Generally, the more likely you are to get away with an offence, the steeper the penalty. I can't speak for all EU countries, but I get the feeling that traffic

Generally, the more likely you are to get away with an offence, the steeper the penalty. I can't speak for all EU countries, but I get the feeling that traffic enforcement is a lower priority by EU police than US/Canada. Several hypothesized factors for this in EU: more competency-based licensing, more regular technical inspections of vehicles (so fewer missing headlights), more automated enforcement (so fewer in-person controls), less focus on revenue generation by police (again, fewer in-person speed/mechanical controls), and most collisions just being a matter of submitting paperwork to insurance without police involvement. In Ontario Canada, police interaction is mandatory if any injury, >$2k damage or public property damage, so 99% of collisions, which is far different than France at least. So unless you have mobile alcohol checkpoints, even if drink-driving happens at the same rate as elsewhere, you're less likely to be caught in EU. And those that are caught probably did something more significant at the same time to warrant police attention. But sounds like your country, testing 45% of drivers per year, makes up for those several factors I brought up. Doesn't seem to be the norm in my EU experience - I do ~25% of my driving there. 20 year old EU data on this on p. 21 here: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-07/02-alcohol_en.pdf https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021...