UNDER what may be branded the holier than thou principle, quite many people, and more-so those who don’t drink alcohol, or do so moderately (by self-set standards), despise excessive drinkers, who bear the uncharitable characterisation “alcoholics”, as moral degenerates who are a nuisance to the rest of community members.
Surely, alcoholism is unpleasant, since, by causing an individual’s mental state to become shaky, the person’s behaviour may annoy other people by, for instance hurling insults at them.
The not-so-tolerant amongst them may insult or beat them up, or laugh them off as probably innocent persons who have been held captive by excessive alcoholic consumption.
At the extreme end, though, a heavily drunken person may cause grievous harm to oneself or other people.
Drivers amongst them belong to the latter category, because when they are under the influence of alcohol, they may injure themselves, the passengers in vehicles under their charge, or other people into whom they may zoom as they zig-zag along roads.
Whether sympathy for drunken drivers is justifiable may be a proverbial million dol lar question.
But so long as drinking alcohol is permissible, albeit moderately, turning a blind eye to excessive drinkers who are potentially suicidal and unintentional killers would be socially reckless.
That’s one of the backdrops against which the move by the Police Force in Arusha Region to assist drunk drivers should be viewed.
The initiative is the brainchild of the Regional Police Commander (RPC), Assistant Commissioner of Police Jonathan Shanna. He set it in motion a week before the onset of the recent Christmas season.
The procedure is that traffic police are mandated to keep drunken drivers off the steering wheel, drive the vehicles to police stations for the safety of the individuals and their machines, which they can then pick later after regaining sobriety.
The Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020 pillar four calls for safer road users by requiring countries to develop comprehensive programmes to improve road user behaviour through public awareness and education to reduce drinking and driving and other risk factors on roads.
ACP Shanna said the programme aims at enabling any person who is deemed drunk and cannot be able or doubts his or her ability to drive a vehicle, to call on traffic police to collect one’s machine, keep it safely at a police station, and the driver being delivered home in a police vehicle.
“The programme is a friendly initiative that does not harm the driver in any way but to help him or her be safe as well as keeping the car safe. We don’t charge him in any way but to prevent him or her from driving under the influence of alcohol, a move that can endanger the lives of others too,” said ACP Shana.
The RPC said that only three drivers had called the police for assistance, speculating that others hadn’t responded to the offer over suspicions that it may have been a trap for locking them up and subsequently slapping drunk-driving charges on them.
ACP Shanna stressed, however that the initiative was wellintentioned, as it sought to keep drunk drivers safe, and to prevent them from posing dangers to other road users.
He said traffic police in the region will conduct public awareness sessions on the initiative, expressing optimism that it would significantly reduce drunk driving in the region.
Commenting on the initiative, the road safety advocate and the Project Coordinator of Tanzania Media Women Association TAMWA), Ms Gladness Munuo, highly commended the move, proposing that it spreads to the whole country.
“It is a good initiative that can also be introduced in all the regions to help reduce alcoholrelated road crashes,” she said, urging alcohol-obsessed drivers to operate the machines.
Global Voluntary Performance Targets for Road Safety Risk Factors and Service Delivery Mechanisms, 2017, calls for countries to halve the number of road traffic injuries and fatalities related to drivers using alcohol and or achieve a reduction in those related to other psychoactive substances by 2030.
