Drink-drive checks step up across Portugal from today until 24 August
The Taxa Zero ao Volante campaign runs nationwide from 18 to 24 August. Of every 100 road crash victims autopsied in Portugal in 2025, 28 were over the legal alcohol limit — and 78% of those were at criminal levels.
Driving anywhere this week, expect more checkpoints than usual. Road safety authority ANSR has launched the Taxa Zero ao Volante campaign with the GNR and the PSP, running nationwide until 24 August and aimed squarely at drink-driving.
It is the eighth of eleven campaigns in this year’s National Enforcement Plan. ANSR handles the awareness side; the two police forces put more units on the road, concentrated where serious crashes cluster.
The numbers behind the week
The choice of target is not arbitrary. Of every 100 road crash victims autopsied in Portugal during 2025, 28 had blood alcohol above the legal limit. Of those, 78% were at or above the level where driving stops being an administrative offence and becomes a crime. That is not one glass too many at dinner.
On the enforcement side, roughly 2.1 million breath tests were carried out last year, of which 1.6% came back positive. Alcohol offences account for about 2.4% of all road infractions recorded nationally — a small share that produces a wildly disproportionate share of the deaths.
The wider picture is not encouraging either: Portugal had already recorded 265 road deaths by mid-July.
What they are asking drivers to do
The advice is the same as it always is, and it works. Pick a designated driver before you leave, use public transport, decide how you are getting home before the first drink rather than after the third. The campaign slogan translates as “breathe life, blow zero”, and the reading ANSR wants on the device is 0.0 g/l.
All of this sits inside Visão Zero 2030, Portugal’s national strategy for eliminating road deaths. The three bodies sum it up in one line worth keeping: road casualties are not fate.
Photo: KOMUnews / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
