Remember the good ol' days? The days when no one batted an eye if you drank all night long and then grabbed your jacket, hat and keys and toddled off to the parking lot in a not-so-straight line? When everyone left well enough alone about whether or not you were "OK to drive"?
Those days - and the mindset that accompanied them - are long gone.
Or they should be. Sadly, there are still plenty of drivers out there who are either ignorant, stupid or arrogant enough to continue to believe that drinking and driving rules just don't apply to them.
For anyone who has uttered the phrase "it's right around the corner" or "just this one time" or "I don't want to come back for my car in the morning," here's a newsflash: no excuse will ever be good enough. Plain and simple, there is no reason for anyone to drink and drive.
With holiday parties going on all month long, police are preparing for the spike in drunk drivers - along with ICBC and the province, they recently kicked off this year's December Counter Attack program.
Road checks will be carried out across the province to raise awareness and, hopefully, reduce the number of drunk-driving related injuries and deaths. We hope the police presence on the roads, along with tougher laws, is enough to deter anyone who still gets behind a wheel after a night of imbibing. But we'd also encourage everyone to carry out their own campaigns against drunk driving: be a designated driver, encourage friends to find safe ways home, and, if necessary, report drunk drivers.
If someone was roaming the streets with a loaded gun, we'd never take them at their word when they said: "Don't worry about me, I'm just fine."
So why does the same phrase carry so much weight when spoken from behind the wheel of a car?
