All Black great Dan Carter has apologised on Facebook this afternoon for being caught driving drunk in Paris, but police say it’s too little too late, as children from Reinga to Bluff are engaging in what they’re calling an “outbreak” of drink driving.

“All across the country, it really is out of control,” said Police Commissioner Mike Bush, at a hastily arranged press conference this afternoon. “There are a lot of children in this country who look up to Dan Carter, who have posters of Dan Carter on their walls – boys and girls, actually – and they’ve really taken a strong message from this.”

320 arrests have been made already, with kids ranging from ages 19 down to just 3 years old getting behind the wheel while shitfaced drunk.

“You can’t blame them, really,” said Bush. “They’re just doing what they’ve seen their role models do on television.”

Even adults were copying Dan Carter, apparently no longer feeling any shame for their actions.

“Ah, I’m not that ashamed,” slurred one driver about to turn onto Auckland’s Southern Motorway this afternoon. “Fuckin’ Dan Carter’s done it, and he’s a fuckin’… what are we talking about?”

While most children are being let off with a warning, the situation has become so dire that Bush says police may have to start pressing charges of driving while blasted off your tits.

“That’s not a DUI,” he noted. “That’s a very serious charge.”

The issue has become so serious – with countless cars careening off the road and into fences, light poles, houses, and other obstacles – that even Labour Party leader Andrew Little has weighed in on the chaos, blaming the Government for not keeping a tight enough control on current and former All Blacks.

“What is going on, when in the space of less than six months, we have All Black having sex in a toilet, and then All Black goes and drives drunk?” he wrote in a statement this morning. “All I know is that this All Black is totally out of control and I’ve heard nothing from the Minister about it.”

Carter posted his apology early afternoon New Zealand Time – after the children’s drink driving epidemic had already begun – but it has made no discernable difference in the number of arrests.

Police believe the lack of improvement after Carter’s apology may have to do with the sentence where he wrote “Done this lots, never got caught, oh well, guess I’ll take back streets next time.”