Resh­ma Ra­goonath

"Act re­spon­si­bly." This is Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz's mes­sage to dri­vers this Car­ni­val week­end as he pleads with them not to mix the dan­ger­ous cock­tail of al­co­hol and dri­ving a ve­hi­cle.Cadiz, in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view, ad­vised mo­torists to en­sure they had a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver or hired al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion in­stead of dri­ving drunk on the na­tion's road­ways.He main­tained that drunk dri­ving was a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly with young peo­ple.

"The sta­tis­tics show that peo­ple be­tween the ages of 18 and 34 ac­count for 53 per cent of the road deaths/fa­tal­i­ties and it is some­thing we are very con­cerned about. One of the main con­trib­u­tors to that is in fact drunk dri­ving or what you call drink dri­ving," Cadiz ex­plained.He said there were oth­er is­sues that had an im­pact on road fa­tal­i­ties such as safe­ty belt use, tex­ting, and us­ing cell­phones while dri­ving.

How­ev­er, Cadiz con­tend­ed, one of the things that could be con­trolled very eas­i­ly was drunk dri­ving which could be checked by peo­ple tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.He al­so be­lieves that the in­creased fines for drink­ing and dri­ving will en­cour­age mo­torists to do the right thing.A first-time of­fend­er now faces a max­i­mum fine of $15,000, for a sec­ond of­fence $22,500, and, for a third of­fence, the mag­is­trate has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly re­voke a dri­ver's per­mit and jail the of­fend­er.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that it was a sea­son of mer­ri­ment and that "Car­ni­val is Car­ni­val," Cadiz in­sist­ed that par­ty-go­ers must en­gage in re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour."It (Car­ni­val) is a big par­ty and there is a high con­sump­tion of al­co­hol, etc, over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. I am not telling peo­ple do not en­joy your­selves–you would want to en­joy your­selves. But do not do it to the detri­ment of your own lives and oth­ers," he said.

Even though to­day was Car­ni­val Sun­day, Cadiz said, there was still enough time to or­gan­ise des­ig­nat­ed dri­vers or maxi taxis for group out­ings."When you think of what you are go­ing to spend over Car­ni­val with go­ing to fetes and cos­tumes and what have you, hir­ing a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver, for in­stance, is a very minis­cule amount that will go to­wards what your to­tal spend is, and then you can go and fete very safe­ly and you do not have to wor­ry about the dri­ving," he said.

Cadiz dis­missed the no­tion that drink­ing and dri­ving was part of T&T cul­ture."My sim­ple an­swer to that or re­ply to that is, you can­not have a cul­ture where you are putting oth­er's lives and your own in dan­ger by be­ing stu­pid, dri­ving drunk. That can­not be a cul­ture," he said.While he agreed that there were still a num­ber of peo­ple who were fac­ing the courts for drink­ing and dri­ving, Cadiz be­lieves the aware­ness pro­grammes that the min­istry has em­barked up­on are work­ing.

"I think we will get to that point where your friends are go­ing to tell you do not dri­ve drunk. Even be­fore you go out to a func­tion you are go­ing to be or­gan­is­ing a lift, a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver or get there by some oth­er way, rent a maxi or what­ev­er it is. It will take time," Cadiz added.