When I was in Grade 10, I did something I am not particularly proud of.
I got into a car with someone who had been drinking.
It isn’t something I intended to do and it happened by accident, but that isn’t an excuse.
It all started innocent enough. I was on spring break visiting my hometown, which I had just moved away from the year previous, when my best friend, his girlfriend and myself, got into a car with a young man, I say in his early 20s, that they knew, to go for a drive to a nearby lake.
Or at least that is what I thought. It turned out we went to the gravel pit to apparently have a few beers. Being the cautious youth I was, I did not partake, but the others did.
Although it didn’t seem like anyone had drank too much, once we were back in the car, it quickly became evident that however many the driver had, it was too many.
It was a harrying trip back to town and luckily for everyone we returned back home safe.
But we really were lucky. The result of our little indiscretion could have been tragic. In retrospect, I should have asked to get out. Insisted to drive myself as I did have a learners permit at the time. Anything, but I didn’t.
That is why I am so pleased about what the Barrhead Cares Coalition, through the PARTY program, is doing to remind our young people about the importance of making good decisions and what a momentary lapse in judgment can result in.
Unfortunately, the program is limited to Grade 9 students. In my experience, the consequences of making poor decisions, especially about driving impaired, is something people of all ages need to be reminded of.
Last year, Mainstreet Research polled more than 1,200 people of driving age from all over the province asking if they would consider driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol if the destination was close enough and the road was quiet enough.
Almost one in five answered they would.
What might even be more disturbing is the poll also reported that close to 10 per cent of Alberta drivers admit to driving while under the influence, with close to half of that number occurring in the last five years.
From my personal observation covering baseball tournaments and the like, witnessing adults openly drinking in public and seeing all the vehicles in the parking lots, I tend to believe the poll is accurate.
So the question is how do we impart the same information Barrhead Cares is trying to drill into our young people? What is the adult equivalent? I’m open to suggestions.
