AUTUMN semesters are getting under way across Scotland, but while freshers’ weeks may be over, that doesn’t mean the student drinking is done. They will continue. And a newly established charity has been visiting freshers’ fairs, warning that a hangover or embarrassing memory are not the worst that can happen on a drunken night out. Each year, some young people, not all of them students, never make it home at all.

“Keys. Money. Phone. Do you have a plan? Don’t let a fun night out turn into a nightmare,” says the poster for Get Home Safe, which this year ran its first campaign at universities across Scotland. Too many young people, according to the charity, are not making it home safe. More specifically, too many young men are dying from accidents or misadventures on alcohol or drug-fuelled nights out.

For Ross Paterson, the son of Sharon and Gerry Paterson who have set up the charity, a pub evening out did turn into a tragic nightmare. The 23-year-old was killed when he was hit by a taxi while walking home across a viaduct bridge in his home town of Taunton. The grief-stricken Patersons have now moved back to Glasgow, where they have close family, and want to reach out to young Scots in the hope of preventing such tragic accidents.

At Heriot-Watt freshers’ fair two weeks ago, the stall of new charity Get Home Safe prompted plenty of booze-addled stories, many of them from students who had already done three or four days of drinking “on the trot”. One fresher pointed to a love bite on his neck: “I woke up in bed with some guy and I didn’t know where I was. It turned out I was over at Napier. Last thing I remember was that I was with this guy in the union and then next thing I knew I was in this house and in this different guy’s bed. It’s weird because that’s never happened to me before. I certainly wasn’t expecting to do it on day two. I think I just drank too much.”

Many students knew of tragic stories. One fresher told me that a friend from his home town had died after falling into Portsmouth harbour on a night out. Another reported that in Cambridge, where he lived in recent weeks, several people had drowned in the Cam.

Some recalled the story of David O’Halloran, a Stirling University student who was found dead in a field after a night out, with traces of drugs in his blood. (His mother believes his drink was spiked.)

These tales are depressingly familiar, and not all of them involve students. A night out that ends in tragedy for a young person is the stuff of too many news stories. There was 17-year-old Thomas Brown, whose body was pulled from the River Leven in 2013. Dean Geary, who was last seen on CCTV in Glasgow’s George Square in February 2010 and was found dead on a country road 20 miles away. Craig McCaffrey, who was found dead in the River Clyde in 2012 after a Halloween party with friends. Ali Bunney, who on a

cold night walked home swaying from a club in Cheltenham and was found unconscious in just a short-sleeved shirt the next day. He died of hypothermia.

“There are so many possible dangers on a night out,” Sharon Paterson pointed out. “Where there are canals and rivers, and there have been a lot of problems with drowning. Ironically, Ross had just stopped walking along the canal in Taunton, because we had asked him to. He had only just changed the route he walked a couple of months before.

“We’re not going to stop the drinking,” she added. “But we can make young people more aware. And we can make sure they’re cared for. For instance we have been involved with the street pastors, people who will walk somebody home, all the way to their door.”

Paterson worries for these young people. “You worry as a parent. Especially when they’re coming to university and getting drinks thrown at them in freshers’ weeks. At this age they feel indestructible. They feel, ‘We don’t really need to worry about things like that.’ When you look at other countries they don’t drink like this. It frightens me.”

Alcohol education charity Drinkaware has studied drinking culture among young adults and found that six in 10 people aged 18-24 say they drink with the intention of getting drunk at least occasionally. A report on student drinking published in the BMJ earlier this year found that 65 per cent of men and 67 per cent of women were drinking to hazardous levels. In 2012 research by Leeds Institute of Health Sciences found that in UK universities 58 per cent were consuming weekly alcohol levels that were hazardous, and nearly 70 per cent were having occasional binge drinking sessions.

Paterson recalled the night that her son Ross, who was living at home with them, did not come back. She couldn’t get to sleep that night and when he still wasn’t back at 5am, she woke her husband Gerry, who said he had probably gone back to a friend’s house. An hour later, the doorbell rang. Gerry suggested maybe Ross had forgotten his keys. But a policeman was at the door. Ross had been hit by a car and killed almost instantly.

Get Home Safe is pitched at both genders, but the Patersons are keen to get the message out to young men. “A lot of lads have this bravado,” said Paterson. “They think they’re indestructible. Girls are more aware.”

The charity is not about stopping people drinking, though that is part of their awareness message. “We’re not saying don’t go out and have a good time. Do that. But be careful. Make sure you don’t wander off by yourself, that you’ve got money for a taxi, that your friends know where you are.”