Hong Kong  - Drunk drivers in Hong Kong are being offered the chance to phone the Automobile Association (AA) and get a tow home for the price of a taxi ride, the rescue service said Wednesday.

The AA has set up a team of vans and drivers to take late-night calls from members, pick them up and then either drive them in their own car or arrange a tow truck to take their car home.

For 64 US dollars, an AA representative will turn up at the pub and drive a member's car home with him or her in it, or, if the member prefers, tow the vehicle home and take the driver in the rescue truck.

For 90 US dollars, the organization will tow a member's car and park it at the AA depot overnight and put the owner in a taxi back home. Charges almost double after midnight.

The service has factored in drivers who are too drunk to remember where they live or do not want a tow truck arriving late at night to alert sleeping partners or neighbours.

"If a member is already quite unconscious - if he can't tell us where he lives or he has perhaps told his wife he is away on business when he's not - then we can drive his car to our depot and park it there overnight," said James Kong, vice president of the Hong Kong AA.

Kong said the service had been introduced as part of a campaign to discourage drink-driving in the high-rise city of 7 million, where only 20 per cent of adults own a car and only one third of those use their car on a daily basis.

"We are not expecting a huge amount of our 12,000 members to take advantage of the service - possible around five a night," Kong said.

The Hong Kong Automobile Association is affiliated with overseas branches of the AA, meaning members from abroad can take advantage of the service when they are in the city.

However, Kong warned that the service would not be of any use to drunks who cannot remember where they parked their cars.

"Unfortunately that's something we really can't do anything about," he said.

Hong Kong has stiffened penalties for drunk drivers after an accident last month in which six men in a taxi were killed in a collision with an allegedly drunk lorry driver. (dpa)