Drunkenness on the train
From Max Schuler
Thursday, November 5th, 2020 at 6:47 pm
Freiburg
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He is said to have driven a Breisgau S-Bahn from Denzlingen to Freiburg: Because a passenger on the platform noticed that a train driver smelled of alcohol, he called the federal police.
The federal police picked up a drunken train driver at Freiburg main station last Saturday evening. The officials found three per thousand in the man in a subsequent alcohol test. The train driver is said to have previously driven a train from Denzlingen to Freiburg, as an eyewitness to the BZ reported. The operating company Südwestdeutsche Landesverkehrs-AG (SWEG) confirmed the incident, but did not want to comment on the exact circumstances.
A passenger noticed the driver’s breath on the platform
Dominik Häringer from Denzlingen was waiting for his train on platform five that evening. He wanted to go back home after a visit to a Freiburg gym. After the SWEG train came to a standstill on the platform at around 7.30 p.m., the engine driver got out and walked towards him. “He smelled very strongly of alcohol, I noticed that straight away,” said Häringer. The train driver asked the Denzlinger if he had a knife with him. “Apparently the door to his driver’s cab slammed and he couldn’t get the keys,” suspects Häringer. Then the train driver ran down the stairs towards the station building.
After this incident, Häringer no longer wanted to get in – he was worried and reportedly notified the police. This picked up the engine driver on his return to the platform and checked the alcohol content in his breath. Result: three per thousand. The man was taken to the police station to have blood drawn. The Denzlinger Häringer estimates that there were between 50 and 60 passengers on the train that the drunken driver drove. “I didn’t mean to harm the man,” says Häringer in conclusion. “But three per mille is already heavy.”
The federal police confirmed the incident: “I have been working for the federal police for 15 years, but I am not aware of any case in which a train driver was so drunk,” says the press spokeswoman for the federal police in Weil am Rhein, Katharina Keßler. The police are investigating drunkenness in traffic and dangerous interference with rail traffic. Meanwhile, the public prosecutor’s office in Freiburg is involved.
The SWEG does not want to comment on the incident
The local press spokesman Michael Mächtel has not yet been able to comment on the specific case – but on a possible sentence. The decisive factor is whether the train driver was just drunk or whether he intervened dangerously in rail traffic, for example by ignoring a signal. If he was just drunk, he could get away with a fine. If he has endangered his passengers or rail traffic, he faces a prison sentence of between six months and ten years.
“We support the authorities in investigating the case and are reviewing our internal control system in order to rule out such an incident in the future,” says the press spokesman for SWEG, Christoph Meichsner. What exactly this control system looks like and what official consequences the driver has to bear, the company did not want to disclose despite the request. For the company’s train drivers, there is a clear rule when it comes to alcohol content in the workplace: zero per mille.
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