I had a safe ride home on New Years, my date being more interested in drinking very sweet, but non-alcoholic, beverages. So did another couple we knew, who we gave a ride home from the same event.
Then again, the entirety of Yorkton had a safe ride available to them from Operation Red Nose, administered by volunteers from the Yorkton Kinsmen and Kinettes, which gave 157 rides over the holiday season, raising $3,000 for the city’s youth groups. There were also good old fashioned taxis out as well, and they do this all year long.
Evidently, the entire province was at least better prepared for the end of their evening this year, since there were fewer impaired driving charges in 2018. There were still too many, 21 in total, but that’s down from 29 the year before.
It would be nice if one year the number released by the province’s RCMP could be in the single digits, or even better, if they didn’t find a single impaired driver all night. But that the numbers are down, and down to a significant degree, shows that efforts are paying off.
The RCMP, for their part, have been a pretty big part of the change, since they’re going out of their way to make it very obvious that they’re out on the roads on New Years Eve and they intend on finding every drunk driver they can. They’re not taking a subtle approach with the problem, which is the perfect way to handle it, everyone knows the police are everywhere and they’re not going to risk drawing their attention.
I also want to give credit to groups like the Kinsmen and Kinettes, since Operation Red Nose was a really good way to let people know that there are alternatives. The nice thing about their efforts was that, even if you didn’t take advantage of them, they were very good about making people aware that a safe ride home was easy to find – the words “Operation Red Nose” rang through the bar as people prepared to go home. It was another reminder that there’s really no reason not to get a ride home, and I suspect that in Yorkton, it resulted in more rides home than they even delivered. I know in our case, it got people talking about how they were leaving.
Finally, let’s give some credit to the taxi drivers, who do this beyond the holiday season. Any given Saturday you’re going to see them carrying people home after a long night of revelry, and they’re pretty good at dealing with cars filled with drunken louts. Yes, it’s their job, but it’s not an easy one, and one could easily argue that no matter their fare they’re not paid enough, especially when they bring home an especially unruly patron. They’re always there, waiting to do their job, and people really need to take advantage of that.
Fewer drunk drivers in the first moments of 2018 is a good start to the year. Hopefully the province can, at a minimum, bring that number under 20 next year, but the ideal result would be to have no drunk drivers at all.
