LAST summer a young British father was thrown out of a taxi in Budapest for spilling his takeaway. Disorientated, Sam Clancy stepped into a busy road on the banks of the Danube. The 24-year-old was hit by two cars and killed. A friend he had shared the taxi with only noticed he was missing a day later.

Mr Clancy, another friend told an English coroner court weeks later, had been “nine out of ten drunk”. He had been drinking lager, Sambuca and Jager Bomb.

This was a tragic, stupid accident. So concluded the coroner. “Young lads are going to drink on a stag do and ultimately this is a very tragic case,” said Michael Salt. “But one word of caution I would like to issue is that people should be more aware of excessive alcohol consumption during stag and hen weekends.”

He summed up: “I don’t want to be a party pooper but being more aware of your intake could prevent such horrific tragedies.”

Some of Europe’s biggest cities have long warned of just how bad stag dos are for them. But wild weekends are turning out to be even worse for the stags themselves.

Men are drinking so much – in unfamiliar circumstances – that they are making themselves very vulnerable. Repeated warnings from authorities overseas about the reckless conduct of British stags have gone unheeded.

A week ago Liam Colgan from Inverness, vanished in Hamburg. The 29-year-old was on a stag trip with his brother, who is was supposed to be getting married in two weeks.

Police in the German port are still looking for Mr Colgan after reports of a “confused” man who told people he was Scottish.

He was last seen at Hamborger Veermaster Bar at 1.30am last Saturday – a stone’s thrown from the hostel where he was staying with his brother Eamonn, a police officer.

Police are worried. Last week they said: “We came to the conclusion that, even though this is a 29-year-old male, he was highly alcoholised in a city he doesn’t know, possibly without orientation.” Their main concern was that there was “a threat to his life and wellbeing” given how cold Hamburg is in February.

Some men go missing on stag-dos only to materialise later but there is not always a happy ending.

Back in 2016 a Scot, William Higgins, 54, was found dead in a canal in Wroclaw, Poland. That same year, Shaun Ennis, died after his heart gave out after taking cocaine on a stag do in the Majorcan resort of Magaluf. Another Englishman, Karl Law, was also found dead in another river, in Prague, in 2013. He had been drinking and taking cocaine.

Drug overdoses, drunken accidents, murders. There has been a tragic succession of fatalities for stags and their friends over the last two decades in Europe.

Dangers – and not just of death – include buying sex. A survey way back in 2012 found a third of men cheated on their partners while on a stag trip. The result? Often broken relationships and a sexually transmitted disease. Another survey four years later found a fifth of men admitted to having drunk a month’s recommended dose of alcohol in a single stag weekend. Judgments are impaired.

Back in 2014 a Briton, Paul Bush, was found dead in the stairwell of a Budapest brothel, his trousers around his ankles and his neck snapped. A coroner later declared an open verdict.

That same year a young British man – alive – was found tied naked to a post in Benidorm, the Spanish resort and original stag and hen destination.

The minor incident, in an area called Little England, was to spark a debate that underlines the ambiguous attitude of so many European cities to British stag dos. The industry generates some £500 million a year. It also has huge social costs.

The naked man made the front page of Benidorm’s Informacion. Locals complained about stags carrying out sex acts on inflatable dolls during the day. We must end with this industry of “drunken ‘everything goes’ parties, said one politician.

Three years later the news from Little England was most serious. A Scottish woman, Kirsty Maxwell, plunged 100ft to her death from a Benidorm high rise. She had been on her own hen party.

A lawyer hired by her family says she was fleeing a sex attack which had begun to materialise after she found herself in the wrong flat.

Men who were in the flat deny any wrongdoing and one of them said Ms Maxwell was “mad, drunk or drugged”.

Authorities and businesses across the Continent are right now bracing themselves for the peak stag and hen trip seasons, just ahead of the spring and summer weddings.

Stag trip tragedies can affect men who would never normally drink wildly, consume drugs or take other risks. The Foreign Office has even issued specific warnings: “Stag and hen parties can be great fun and a time for celebration, but travellers are more likely to take risks and get into trouble abroad if they have been drinking heavily,” it said.

The man knocked over in Budapest, Mr Clancy, left a young daughter. His partner, Rebecca Sweeney, said he had been a “family man”. She said: “I just hope in future more people will familiarise themselves with their surroundings in foreign countries and maybe be a bit more careful with how much they drink.

“You can’t tell somebody on a stag do not to drink, but being more sensible could prevent somebody experiencing the heartache I have.”