When it comes to stupid ideas, I used to think that drinking alcohol and then getting into a car was one of the stupidest. To my mind, it was up there with riding on a rollercoaster without a safety bar, jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute or eating at KFC every day of the week and not expecting to get fat. Dumb. Just dumb.

Now I've lived in Bermuda for a while, though, I know better. Drinking and driving isn't really that dangerous. If it was, we wouldn't have turned it into a national pastime.

I think it's great that Bermuda's found a way to differentiate itself from more uptight countries such as the US, the UK and Canada. There, people follow their favourite teams in the sports section of the newspapers. Here people follow the drunken antics of their friends, family and local celebrities in the 'Around the Courts' section.

The only thing that's missing is a national drunk driving championship. I'm amazed there isn't one already. We could get a bunch of competitors, give them each a crate of Elephant, and then see who could drive furthest from Front Street without having a crash. Local companies could sponsor the cars. Bacardi and Goslings could provide alternative intoxicants. Competitors would flock to the Island from abroad. We could even turn it into the third pillar of our economy, lest the tourists and international businesses be scared off by the number of inebriated drivers on our roads.

"It's not like we have superhighways here," said one confident, would-be competitor recently on A Limey In Bermuda. "It's pretty easy to navigate our roads even after a couple of drinks ... If you can start up your car and put it into gear, then you can get home safely."

Such an idea would never work in a country like the UK. There, everyone's been brainwashed by decades of anti-drink-driving ads, turned into a bunch of overanxious obsessives by watching one too many reconstructions of drink-fuelled accidents where grim-faced paramedics scrape the remains of the hapless victims off the asphalt. Most are terrified to have even one drink if they're going to drive, convinced that doing so will inevitably lead to the bloody death of a wide-eyed innocent or worse, themselves.

That's not to say that the UK's drunk driving laws differ much from ours. They don't. We both have a limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. We're just more relaxed about it.

The British anti-drink-driving campaigns try to scare you into complete abstinence. They're more frightening than a showing of "The Ring" in a haunted castle on Halloween. They warn that calculating how much you can drink to stay under the legal alcohol limit isn't a precise science, that it depends on your sex, weight, age, metabolism, stress levels, whether you have an empty stomach, and the amount and type of alcohol you've drunk. "The only safe option is not to drink if you plan to drive," warns one leaflet.

In contrast, here we're much less neurotic. We understand that people need to use their cars after they've been drinking. For example, how's a guy to impress a girl he's just picked up at Robin Hood if he has to take her back to his place on the bus? And what if you can't get a taxi because you've had so much to drink that you look like you're about to throw up? It's times like that that you need your car.

It's easy for outsiders to assume that this means Bermuda has a cavalier attitude to drinking and driving. But that's not the case at all. Clearly we can just handle our alcohol better and we're more aware of our limits.

I wouldn't dream of getting into a car after spending the night getting hammered down Docksiders without asking myself a few questions first.

I know that I can have 43 Coronas before I'm in danger of passing out. Have I drunk more than that? If not, I know I don't have to worry about falling asleep at the wheel.

Second, I check whether I'm still able to judge speed and distance accurately by making sure I can get my car key in the door lock without breaking it or scratching the paintwork too much. If I can, I can be confident that those abilities aren't impaired. (Mind you, with all the scratches around the lock now it's getting difficult to tell.)

Third, I make sure I'm not driving too far. It would be reckless to drive all the way from St. George's to Dockyard after I've been drinking. As long as I'm only going from Hamilton to St. George's, that's fine.

We don't have a problem with drink-driving. We're not too permissive, it's those other countries that are too uptight. We should celebrate our pragmatic, laid-back approach preferably with another shot of rum.

One more for the road, bartender!