The old saying goes that the first step of solving a problem is admitting you have one. Saskatchewan, as a province, has a drinking and driving problem. A recent Mainstreet Research poll has finally given us the answer as to why, and it’s at least partially because we don’t actually think it is a problem. Nineteen per cent of respondants said drinking and driving is fine if it’s just over a short distance, an attitude most commonly reflected by people in the 18-35 age demographic.
Saskatchewan does have a problem. In 2015, there were a total of 122 fatalities on Saskatchewan roads, but 53 of them – or 43 per cent – were the result of drunk driving. Going by the numbers, if Saskatchewan residents stop drinking and driving, we will cut the number of fatalities on our roads by half. In 2015, that would have meant 53 people who would still be with us today, including adults and children. There will be fewer collisions overall, making our collective insurance go down. There are only benefits to seeing drinking and driving end in this province, but it’s not going to, because people do not view it as a problem.
SGI and the provincial government, for their part, have at least tried to stiffen penalties, with long driving prohibitions and the possible seizure of vehicles as threats for people who are caught. That hasn’t helped, and it hasn’t even helped for people who work for SGI – former Minister in Charge of SGI Don McMorris was famously caught and charged with impaired driving himself. It’s clear he agrees with the people who think it’s fine to travel a short distance under the influence, mainly because he did. This is not to blast McMorris, but to use him as an illustration of the problem we are facing. Even people who know that impaired driving is a problem will occasionally think it’s not something that applies to them. The idea that it’s a problem for other people, in other places driving on different roads, that’s the uphill battle that the province has to face. It’s getting everyone in the province to admit that drinking and driving is a problem, and in this case we can’t even get people whose actual job involves spreading that message to admit it’s a problem.
What needs to happen is a change in attitude, but how do we actually get people to change their minds? The punishments are strict at the moment, and there are always movements to make them stricter, but it’s not working. Instead of spreading the idea that drinking and driving is dangerous, we instead have a situation where people think that getting caught is dangerous, which is defeating the purpose. Instead of calling a ride, we instead have people trying different routes home where they might not encounter police. This is in no way suggesting that the punishment should be more lenient, but that something needs to happen in addition to the punishment in order to convince people to get a ride home.
Maybe we need to give people an actual demonstration of what alcohol does to their reaction times and judgement, convince them that it’s a problem for them as well as a problem for everyone else. There would be a question of SGI could actually demonstrate this – finding drunk people and sitting them down in a driving simulator, perhaps – but it’s a thought, a way to get people to realize that they are affected by alcohol just like everyone else. Maybe we just need to find a new way to educate people of the dangers of driving under the influence, because the current method simply isn’t working as well as it needs to. Maybe we just need some peer pressure, it could simply be up to those of us who don’t think it’s okay to keep a close eye on the one in five people who do. In some cases, it won’t matter if people don’t actually believe drinking and driving is physically harmful if they definitely believe it’s socially harmful.
But the main thing is that we need to recognize that it is a problem in this province, and it’s clear that for a significant percentage of people living in Saskatchewan that hasn’t happened yet. Those are the people who continue to drive under the influence, and those are the people who caused over 40 per cent of the fatalities on the province’s roads in 2015. Those are the people we need to reach, and we’re going to have to get creative to break through the wall of denial that they’re living behind.
