Making streets more user-friendly for drunks

How is the anti-alcohol lobby going to respond to this? Scientists believe that removing street furniture to allow drunken punters an easy way home could help reduce conflict and violence.

According to a report in the magazine New Scientist, researchers from the University of Cardiff are using computer simulations to mimic the movements of people staggering home after a good night out.

They hope to come up with street designs that direct late-night revellers safely home to their beds instead of onto the path of trouble.

Scientists went out on the streets of Cardiff to get information about drunken behaviour they could feed into their computer model.

As was reported, the team made 24 visits to the city centre between 11pm and 3am on Friday and Saturday nights, breathalysing people and monitoring their gait.

A quarter of the individuals encountered were found to be so drunk they were staggering.

Simulations were then run showing crowds in various states of inebriation trying to pass through a narrow alleyway to three different destinations.

When a fifth of the people were staggering, progress was reduced by 9 percent, while a whole crowd of drunks led to a 38 percent reduction in movement.

The scientists believe their findings are directly linked to the all too common phenomenon of fights breaking out at “chucking out time”.

“Drunks become irritants because they slow people’s progress towards their goal,” said study leader Simon Moore, from the University of Cardiff. “They may then become targets of violence.”

The researchers plan to investigate how moving street obstacles such as benches, bus shelters, bins and monuments, or increasing pedestrianisation might ease congestion around nightspots.