"Don't drink and drive" a familiar seasonal refrain

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It's become one of the harbingers of the coming Yuletide season-along with the appearance of Christmas decorations, receiving of Christmas cards and singing of carols, comes the beginning of the campaigns reminding us all not to drink and drive this festive season.

Whether the message is delivered through the provincial Have Someone for the Road designated driver program, Saskatchewan Government Insurance's (SGI) Santa's Little Helper campaign which casts law enforcement officers in the role of helping St. Nick by keeping the roads safe, the message seems to be getting through.

According to Shannon Ell, supervisor of traffic safety promotion for SGI, the number of accidents caused by impaired drivers isn't the highest during December's festivities. Ell thinks at least part of the reason for that is the emphasis placed on the extra education and enforcement in place this time of the year.

"We've been working with enforcement, and we've had advertising campaigns that run through the Christmas season. We've done that for years and years and years. And I think it's definitely shown that December is one of the lower times. And I'd like to say that's because working education and enforcement together, people think they're going to get caught and then they just don't do it. I don't have any proof of that, but it's a good story, a nice theory . . . and I think that's the pretense that we work on," Ell said.

"If you're out there, all the time, checking for drinking drivers, people won't take the chance, because those sanctions are pretty heavy duty."

The overall rates of alcohol related collisions have been in decline over the past few years, although last year's rates actually saw an increase.

According to the 2001 Traffic Accident Information System (TAIS) annual report, close to 46 per cent of all fatal collisions in 2001 involved a driver that had been drinking. This was quite an increase over the figures for 2000, in which only 26 per cent of fatal collisions involved a drinking driver. It was also higher than the average rate for the past 10 years, at 37 per cent.

Although the higher numbers were a bit disheartening, Ell sees the increase as more of a statistical glitch than as any indication the rates are on their way back up again.

"If you look at the trend, say over the last 10 years or so, we have been steadily decreasing in the number of deaths related to alcohol. And every once in a while, we have a little blip in that downward trend. So if you look over the past 10 years, it's still lower than it was, say pre-1996. But certainly it was sort of unnerving to see that there was an increase from the year before, because we did have a really good year in 2000," Ell said.

"I think if you look over, again, say 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, the acceptance socially of drinking and driving has really decreased. If you talk to young people, and I say that knowing that most of the people, a large portion of those that are dying, are killing themselves on these roads, are the young people. But I think overall, the acceptability; social acceptance of drinking and driving has really decreased.

"But you still get these people, I don't know what their thought pattern is, whether they don't think they have another way home, or they don't think it's going to happen to them. I really don't know. Judgement definitely gets a little skewed when you have been drinking, so maybe people that normally, when they're in a sober state would not drive after they've been drinking, after they've had a few drinks they lose that judgement, I'm not sure.

"I know that we do do a lot of programs. We know from other successful jurisdictions that have other successful programs, that a combination of education and enforcement tends to be the way to go."

In addition to the aforementioned Santa's Little Helper program and the Have Someone for the Road program, which encourages businesses serving alcohol to offer free non-alcoholic bevrages to designated drivers, SGI is also involved in server intervention, which trains servers to recognize when someone has had enough to drink.

SGI also works closely with the organizations that play the biggest role in the fight against drinking and driving-law enforcement.

"We work with police. Saskatoon and Regina both have a program called the Enforcement Overdrive program. Which is where police go out and do roadside checks. And in order to make them on a regular basis, SGI gets involved in providing some sponsorship to augment the overtime hours," Ell said.

"We also work with the other provincial police agencies, like the RCMP and other municipal agencies to train officers in what is called standardized field sobriety training. Which is really a tool, an investigative tool that an officer uses to determine levels of impairment. When a police officer stops a vehicle, it helps in that determination of whether that person is impaired by alcohol."

Other enforcement tools are also used in Saskatchewan to discourage people from driving when they've been drinking.

"We've got some administrative, some provincial type programs. Like a .04 limit. If you're over .04 you can have your license suspended for 24 hours, right on the roadside. Zero tolerance for new drivers. The 90 day admin suspension," Ell said.

"Most often, if you're caught impaired driving, you fall into the Criminal Code of Canada. So the sanctions are the same in different provinces. What differs is the level of tolerance, 0, or .04; the types of admin suspension. And then the length of suspension. I know Saskatchewan has first, second and third, one year, three years and five years. Places like Ontario, if you're caught more than three times, it's a lifetime suspension that they give you," she said.

"There is actually a national strategy to reduce impaired driving. And underneath that strategy, things like the 24-hour roadside suspension and 90-day administrative suspension are initiatives tht the entire country are being asked to implement to try and combat the problem of drinking and driving."

Of course, there are a number of other organizations that are working to eliminate drinking and driving across Saskatchewan, "Students Against Drinking and Driving (SADD), they've got about 125 chapters in schools all over the province. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), there's a chapter in central Saskatchewan. Our different health authorities and things like that all do a little bit of this kind of thing as well. We've got law enforcement and EMS people," Ell said.

"We also have a program with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL). They go into school and talk, not specifically about drinking and driving, but it certainly is one of the topics, on road safety in general, to try and get the message out of how dangerous it is to drive after you've been drinking."