It’s holiday time, there’s no need to be afraid. Well, there is if you intend to be on the roads or sidewalks.
Tis the season for holiday parties and people needing to get home from those parties and new survey from public opinion research firm Liaison Strategies highlights the unsettling reality during the yuletide season. But while the results are worrisome, we are moving in the right direction.
Participants were asked “During the holidays, how often do people in your community drive after drinking or using drugs compared to the rest of the year? Twenty-nine per cent said “a lot more,” 33 per cent said “a bit more” and 25 per cent said “about the same.” That’s a whopping 62 per cent increase.
Respondents were asked, “When attending holiday gatherings, how do you decide whether you are okay to drive?”
- “I count drinks” – 19 per cent
- “I go by how I feel” – 23 per cent
- “I wait a bit and assume I am fine” – 20 per cent
- “I do not drive after drinking” – 17 per cent
- “Other” – 20 per cent
Incredible.
How people decide whether to drive after drinking breaks down along age demographics with drivers under 50 most likely to “go by how I feel” and drivers over 50 most likely to not drive.
What is it about alcohol that gives imbibers a sense of invulnerability? Imagine substituting a different verb.
Respondents were asked, “When attending holiday gatherings, how do you decide whether you are okay to engage in a knife fight?”
- “I count knives” – 19 per cent
- “I go by how the knives feel” – 23 per cent
- “I wait a bit and assume I am fine to engage in knife fighting” – 20 per cent
- “I do not knife fight after drinking” – 17 per cent
- “Other” – 20 per cent
Imagine, if you will, the “other” ways Canadians decide whether they are sober enough to drive.
“When you were asked how, when attending holiday gatherings, you would decide whether you are okay to drive you answered ‘Other.’ What does ‘Other’ mean?”
- “I channel the spirit of former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and ask him what mother would do” – 19 per cent
- “I feel by how go I drunk” – 23 per cent
- “I assume I am fine. Fine as wine” – 20 per cent
- “I count sheep and if I don’t fall asleep, I drive” – 17 per cent
- “Other” – 20 per cent
Participants were also asked about the number of drinks they believe someone their size “could consume before being legally impaired.”
Eight per cent said zero drinks, 17 per cent said one drink, 29 per cent said two drinks, 21 per cent said three drinks and 12 per cent said four or more.
The results are dismaying, yet in no way surprising. Drunk driving was a sport in the 1980s. It’s since become recognized as a lethal abomination and is no longer socially acceptable and yet it persists. Christmas just heightens the irony.
If there is a positive stat from this survey, it is that 54 per cent of respondents believe police should increase checkpoints during the holiday season.
Experts said, for an article last year, that over the last couple decades enforcement blitzes and party hosts, including workplaces, being more conscious of their social responsibility has been making a real difference.
During the 2004 holiday season, 38 per cent of drivers killed in crashes had alcohol in their blood – much higher than the rest of the year – according to data from the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, an Ottawa-based non-profit. Now, drinking and driving during December is slightly lower than the rest of the year.
Of course, the best way to avoid drunk driving is to either drink but don’t drive or drive but don’t drink. This method of determining “whether you are okay to drive” is 100-per-cent effective, 100 per cent of the time.
All credit to Liaison Strategies for bringing the awful drinking and driving scourge to light. I rail against it annually. Next year I think I will do something dramatic. I might dress myself up in rags as King Lear and head down to Sankofa Square. There I can present Act 3, Scene 2 and start by yelling at the wind and the thunder and then finish up admonishing drunk drivers.
“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, That drive drunk the roads of this most festive of time, How shall your soused heads and bleary eyes, Your loop’d and tipsy recklessness, defend you from holiday seasons such as this? O, we have ta’en Too little care! Take limo, taxi, a lift from a friend; Expose thyself to public transit, That thou mayst shake the evil that is drunk driving, And show the heavens more just.”
Then again, maybe I’ll just type: “Don’t Drive Drunk” one more time and hope it finally gets through to the rest of the people who haven’t figured out how dangerous their behaviour is.