Helping young professionals succeed in work and life

Perth’s atrocious attitudes towards drink driving.

I don’t want to seem like I’m self promoting so I will write this as if I was on the ABC.

Starting a business in the ‘late night intoxicated car owners transfer and logistics industry’ gives you an interesting insight into the way people view drink driving. When we first started this business (a service that drives people home in their own cars), we thought to ourselves “Perth has a need for this service. There are places taxis won’t go, or go quickly and there is a problem with drink driving.” We made our message about providing an alternative to drink driving.

We had an amazing response from people and business owners that we met. Some said we were offering an invaluable community service. Many said they would use us often as they “drink drive all the time”. We got very excited. We did not get a single call from these people.

As it turns out, Perth has an ingrained culture of drink driving. People are too willing to do it, and they are not getting caught. The chances of reprimand are limited to the main streets on a Saturday or public holiday when the RBT’s are en force. The police pick a month to target drink driving. Operation Octopus in December 2009 and January 2010 was a targeted campaign to reduce drink driving around back streets from liquor serving establishments. In the two months 6073 breath tests were taken resulting in 337 charges laid for drink driving, a strike rate of 5.5%. On any day, 2.5% of people breath-tested are found to be over the limit.

Think about that next time you’re on the road. For every 40 cars you see, one of them was over the limit, risking your life and theirs.

Last night, I had a customer tell me that they think “90-95% of your business will be people who have been caught drink driving before”. I had to correct her, I can recollect the small few instances. Two people who have lost their licence before have used our service. They speak of how they will never do it again as they placed a huge burden on others when they could not drive themselves.

I’ve had one customer explain to me that they consider themselves a “responsible drink driver” because when he drink drives, he doesn’t hoon or do anything stupid. He then went onto explain to me that he fell asleep at the wheel while drink driving on the Mitchel Freeway and only woke up as his car gently scraped across the wire fencing guarding the train line. When he woke he was heading into a tree and could just steer the car away in time. Despite this, he said only now that he had a child with him did he consider not drink driving, thus using our service.

On three occasions we have had bookings for late at night, between 11 and 1pm, where at the last minute we have received a text saying “sorry, drove off”. One of them drove off because we were five minutes late for his booking, which was only because he changed restaurants. He sent us another text 15 minutes later, a picture message of a booze bus with the caption “blew 0.07”. This was three weeks after the law changed so that blood alcohol content between 0.05 and 0.08 incurred a minimum three-month suspension.

As much as we would love to be doing our small effort to reduce drink driving on our roads, it turns out the majority of what we do is offer responsible people a viable alternative to taxis. Responsible people in Perth are sick of late or non-existent taxis, engaged phone lines, poor driving and poor customer service.

Taxi charges are set by the state Government, so there is no way for taxis to change their business structure. They cannot charge more, or charge in advance to secure a booking. They get no benefit from waiting for you, or driving you in a safe and sensible manner. They get no benefit from picking people up from the outer suburbs when they can wait in the queue in Northbridge or the Airport. For these reasons, taxis fail responsible people and leave little alternative to the drink driving prone.

Not that this is an excuse.

My opinion: A long-term education and awareness campaign needs to occur in conjunction with changes to taxi regulations and improvements in late night public transport in order to change the culture of drink driving in Perth. What is yours?

Tags: alcohol, drink-driving, policy

3 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of Emergen to add comments!

Join Emergen

Comment by Lewis Cann on April 11, 2011 at 6:38pm: Couldnt agree with you more Janine, I believe I've had a similar rant before. There is no quick fix to the drink driving problem, or the current culture of alcoholism, which is why there is no political motivation. The best we can hope for is a change now so that its better in the future.

Comment by Janine Ripper on April 11, 2011 at 6:28pm: Bare with me as I may go off on a tangent...

I believe drink driving is a side effect of the greater issue that is an ingrained drinking and drug culture in Australia. I don't believe it is specifically a YOUTH problem. I see this stretching across all ages from early teenage years to people in their 80's - and this is from personal experience from people I have met over the years.

This problem has been around for years - and not just in the last few years when the media has chosen to focus on it in the news. The issue has also been 'encouraged' by the creation and increased prevalence of social media tools that allow people to distribute images of their drunkeness with ease, with the sky-rocketting population and as a result of societies large and growing dependence on alcohol, drugs and stimulants (I'm going to step out on a limb and even include 'energy' drinks in this).

In one way, I am thankful for the increased focus on this as an issue - as it is showing part of our society for what it is - ugly. On the other hand, I see people laughing at it, thinking it's cool, or just turning a blind eye and not doing anything about it. With some there appears to be this image of 'invincibility' that is portrayed - the 'tough guy', the 'I'm a bitch and proud of it', etc attitudes whereby people continue to be reckless. I see it in the workplace, on the roads (not just drink driving - road rage, driving with mobile phones, etc), and so on.

There are so many things that need to change...and yes, drink driving is one of them. But it's part of a bigger issue which is deep-seated and cultural.

Comment by Susan Broughton, CFP on April 11, 2011 at 2:35pm: holy wow yes this service is desperatey needed

you didn't even mention the experiences of the taxi queues, yes you can get a cab eventually but sometimes you wait ages in line with drunk people, not fun!

Comment by Lewis Cann on April 11, 2011 at 9:16am: @Rachel Seymour

The WA Police has written in their 2010 annual report:

"An emerging youth culture characterised by excessive alcohol consumption and a propensity to engage in anti-social behaviour are major challenges for the agency. As such the WA Police implemented the Alcohol Policing Strategy in November 2009. The objective of this Strategy is to provide a better focus for alcohol-related policing, and complements the WA Police Anti-Social Behaviour Strategy. The Strategy summarises the WA Police focus and key priorities in relation to alcohol-fuelled crime:

Ensuring high visibility presence around licensed outlets, at entertainment events and in public open spaces

Collaborating with the liquor and entertainment industry, other government agencies, non-government organisations and community groups to reduce alcohol-related harm, for example, liquor restrictions

Using technology, intelligence and specialist skills to identify and target police resources for maximum impact.
Responding to requests from rural and remote communities to develop approaches to restrict the supply of alcohol
Building capacity by research and collaboration at a national level to inform policing approaches
Driving legislative reform to enhance enforcement, for example, prohibition and proposed barring orders."

Aside from this I dont think there is any political will to make anything else happen. For the most part drink driving has become normalised and does not seem to have much shock value except when very young people are injured drink driving.

It seems the police are getting a little less reluctant to breath-test people aswell - in 2005-06, 978000 breath tests were conducted with 1.5% resulting in a charge. Every year since then, total breath tests has decreased to 753000 but the rate of charges has increased to 2.6%. So the problem is either getting worse, or the cops are getting better at knowing where to set up RBT's.

@steve cann

Thanks dad. Im sure an extra 300 plates will make 300 licence owners alot richer, give 300 extra people a job and make a small dint in 80000. However it would be interesting to see where those 80000 people were located, im sure the majority of them were not in the inner suburbs, Northbridge or the airport.

The unfortunate thing about taxi legislation is that it protects taxi owners income and puts customer service last. To get better service for people, to secure bookings and to get reliable drivers, the market needs to be less regulated.

Comment by steve cann on April 10, 2011 at 10:44am: Hit the nail on the head Lewis. Check out today's Sunday Times. 80,000 people did not receive their Taxi last year. That is a lot of frustration, how many of these people drove home over the limit. How long can you wait for a Taxi that may not ever come. Will another 300 Taxi plates make a difference if the people running the show are indifferent.

Comment by Rachel Seymour on April 8, 2011 at 12:22pm: "On any day, 2.5% of people breath-tested are found to be over the limit. Think about that next time you’re on the road. For every 40 cars you see, one of them was over the limit, risking your life and theirs."

Reeling from reading this blog, well done to Lewis for writing this piece and highlighting the issues in such a factual and intelligent format. Lewis, what is the Government going to do about this? What is the next step?

Comment by Lewis Cann on April 7, 2011 at 6:33am: I agree with you Cara that there are some people who are selfish and ignorant - not much you can do to change that, but I've found that people who are simply selfish will accept a free offer of a designated driver or taxi.

On the other side of the coin, I think some people are control freaks. Because they could not accept in their mind ever losing control, even if they do get drunk they convince themselves they are in control enough to safely drive. These people won't even accept a free ride, because they "don't need it"

So on one hand there are people who need enforcement, regulation and alternatives, on the other hand there are people who need to understand that its ok to not be able to drive, which can only occur through gradual behaviour change. Of course there are some other in betweens, like "invincible teens" and alcoholics, but those are issues beyond just drink driving.

Comment by Cara Templeman on April 6, 2011 at 11:17pm: Thank you so much. I get absolutely furious about this disgusting behavior. Drink driving kills innocent people, someone's mother, father, brother, sister and yet the laws are pathetic with many simply reoffending. There needs to be better, safer public transport but to be honest i think that generally people are selfish and truly don't care about their actions. I really like what you are doing and I wish you all the best in changing a culture that we should be ashamed of.