The drink-driving cancer is metastasising at an alarming rate

There are few crimes as heinous as rape and paedophilia, but one certainly is, and that’s drink-driving. It is a crime born of laziness and misplaced bravado and it was this crime, albeit allegedly, that took the life of 13-year-old Abhilash on Thursday.

For a country hell bent on executing its murderers, I cannot fathom why we don’t go after those who kill people while driving under the influence with the same gusto. The reason is probably because like cancer, substance abuse, and Aids, it permeates throughout society’s strata. While cancer and Aids come with a social stigma, driving drunk carries with it a sense of blasé that verges on ridiculous.

Many, if not most, of those who drive while intoxicated do so because they can’t be bothered catching a cab or a rickshaw, or simply because they have been flushed with a sense of derring-do that gives rise to a sense of omnipotence usually reserved for mythical deities.

By all means, if the mood strikes you after a few drinks, please do attempt to fly off a 10-storey building; by all means practice your sword-swallowing; but do not risk the lives of others in your pursuit of the nothingness.

Drunk-driving has become a group sport, where friends cajole each other into believing they’re more than capable of getting behind the wheel of a car or on a bike. And it is these very friends who are invariably the first to tut-tut in disgust after an accident has claimed the lives of a companion or an innocent motorist or pedestrian.

From film stars and industrialists, to rickshaw- and bus-drivers… the rot is deep, and it’s burrowing like a mole on steroids. Unfortunately, even those who are meant to be clamping down on DUIs often turn a blind eye when the perpetrators of the crime have enough clout or money to make arresting them a nuisance.
A paltry fine is going to stop nobody. The punishment must fit the crime. If a motorist kills another human being while under the influence he must be given a minimum 25-yr jail sentence (I don’t condone capital punishment, but if I did, I’d be baying for blood) and the authorities must make sure that, once out of the slammer, the only thing he (or she) drives is a hard bargain.

The onus is also on parents and peers to make sure that their wards, partners and friends never get behind the wheel after so much as a sip of grog. They won’t like it, but they will learn to live with it. Alive and arguing is a lot better than dead and grieving. True friends don’t let you drink and drive… it’s as simple as that.
The last time I ever got behind the wheel of a car drunk was over a decade ago. I was legless, the sort of situation where you have to close one eye in order to focus on the road ahead. I remember thinking that red lights were for other motorists and crossings were open just for me. I have never had a drink and driven or ridden since that time. And just thinking about those irresponsible days makes me cringe with disgust. In school and college, the list of friends and acquaintances either injured or killed in drink-driving incidents became as emotive as Schindler’s List.

Believe me, I know, how difficult it is to give your car keys to the bartender or a sober friend after you’ve had a few drinks and the mind has been lulled into a superhuman state. I also know that you honestly do believe you can drive safely. You can’t. You may get away with it a few times, hell, you may even get away with it for years. But when that accident comes, and trust me, it will, the repercussions are devastating; more so because you could have so easily avoided it.

When you’re complaining about how inconvenient it is hailing a rickshaw in the middle of the night, or how all the cabs are booked, just think of how inconvenient it will be for your partner and children if you’re dead, or worse, maimed for life.
Just think of how inconvenient it will be for the family of the person you just killed.

Just think of how inconvenient it will be waking up day after day with blood on your hands; waking with the knowledge that life as you knew it was over and it was all your fault.
Just think, before you drink and drive.