“It’s such a simple problem. Yet we don’t seem to learn.”
Bonny Stevenson, president of MADD Saskatoon, speaks for many when she expresses her frustration with the ongoing challenge of confronting impaired driving, with continues to bring fresh tragedies, year after year. Alcohol and cannabis are equally at fault, but the real problem is simply getting people to pay attention to the message.
“It’s just that the message is just so simple,” Stevenson says. “You plan a safe ride home. And in larger centres like Saskatoon, there is just no good excuse. There are cabs, there are Ubers, there’s, you know, call your parents. Call a friend.”
Lou Van De Vorst who lost his son, his wife and their two kids in a drunk driving crash in 2016, says the impact of an impaired driving fatality is much larger than people realize. “When you think of the numbers that are impacted every year, every day, from deaths to impaired driving and injuries… it just compounds it. It’s immense.”
Stevenson says misconceptions about impaired driving are everywhere. “You know, you hear lots of those,” she says. “People always think, ‘I only had two drinks and I had something to eat with it. I should be fine to drive, you know?’ And I think it’s things like that that I think we should always have in the back of our head that zero tolerance is probably always the best message.”
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Lou and Linda Van De Vorst echoed that sentiment.
“And everybody thinks, ‘I’m just, you know, five minutes away from home.’ And then they get out onto the highway and , you know, end up in the ditch, rolled over or head on collision,” Lou says.
Stevenson says impaired driving is simply not an accident. “Impaired driving is a crash. It’s not an accident because it’s a choice people are making to get behind the wheel… They’ve made that choice to drive impaired.”
The Van De Vorsts say the problem of impaired driving has gone on long enough and hope more people will take the problem seriously before more are hurt.
“We can’t keep on going like this,” Linda says. “We can’t be numb to the problems Saskatchewan has. We have a problem. We have to do something to get rid of the problem and be socially responsible by doing so,” said Linda Van De Vorst.
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