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Ding in the New Year program looks to reduce impaired driving, save lives

Dec 14, 2017 | 11:00 AM

It is a story we hear all too often: innocent lives thrown into havoc at the hands of a drunk driver.

For Robin Keays, it was September of 1994. She and some friends were heading from one party North of Prince Albert to one South of the city. On their commute, a deer leapt out in front of the vehicle she was in. The driver attempted to stop but was rear-ended by a driver from behind. The impact was so hard the truck’s box was pushed into the rear of the cab. Keays knew the driver was impaired as he was a friend of hers and she had shared liquor with him that night.

“He chose to change my life forever,” Keays, the vice president of the Prince Albert MADD Chapter, said Monday at an event to highlight the Ding in the New Year program.

The program offers free public transit from 7:15 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 31 to 3 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2018, to ensure everyone can enjoy the holidays and get home safe.

This year new accessible transportation options will be offered through the Community Service Centre, allowing those with special needs to get out and enjoy the night with a safe ride home. The provincial government foots the bill for the buses and drivers who work the night.

Keays was joined at City Hall for the announcement by other local dignitaries and Police Chief Troy Cooper, who heralded the program as another means to give “no reason for someone to drive while they have been drinking.”

“We have a whole host of options for people,” he said. 

While the chief does think people were beginning to get the message — highlighting 153 people have been charged with impaired driving this year, down slightly from 2016 — he said, “certainly, it is still a concern for the community.” He reiterated how social influence plays a key role curbing impaired drivers and called on residents to take up the call to stop drunk drivers before they get behind the wheel.

“The legislation here is no leaner then it is in any other province… [yet] we still tend to [drink and] drive more,” he said. “I think every person here has an opportunity to change that.”

Echoing this sentiment was MLA Joe Hargrave, the minister responsible for SGI which funds the program. For him, the most important aspect of the initiative was working to bring down the number of injuries and deaths in the province due to impaired driving.

“We have got to keep funding it and we have to keep the awareness against drinking and driving out there….We have got to bring down the numbers,” he said. 

He said he was pleased to see the introduction of special accessible transportation options and said it was “unfortunate that it took so long.”

Last year, over 400 people used the program. Since it was founded and launched in Prince Albert in 1989, the program has provided over 10,000 safe rides home on New Year’s Eve.

 

tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr