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Drunken driving
| Date: |
09 April 2006 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Nicola de Chaud
Odette Schwegler
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
The abuse of alcohol costs our country between 10 and 20 billion rand a year. The human cost is impossible to put a value to. More than 14 000 people are killed on our roads every year - around half of those accidents involve alcohol.
Caro Smit: 'It really is the most painful thing because it hits you all the time. You wake up every single day and think, 'Oh my God, my child is dead'. And it is just the most painful thing and it goes on all day.'
Caro Smit lost her 23-year-old son Chas in September last year.
Rory Elliot: 'A lyric I wrote in a song after Chas passed away was 'My life is shattered and it is your head that cracked it'... because I remember how he died.'
Chas and band mates Rory and Brandon had created Plush, which was beginning to make its mark on the SA music scene. The three were inseparable
Rory: 'My life with Chas wasn't just based on the past and the present; it was based on this future, this promise, this hope, this dream that we were striving for that so many people believed we could do it. And we were this close... it was there, it was within our reach, we were reaching out to touch it. And someone came along and cut my hand off.'
The band was at the start of its nationwide tour when Chas was killed.
Brandon Prevost: 'Chas and I left the auditorium and went to go pick up some friends. And he had already made his way across the road and I saw a white flash out of the corner of my eye. And all of a sudden he just disappeared right in front of me. I mean this person just drove straight through him as if he wasn't there. There were rivers of blood literally within three seconds. I mean to see something like that! ...'
Linda Barron, who was behind the wheel, has been charged with culpable homicide and driving under the influence. She had an alleged blood alcohol count of 0.23 - that's four times over the legal limit. The court case is ongoing.
Caro: 'Chas wanted to live. He worked very hard at his career, and he wanted to live. He had everything going for him.'
Caro refuses to see Chas' death as an accident.
Caro: 'Drinking and driving is a choice you make. There is no such thing as an accident. One doesn't drive drunk by accident.'
In South Africa, many make the choice to drive drunk. Statistics around drinking and driving in this country [are] almost double those in countries like Australia and France.
Caro: 'Chas is a statistic now. He shouldn't be a statistic. He was a living person who had all of his family who loved him and who he loved.'
Caro - an alcohol and drug counsellor - is trying to make sense of her son's death by raising awareness around drinking and driving.
She has started an initiative called SADD - South Africans Against Drunk Driving.
Caro: 'We just need to stop people dying. I mean every single year we lose 2 000 of our school leavers and 25 000 others are severely injured, paralysed or brain damaged - and most of that is from alcohol.'
Professor Charles Parry from the Medical Research Council in Cape Town has been studying alcohol related problems for a decade
Professor Charles Parry (Medical Research Council): 'Research done in 2004 shows that one in every two persons fatally injured on South African roads tested positive for alcohol. You know, I talk a lot about the numbers involved, but one has to keep the human story in mind and hold that out... 'This is my son. It could be your son or your daughter'.'
Last year Carte Blanche featured a remarkable young documentary-maker, Ashley Kaimovitz
Ashley's mother: 'I think she crammed more into 19 years than most people do in a lifetime.'
She was killed by a drunk driver...
Romy Kruger: 'No lights, no licence... she [Ashley] was killed instantly.'
Ashley's schoolmate Romy Kruger and 12 other friends have joined forces with Caro as the Cape Town branch of SADD. They have created posters using images of Chas and Ashley to drive home the message.
Romy: 'And they are very hard-hitting and cutting and personal. We want people to realise that it is actually cool to not drive drunk as opposed to the opposite.'
It's a message that Chas's sister Phillipa also drives home.
Phillipa Smit: 'I have had to grow up and realise that we have to take responsibility and that it is not up to other people any more. It is up to us. Last year it wasn't a problem because I never knew of anyone. All of a sudden I have got to stop my friends doing it.'
Romy: 'You always hear people telling you these wonderful heroic, amusing stories of how they were so drunk that they can't even remember how they got home... they know that they just woke up in their bed the next morning. Someone like that killed Ashley, and that is not amusing or heroic.'
South Africans are among the heaviest drinkers in the world, consuming between 17 and 20 litres of pure alcohol per drinker per year.
Charles; 'I think the statistics speak for themselves. In South Africa we have a culture where we think we have a right to drink three or four or five drinks over the evening, have a bit to eat and get on the roads and drive... where in fact, quite rightly, we would be well over the legal limit for driving.'
0.05 - that's the legal limit. And you'd be surprised at how little it takes to get there. It's not an exact science, but for the average man, it's no more than two beers in an hour, or two tots of spirits... for women it's even less.
Rory: 'I mean everyone does it. You drink and you drive. You think - 'surely I can do it. I know that there are rules and that is there but those are for the guys who can't handle their liquor' or whatever. But the fact of the matter is, you make mistakes.'
Ian Wentzel (Advanced Driving Instructor): 'I didn't think that two beers was going to affect me at all.'
Ian Wentzel is an advanced driving instructor and go-cart racer. Last year he participated in drinking and driving tests at Kyalami racetrack.
Ruda: 'When you got involved in these tests, what did you expect?'
Ian: 'Not much, actually. I was quite confident. We had about two beers in the space of about an hour and a half. They breathalised us throughout the whole thing. About three quarters of the way through my first beer I was already over the legal limit of 0.05.'
Two beers sent him well over the legal limit and Ian started the race with a blood alcohol level of 0.07.
Ian: 'By lap six or seven the wheels really started to come off. I had a bit of an incident with the tyre wall and another tipsy driver. Eventually all my inhibitions went out the window as well. I started to cheat a bit and tried to take a couple of shortcuts.'
Despite efforts to cut corners, this ace driver came in last.
Making sense of the test results is criminologist, Lawrence Barit.
Lawrence Barit (Criminologist): 'The person's depth perception was reduced by a staggering 43%. In different words, though he would still be able to see a car approaching, his ability to see how far away it was is reduced by 43%. It is an answer to why so many of drinking and driving collisions are head-on collisions. They start an overtaking manoeuver and they have got no chance of finishing it.'
Stan Bezuidenhout (Accident Reconstructionist): 'The degree to which your perception reaction skills are affected... I cannot understand why the law is still so lenient on drunken drivers.'
Stan Bezuidenhout is a forensic accident reconstructionist. He has investigated more than
6 500 accident scenes on South African roads.
Stan: 'In the five years, almost six years, that I have been investigating accidents I do not know of a single case where the person who was arrested for drunken driving actually ended up doing jail time, which is a big problem in my opinion.'
Caro: 'Because at the moment what is happening is that people are being slapped on the wrist and they are saying, 'Naughty!'. And people say something like, 'Well, that is a first time offence'. And I say, 'Are we each allowed to kill one person?'
In Ashley's case, the driver of the vehicle has not been charged with driving under the influence. Blood alcohol levels were not taken at the scene
Ruda [to Romy]: 'Why do you believe that he was drunk?
Romy: 'According to witnesses at the scene. And the paramedics and the people that were there first said that he was drunk.'
If prosecution goes ahead, the driver could be charged [for driving] without a licence and culpable homicide. It's been more than a year, and to date nothing has happened.
Romy: 'The whole thing... the fact that after a year nothing has happened, is just saying that it is okay. It's okay for him to have killed my friend, which it really is not. It is okay for him to have driven drunk, because nobody even bothered to test him.'
It's not that the laws don't exist, it's that they are not enforced.
Stan: 'In South Africa there really seems to be a culture of acceptance. On one night there was a guy... and it was his fifth time ... and he said, 'Don't you have anything better to do?' I mean, if he has been arrested five times, why is he still walking around?'
It's taken strong law enforcement and hard-hitting advertising campaigns in countries like Canada, Australia and the UK to bring down drunken driving statistics. Effective measures include confiscating licenses on the spot, a zero blood-alcohol level for novice drivers and frequent, random breath testing.
Charles: 'For example, an adult male driver in Australia has a 50% chance of being tested in a given year. And in South Africa you can go for a decade or two without being tested.'
Experts and activists agree that ultimately all roads lead to the justice department. Our repeated requests for an interview with Justice Minister Bridget Mabandla were denied.
Romy: 'We understand that one of the primary problems is the law, and that it is not being enforced correctly. But Caro of SADD is focusing more on that where we are focusing more on changing people's mindsets.'
Brandon: 'I will never ever, ever [now] get into a car with someone who has been drinking now. And I am so sorry that it has taken something like this for me to actually want to change.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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