Over on Caboodle.hu there is a chilling story today about a new proposal by the Hungarian national police to stiffen up the country’s already draconian drunk-driving laws. While we’re a little hazy on the planned new regulations (if the current law already involves “zero-tolerance,” how do you make it tougher?) one thing is clear: it’s going to make some people in the country’s wine industry as mad as a mother against drunk driving.
Even before the new, tougher regulations were proposed, the head of a group representing some wine regions said the existing ban on tippling and driving was working to cripple the country’s bor industry. According to Csaba Horváth, the head of something called the National Council of Hill Municipalities, the daily work of winemakers is being made “impossible” due to the zero tolerance rule, as they cannot even taste their wines while at work, assuming they are driving to and from “the office.”
What Horváth instead proposes is that Hungary should follow the example of other countries in the EU, and have a more generous blood-alcohol limit for wine regions, telling Gazdasági Rádió that “usually it is not those who consume a minimal amount of wine who endanger the safety of traffic.”
While it’s hard to imagine giving people in the wine business a special dispensation from whatever drunk-driving laws the country settles on, it’s equally hard not to feel like Horváth and the people he represents are getting a bum rap. Can we really expect people who make wine for a living not to even have a little taste while making it? And it seems especially harsh to force members of the Council of Hill Communities to walk or bicycle to and from work, as they are working in hilly municipalities, and, well, drunk.
