WITH longer evenings and the barbecue season in full flow, Somerset County Council’s Road Safety Team is backing a new app which raises awareness of ‘morning after’ drink driving.

The free app, called the ‘Morning After Calculator’, works out approximately how long it takes for alcohol to pass through your body and is designed to help stop people unknowingly drink driving the following day.

So if you’ve enjoyed a few beers or a glass of wine with your summer barbecue, you can enter how many drinks you’ve consumed and the app will calculate roughly when you are likely to be alcohol free again.

Cllr David Hall, Somerset County Council’s Cabinet Member with responsibility for Road Safety, said: “Let’s make one thing absolutely clear – this app is not intended to help people work out how much they can drink on a night out before driving home. And it won’t help if you are arrested for drink driving.

“If you are drinking any amount of alcohol on a night out – even one drink – you should leave the car at home and make alternative arrangements.

“What this app will do is calculate roughly how long alcohol stays in the body, which is useful to remind us all just how long it takes to return to normal following a heavy night.”

The app allows one hour for each unit of alcohol, plus an additional hour for the alcohol to enter the bloodstream, and then rounds up the calculation to the nearest half hour.

The calculation is not based on any drink drive limit – it is the length of time when the alcohol in the drinks the person has consumed is likely to have passed through their body.

You can download the app for free via the Morning After campaign website and from the Google Play store and iTunes.