive somewhere.
Still, if you plan to drive, you need to wait an appropriate amount of time after having your last drink to hit the road – but how long is that exactly? Let’s take a look.
How long do you need to wait?
Much like how there is no set amount of drinks to match the legal limit, there’s no set amount of time to wait before driving again. These sorts of situations depend on certain factors, like what you’ve been drinking and how much you have had, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. That and the effects of alcohol vary from person to person.
According to the DVLA, it takes around two hours for a pint of lager to work its way out of your system, and if you’re having a large glass of wine, that could still be in your system four hours later! It might sound dramatic, but even a small amount of alcohol can impede your driving and reaction times. So, really, even if you feel fine, the chances are that you’re over the legal limit, so it’s best to avoid driving for your safety, pedestrians and the safety of other drivers.
Different rules apply to different countries
It’s also worth bearing in mind that what may be legal in one country could be very illegal in another, and while to a certain degree this may seem obvious, but even our close neighbours like Scotland have different drinking laws than we do here. They are as follows:
- 50 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood
- 22 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath
- 67 milligrammes in 100 millilitres of urine
As you can see, these are vastly different from the legal limits we have here in England, Wales and Ireland. If you know you’re planning to travel abroad, it’s always wise to check the legal driving limits of any different country you choose to travel to if you’re planning on driving whilst you are there. Some countries do not tolerate drinking and driving in any capacity like Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh and Brazil (just to name a few). The last thing you want to do is end up in trouble far from home. So when it doubt – leave the drink out!
Now, let’s be honest, you probably don’t need us to go into too much detail about exactly why drinking and driving is bad – which means that your car is probably not going to reach the end of its life in a drink-driving situation. It’s far more likely that it’ll eventually putter to a stop instead – and that’s exactly where we come in here at Scrap Car Network. We have a long history of helping our customers get the very best price on their old vehicles – so if you want the most cash for your car, you’re in exactly the right place.
We like to keep things nice and easy, so all you need to do is enter your car reg and postcode into the fields on our site, and we’ll get you an instant online quote before you can say cash for cars! Find out what your car is worth today!
