Carnage is avoided and all is well with the world. Common sense has prevailed and safety has emerged paramount.

I read somewhere last week that a village had to cancel its traditional, annual duck race because the organisers could not guarantee the safety of the crowds who would attend.

It would have cost them £2,000 to insure against injury and as it was a charity event, that would far exceed any profit.

Another English tradition lost. Can you imagine a gentler pastime than cheering on your chosen plastic duck - odds as good as ten to one if it was a sleek racing duck - as it bobs gently down the village stream to the finishing line?

But no, it was feared someone might get too boisterous and drown in the murky waters. No thought about injury to the ducks, though. Where's the RSPCD when you need it?

No institution is safe from the health & safety squad. It was comforting to hear that North Yorkshire Police are to be subjected to random drugs and alcohol testing. Nice to know that after a night at the policeman's ball they will not be on traffic duty while high on a line of cocaine confiscated from the local drugs baron.

I've experienced an industry where random testing was the norm. British Rail. I had a spell as head of the press office and, after the railways had suffered a series of high-profile safety breaches, they decided to introduce a zero drugs and alcohol policy for all staff and contractors. That meant absolutely not one gram of alcohol in your system, let alone enough to fail a roadside breath test.

If someone suspected you'd had a drink, they could tip off the drugs and alcohol flying squad.

It is a good policy for safety critical staff like drivers, conductors and track workers. Some office workers felt it was a bit harsh when you could only be charged with being drunk in charge of a Biro.

The policy was absolute, no exceptions. So when one faithful BR servant was retiring after decades in the job, he went out with friends at lunchtime on his last day and had a half-pint before returning to the office for his presentation. He was breathalysed and sacked with loss of pension. Only an outcry in the national press saved him when bosses relented.

A Railtrack recruit turned up for work on his first day, within an hour was breathalysed and was sacked on the spot because he had been out drinking the night before.

But it was the medical before you were offered the job which proved how deadly serious they were. After the usual examination, you were told to strip, provided with a flimsy gown, handed a bottle and sent behind a curtain to provide a urine sample. All the time a nurse is hovering beyond the curtain. A thermometer was immediately dipped into your specimen to ensure it was at body temperature and was not a non-drinking, non-druggie friend's urine you had smuggled in from the night before.

How odd then that some of the other tests were less rigid. You had to look at pretty pictures and make out designs to prove you were not colour blind so you did not drive your train through a red light (I never had any intention of driving a train, by the way).

And the hearing test - which was presumably designed to keep you from being splatted by a 125mph express as you worked on the track - was nothing like so sophisticated. It consisted of a doctor-type standing behind you and whispering numbers in your ear.

I once got the last train home to Selby after a colleague's leaving party and found about 20 stranded passengers whose connection to Hull had not turned up. The station was unmanned and they were desperate. After drinking I should have ignored them. Instead I phoned the railway control room and organised a bus to get them back home. It was a sackable offence, but I thought I had got away with it.

Two days later the director, who had also been at the party, called me to his office and asked why I got involved after alcohol. I was saved only by the fact that he had received two letters from grateful passengers thanking "the press officer who stepped in and helped".

There's rules and there's rules.