There’s a serial killer on the block. Let’s call him/her X for now. X loves to live the good life and party. Once the night’s revelry is done, X — in high spirits — usually heads home in the car. Despite seeing countless messages of ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ and cops checking at every point possible, X drives on, thinking it won’t affect him or anyone else.
But it does. And X could be you , driving around in your car that suddenly turns into an instrument of mass destruction.
Recent incidents in Chennai prove that life can sometimes be short-lived for those living on the fringes. Like it did for a sleepy, unsuspecting auto driver on Cathedral Road, who was mowed down by a Porsche, driven reportedly by a drunk youngster. This comes barely a few weeks after a 26-year-old girl, reportedly drunk after a night of partying, fatally knocked off a 54-year-old loadman who was crossing the OMR.
In between the two incidents, you also had a young Tamil actor who, after a night out, crashed his car into a parked police car outside the Nungambakkam police station. Thankfully, there was nobody in the car.
The three of them would have done well to watch a video titled ‘A message from Lord Yama’ released three years ago that cautioned against drunken driving. In this video, shot majorly outside Sera, one of the most popular hangouts in Chennai, the God of Death suddenly emerges from inside cars, sending patrons into a tizzy, and reminding each of them to ‘drink and get driven’. It’s a pity that this video fetched just a little over 14,000 views, as compared to more than 55 lakh views for a song like ‘Club le Mabbu’.
It clearly looks like the message needs to be said time and again.
Thankfully, the corporate world is waking up to the concept of safe driving, and talking to youngsters in the language they speak. A Chennai-based company, Contus, is developing a gamification solution for Mahindra & Mahindra, in which a driver loses points for rash driving while earning points for driving smoothly.
I’m not clear about how this works, but such creative solutions might be the right way to tackle this issue. The cops are taking steps — the breath-analysers are out every Saturday evening on major roads. However, that isn’t stopping people who own a Porsche and hang out at Pasha, but seem to lack the common sense to hire a driver post an evening of partying.
What’s also required, in adequate doses, is awareness among the company one keeps. Remember the times when we went out as a big gang and there was this teetotaller destined to drive the group back home? Perhaps, it’s time people brought back this custom, if they lack faith in a call-driver or options such as Ola and Uber.
The spotlight should also be, I reckon, on the ease of getting a licence in modern Indian cities. The focus is primarily on rigid paperwork (which can be avoided if you bring out some ‘important pieces of paper’ from your purse) and has very little to do with one’s driving skills. A friend’s brother recently bragged that he had obtained one even without learning to drive. I wonder what wreck he’d cause once he gets on road.
A valid licence allows you to enjoy the terrific freedom that driving offers you. I re-polished my driving skills quite recently, on the service roads of the Marina, under the guidance of an uncle, and re-discovered the myriad joys it offered and the immense sense of power it empowers you with.
But like the popular Spider-man phrase goes (With great power comes great responsibility), it helps to understand during such learning sessions that when you’re behind the wheels, you are in a seat of responsibility. This pertains to not only your near and dear ones, but also to our co-drivers and people who live on the periphery of the roads.
Had Vikash Anand (a well-known racer, to say the least) thought of that responsibility, he might not have been driving the car that crashed into 12 parked autorickshaws and killed a driver who was ‘living’ in it. Had Aishwarya Wilton been a little more careful and hired a call-driver or let one of her sober friends drive her Audi, she’d have not mowed a carpenter at 4 a.m.
The message is clear: Think before you drink. Drink, but get driven.
