St. Patrick's Bank Holiday Weekend: Celebrations in the Pubs, Tragedies on the Roads

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Tuesday March 20, 2007 03:18 by LiP

The age old-adage that nobody celebrates quite like the Irish rang true this weekend. As is common during Irish festivals a large proportion of the population chose the local pub as the most appropriate venue to celebrate our patron saint. However, reports of over two hundred arrests relating to drink driving and eight fatalities on our roads this weekend leads this writer to question why in this day and age do we still refuse to follow the rules and ask is it not time we started to celebrate a little less haphazardly and a little more sensibly?

It is nearly midnight on St. Patrick’s Day and you have decided that after a day in the pub its time for you to go home. One or two of your friends agree so you head to the local chippers and then plan to go home. After a large helping of curry cheese chips, you’re ready to hit the road and you set off in the direction of your trusty car. One of your friends suggests perhaps getting a taxi because you’ve been drinking. You protest, insisting that you only had a few drinks and you switched from alcohol to Lucozade at around eight o’clock besides you’re perfectly sober and you can handle your alcohol, not like that raucous crowd heading up to the night-club you laugh as a bunch of guys in oversized green hats stumble past singing old rebel songs and cheering, your friend shrugs and hops in the back of the car. You smile at your brilliance in having convinced her to accept your generous offer of a lift home; she lives five kilometres outside town and the local hackney charges at least three euro per kilometre, she doesn’t have fifteen euro to throw away on a taxi, you’re doing her a favour. As you set off on your short journey the car is filled with an incessant babble of chatter and laughter punctuated every now and then by the sound of the radio playing in the background. You heave a sigh of relief as you settle back in your seat, concentrating on the steering wheel, this is the kind of day you live for, good craic, great company; you can’t wait until the photos are developed . . .you’re concentrating on your steering so intently that you don’t see the man stumbling along the grass verge until its too late. . .

The sad reality is that this situation is a common occurrence throughout our country and it shouldn’t be. When you drive under the influence of alcohol regardless of whether you had a good helping of chips before you started or whether you stopped drinking an hour ago, you are risking your life and the lives of many others. This weekend, St. Patrick’s bank holiday weekend, was a time of celebration yet amid those celebrations, amid the parades, the rugby and the fun, eight people lost their lives in road traffic accidents. Last night, RTE news reported that between 10.30 on the morning of Saturday 17th and the same hour on Sunday 18th over two hundred arrests were made on our roads in relation to drink-driving, earlier in the month gardai reported 411 people were stopped for drink driving offences during a seven-day period. When are we going to learn? How many more people have to die, how many more families have to be devastated until the truth sinks in that you cannot and must not drink and drive?

The rules surrounding alcohol and road safety are not that difficult to grasp, legally you are not supposed to drive after having consumed more than 80mgs of alcohol per 100ml of blood but in reality, you should not drive after consuming any alcohol. The Road Safety Authority of Ireland has released literature explaining how our driving ability is hindered after just one drink. Under the legal limit your visual functions, choice reaction times, vigilance, alertness, perception and tracking skills are all impaired. Last year the Road Safety Authority published literature showing a 63% increase in “safe attitudes” towards drink driving and it was also ranked as the third most shameful behaviour by members of the public, after sexual abuse and drug dealing. However, the message that it is wrong to drink and drive is still not reaching enough people; 207 arrests relating to drink driving is still 207 arrests too many. So what can we do?

It is not as if we haven’t been told all of this before. Gardai have been cracking down on drink driving helped along by their new mandatory breath testing powers and our televisions and radios are rife with disturbing, heartbreaking images and messages concerning the consequences of reckless driving. This scourge is not the result of a lack of information but rather it is down to the individual. It is caused by the individual who has visited the pub every Friday for the past twenty years of their lives, drove home after countless pints and never had an accident and it is down to the individuals who believe, “that will never happen to me.” There are no excuses; just because you have driven under the influence before and not had a accident is no reason to do it again; just because you are an unyielding optimist is no reason to do it; just because you couldn’t be bothered paying for a taxi because you’re saving all your money for your brother’s wedding next month is no reason to do it! Save money for the wedding by not drinking, be optimistic by all means but also be responsible and if you have been stupid enough to drink and drive and lucky enough to have survived it, go home look at the news on any day of the week and think long and hard about the people killed in road accidents that day, or think about the eight people who lost their lives this weekend. Those people will not be celebrating any more St. Patrick’s Days; those people will not ever drink, eat, sleep, kiss, cry, smile or laugh again. Could you live with yourself if you were responsible for their death? Could you forgive yourself for putting their loved one through all that inevitable pain and suffering? Can you imagine if you had known them, if you had loved them!

Imagine, if you will, the person who you love most in the world, be it a parent, sibling, spouse, child, friend, lover, whoever. Imagine getting a phone call or a knock on the door some day or night when you are at work or in bed or out with your friends or watching a DVD and imagine hearing they were in a fatal accident. How would you feel? How would you feel if the light in your life had suddenly been extinguished, if that one person who made you feel most like yourself, loved, special and worth more than you could ever imagine you were worth, was suddenly gone? You would cry but there really is no one action that can capture that feeling, no words, colours, images or songs can capture how you would feel and others cannot understand that feeling unless they have also experienced it. Death is hard whenever it comes, but death that creeps up on us, that we never for an instant thought would knock on our door, a death that could have been prevented if someone had decided to get a taxi home instead of drive, if someone had drank a coke instead of a pint, a death that has absolutely nothing to do with science or health . . . Can you think of anything more tragic?

It is true that introducing harsher penalties for those who chose to drink and drive is effective and it may cause some people to stop and think before they do so. However, the majority of these cases where it is common for an individual to drive home after a night of drinking doesn't happen in the larger towns, on the motorways or roads where Gardai checkpoints are a regular occurrence but in the smaller communities where the appearance of a squad car on the side of the road is sporadic at best. Generally, in these areas, Garda action surrounding drink driving is reactive rather than proactive and sadly a tragedy has to occur before people really sit up and pay attention. The ads on television showing horrifying images work for some individuals but many people watch them without actually seeing them, they see the images and hear the words but having no way to relate it to their own lives they don't take the message on board. In these communities the biggest danger lies in the fact that this blasé attitude is being passed on to the youth, the new generation of drivers amongst us who have no comprehension of the dangers of alcohol and driving. It is hard to believe but in some parts of our country drink driving is not an isolated event but a social norm. In a place where something such as this has been happening for years and where Garda action to combat such practises is infrequent, the threat of penalty points, larger fines and loss of licence is as daunting as a child in a superman outfit is to a hardened criminal. A complete turnarounds in attitudes is needed.

It may seem like the tiniest, most inconsequential detail but deciding to drive after you have consumed alcohol, no matter the amount, could change your life and the life of many others forever. It’s true what the advertisements say, “the life you save could be your own.” Your choice is simple, do the right thing or do the wrong thing; experience tells this writer that doing the right thing feels a lot better.

“Let me give you the definition of ethics: it is good to maintain life and to further life. It is bad to damage and destroy life.”
Albert Schweitzer