The celebration of Christmas draws in people from all sorts of situations and groups into parties and suppers of all descriptions throughout the month of December, and leads right into the celebration of New Year’s the week after that.
While families, businesses, groups and organizations of every type gather to share good times, good food and drink, the Weyburn Police Service and RCMP are gearing up to ensure that the drivers on the road are sober and not impaired by drugs or alcohol from these many celebrations.
With all of the public education on impaired driving that have been repeated over and over in every form of media, and with enforcement of the law by police at planned CheckStops and at unplanned stops of vehicles on the roads and highways, the incidence of driving impaired still ends up contributing to collisions with deaths and injuries.
In 2013, impaired driving was the number one cause of death on roads, with 29 per cent of all fatalities related to alcohol or drugs.
Last year, provincially there were 109 alcohol or drug-related collisions with 39 injuries for the holiday period from Dec. 1 to Jan. 3, 2014.
As families and friends set out this holiday season to head to celebrations and sharing of Christmas joy this year, they should be able to do so without fear that an impaired driver is going to lose control and slam into their vehicle on a road or highway.
And really, this should apply all year around, winter or summer, day or night: the simple principle is, if you’ve been drinking alcohol, then you do not get behind the wheel of a vehicle, even if you think “it’s just a short drive home”. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re “not really drunk” either, as police have found even people who have a blood-alcohol reading of .04 can be considered impaired to a degree, although not high enough necessarily to warrant a charge.
Usually celebrations and parties are planned in advance long enough that a person can make prior arrangements, such as calling a taxi, asking a friend or having a designated driver available to drive you home; there really is no excuse to imbibe of alcohol and/or drugs, and then go afterwards, “I have no other way to get home and I have to work in the morning.” If you hit an innocent person or end up arrested for driving drunk, you won’t be going to work; all that pain is not worth it — so don’t drink and drive.
