IT?HAS?BEEN?DRILLED into our heads that we ought never to drink and drive – not more so for protecting our own lives as for not taking those of innocent others. Still we find a few wayward indulging in drink-driving – at the expense of some, sometimes to their very own peril.
Minister of Health Donville Inniss has not been unknown to vent about the pressures that victims of unnecessary and careless accidents put on the resources of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH). There was a time when a senior doctor in the Accident &?Emergency Department swore most of the road crashes necessitating QEH attention were a result of drink-driving.
There wasn’t clear statistical evidence to support this charge, but nigh everyone believed drinking and driving had made some contribution – however small. The word then was: if you are going to drink, have a designated driver.
This would be a person not giving to libations, or who would not be participating in the alcoholic rituals.
Now, we have an equally debilitating concern: text-driving! It is the highly dangerous and unconscionable practice of sending messages and emails on your BlackBerry or other cellphone while speeding along the highway.
And, of course, the Minister of Health is appealing to the guilty to stop it. As he asked, what could one be telling the person on the other end that couldn’t wait a few minutes more?
“If you are gonna tell your wife by texting as you drive, ‘Darling, I love you’, well you should have said it before you left home,” quipped Mr Inniss on Tuesday at the launch of the No Thumbing Barbados campaign that will seek to discourage drivers from texting as they travel our busy streets.
Even more so than with drink-driving, there are no specific statistics readily available on the negative impact of texting and driving. But it would not be unreasonable to surmise that quite a number of fender benders have been at the end of a text.
Still we need not have mounting statistics of injury and death to take action. That’s why we applaud the effort of Calvin Noel of Promotions Plus Inc. to get the awareness drive into full gear by New Year.
The reports of deaths and life-altering accidents for younger drivers in the United States are staggering. Some sources say texting not so important messages while driving causes 11 teen deaths every day.
But it is not an American teen-only problem. According to the Washington Post, 47 per cent of adults have admitted to texting while driving. And the United States National Safety Council has said the text-driving causes 25 per cent of all accidents, totally 1.6 million a year.
Of the utmost worry is America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s declaration that text-driving is six times more dangerous than drink-driving.
Our No Thumbing Barbados couldn’t have been more soberly timely.
