Booze control: Japanese driving school gives motorists a few beers and then tests their skills to highlight the dangers of drink-driving

A Japanese driving school is handing motorists beers and then getting them to navigate a course under the influence of alcohol to highlight the dangers of drink driving.

Video shows one of the willing participants driving round the course with ease while sober.

Yuichiro Kodama, a reporter from the Fukuoka Broadcasting Corporation, one of the local media outlets expressing an interest in the scheme, managed to ease through S-turns and weave between cones on the school’s private course in the initial stages.

But during a 90-minute break, he drank five whiskies with soda and a can of beer, before taking a breathaliser to make sure he was drunk enough.

Video then shows him entering the car visibly intoxicated and proceeding to potter round the course while sat beside an instructor, crashing into poles at the side of the road and running over a cone, at points looking like he is about to doze off.

After successfully completing the first part of the text, reporter Yuichiro Kodama drank five whiskies with soda and a can of beer during a 90-minute break

Video then shows him entering the car visibly intoxicated and proceeding to round the course sat beside an instructor crashing into cones and crashing into poles at the side of the road

He is then shown staggering out of the car to give an update.

Chikushino Driving School has teamed up with the local police in the Fukuoka prefecture to implement the bizarre scheme.

Motorists are required to negotiate a series of tests while sober and then again when over the legal limit.

The limit in Japan is 15 milligrams per 100 millilitres, as compared to 35 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres in the UK.

Hyelim Ha, a reporter with the Mainichi newspaper, also tried her luck on the course, accompanied by Shojiro Kubota, the deputy head of the school.

After consuming a can of beer, a glass of plum liqueur and a shot of the traditional liquor ‘shochu’, Ha had reached double the legal limit.

‘My hands are cold and my heart is beating fast,’ she said, adding that she felt capable of driving.

But Ha had trouble on the circuit, continuing to accelerate and slow down intermittently on a straight section of road with no cones.

Kodama appeared close to falling asleep at times after his 90-minute boozy break 

While she finished the slalom section with no issues, Kubota gave Ha a word of warning as she approached the S-turns.’You were entering the curve at a faster speed than before drinking,’ he said. ‘You also turned too widely and the vehicle strayed into the opposite lane.

‘Even though it slows the skills people need for driving, such as cognitive capacity and judgment, the driver assumes they are driving safely – and that is the danger of drunken driving’

The police are trying to raise awareness of drink-driving through the campaign, seven years after a crash killed three children.

Akio Ogami had been driving his car across a bridge over Hakata Bay a car driven by city government worker Futoshi Imabayashi slammed into it from behind.The vehicle fell nearly 50 feet off the bridge and into the bay before it swiftly sank.

Imabayashi was handed a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty of causing the deaths of the three children, who were aged one, three and four, while driving under the influence of alcohol.