How will you get home after a night out with friends? It’s a question some people ask themselves before they head out the door, but all too often someone will take a fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants approach to getting home after a night out drinking. That’s when the trouble starts, because when you’re drunk, you’re much more likely to make the decision to drink and drive.
The Texas Department of Transportation (DOT) wants people to stop drinking and driving and start planning to get a safe ride home. Especially with one of the deadliest days of the year, the 4th of July, right around the corner, it’s more important than ever to plan your ride before you drink.
The ‘Plan While You Can’ campaign has been around for awhile. Along with extra drunk driving checkpoints, Plan While You Can involves stops at shopping malls to let drivers test their skills using an interactive game. The game lets the driver experience what it’s really like to drink and drive, and if you play it you’ll experience things that occur when you’re drunk behind the wheel. You could face difficulty steering, blurred vision, or experience what it’s like to lose your coordination. At the Plan While You Can stops you’ll also have the opportunity to watch victim stories that are shared from the Faces of Drunk Driving website.
Although Uber recently pulled out of Austin, Texas due to a dispute over ride sharing, the ride sharing company is still available in other areas of Texas and there are also alternate ways you can get home safe and sound. Call a taxi, ask a sober friend for a ride, or spend the night where you are; there’s a lot of choices you could make besides getting behind the wheel while drunk, and planning ahead and choosing one is the best way to get home alive after drinking.