Drunk driving: When one for the road becomes one too many
Broken bodies and shattered lives are the result when booze mixes with baravado.
With alcohol being ‘illegal’ in Pakistan (except for non-Muslims and foreigners), the debate on drinking, much less drunk-driving, is non-existent.
“Drive safe, yaar.” This is the typical weekend sendoff as hosts of parties and impromptu dinners begin collecting the wine glasses and empty beer cans and say goodbye to their guests. There is rarely a debate on if anyone is “okay” to drive, and for the most part, everyone gets home.
But on occasion, the tales begin to filter out — of the young men and women injured, of mangled cars, of cops asking questions, of pain and of parties gone wrong.
Pakistanis’ utter disregard for traffic rules is made even more evident on weekends, when people frequently turn without signaling, break the speed limit and signals alike and speed by so fast that even presidential cavalcades seem like a procession of turtles by comparison.
And just a few months ago, one man — reportedly driving while inebriated — ran over and killed a man and a woman on Karachi’s Korangi Road. The case was eventually settled after a payment of ‘blood money’ under the country’s Qisas and Diyat laws.
With alcohol being ‘illegal’ in Pakistan (except for non-Muslims and foreigners), the debate on drinking, much less drunk-driving, is non-existent. Unlike the US, where advocacy groups such as ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ have driven the debate and raised awareness, there are no similar organisations or examples available here. There is, similarly, no notion of having a ‘designated driver’ — someone who is abstaining from alcohol for the night and is fit to drive at any hour of the night, and most people avoid calling cabs if they’ve had too much to drink.
According to Pakistan’s driving license rules, “tighter rules apply for drivers who have been disqualified for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) of alcohol, drugs or narcotics. Such drivers will not regain their license until thay (sic) have satisfied the Medical Adviser at the Traffic Police Office that any drink / drugs problem he/she may have had is under control and there is unlikely to be any road safety risk if he drives.” Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs means eight penalty points on the license. Not surprisingly, alcohol doesn’t even get a mention in the tests required to obtain a license in Karachi.
“There are laws,” says Ahmed Chinoy, the head of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). “Drunk driving is prohibited… drinking is illegal. There is a need to enforce these laws.”
Statistics on drunk driving however do not exist, because few cases are charged officially. Drunk driving hardly ever gets a mention in the press, save for the odd report about someone being found inebriated or the occasional letter to the editor calling for stronger regulations. But the accounts of those who have been injured or even killed in drunk driving accidents can serve as a cautionary tale.
Saad Khan* was injured in an accident after his car nearly swerved off the highway a few years ago. “I was at a friend’s place, drinking — not even drinking heavily actually — and left around 1 or 2 am. My friends asked if I was fine, and I felt I was, because I did this pretty often.”
Khan was driving on a steep section of the highway and a truck came up in front of him. He says his delayed reaction was likely because of the alcohol he had consumed. By the time he noticed the truck, he slammed the brakes “a lot harder than was needed”.
“There was still a lot of space between the truck and my car, and I was going around 90 to a 100 km/hr. The wheels abruptly turned to the right and the car went out of control. It was going off the road — and there was a pretty big drop — but I just held on to the steering wheel.”
Saad Khan passed out. By the time he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by a number of people asking him if he was okay. “I was still disoriented, but I had been wearing a seat belt and that saved me from further damage. I had cut my tongue quite badly and there were bruises everywhere.” The passers-by pulled him out of the wreckage of the car, and a well meaning cab driver helped collect his possessions and drove him home.
The episode left Khan feeling nervous and he now never gets behind the wheels of a car that doesn’t have a seatbelt. However, Khan echoes a familiar refrain: that you have no choice but to drive home even if you have been drinking. “You think you should be careful and not have too much to drink, but at the end of the day, it’s a matter of whether you can discipline yourself.”
Adil Aslam* lost a friend in a drunk driving accident a couple of years ago. “It was after a party, and he was clearly drunk. I had put him in a car with a friend who needed to get home and made sure that his girlfriend was driving. After they dropped the friend home, at some point he convinced his girlfriend to let him drive. The next thing we heard was that they had been in an accident. He crashed the car straight into a wall,” he recalled. The girl survived with injuries, but Aslam’s friend was not so lucky.
Alcohol, along with reducing inhibitions, also impairs motor function and judgment. While those around you can usually tell that you’re in no shape to drive, saying this to an intoxicated person usually gets the response: “I’m not drunk.” While some may actually realise that it would be safer not to drive themselves, the majority of drunk drivers naively believe they’ll be fine, their confidence artificially boosted by alcohol.
Others have devised rules for themselves. Mohammad Ali*, in his 30s, says that he has a “third gear rule” — not driving higher than the third gear after drinking. When asked if it would not be safer to simply not drive at all, he replies, “the problem with leaving your car behind and calling a cab is that you wake up far from your car and then it›s a hassle to retrieve it the next day.”
The third gear rule seems to work for him, as he has rarely been stopped by the police. Others of course, are not as lucky.
Drive down any major city’s main streets on a weekend night, and you can spot a number of cars being stopped by the police. One by one, the drivers get out, let the cops check their car or the registration papers, and answer a couple of questions about what they’re doing and where they are going. There’s no breathalyzer test, and cops asking questions about alcohol are often more concerned about the quantities present, and the money that can be extorted, as opposed to whether the drivers are a danger to themselves and others.
“You see these police mobiles parked in Defence on the weekends and checking cars?” Chinoy says. “They are only extorting money from people who are drunk and driving. People are stopped; they pay the police and then go away.”
Khan recalls having been stopped by the police. “Once, they found beer in the car and the other time, they could smell it on my breath. One cop was drunk himself, so he let me go.” But he said no officer has ever tried to take him to the police station or the hospital. “They assume they can get money or alcohol out of the person, and that’s how it usually ends.”
DSP Zameer Abbasi, who has served at the Gizri and Frere police stations in Karachi, doesn’t dispute that officers are often paid off. But he claims it depends on how cops are “tuned” by their in-charge, quoting episodes where he’s stopped influential young men in Karachi for traffic violations. According to him, police officers haul away anyone driving under the influence for a blood test to ascertain the level of alcohol in their system. “If someone is rude and is misbehaving, then they are definitely taken in,” he stresses. “The person and the car are both booked.” Those driving under the influence, he says, are always found in the upscale neighbourhood of Defence and are men aged between 20 and 30.
Ideally, Chinoy says, these drivers need to be taken right away to a public hospital to be tested and charged accordingly. But, as always, the problem in Pakistan boils down to enforcement: Chinoy says medico-legal officers can be bribed to produce any report one wants. DSP Abbasi has another complaint: that if the “level of alcohol is less, then the report is ‘reserved’ by the medico-legal officer, and the police have no authority.”
Dr Seemin Jamali, who heads the Casualty department at Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, describes the profile of those who end up in the hospital after drunk driving incidents. “Usually these are people who enjoy having a drink, and then they start driving. They’re very prone to having accidents, often crashing their car into poles or on traffic islands. They are brought into the hospital by ambulances or passers-by.”
For the few who end up going through the legal process, charges are usually filed under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code that include unintentional murder committed as a result of ‘rash or negligent driving’, which carries a 10-year sentence and diyat. ‘Rash driving’ that endangers lives carries a two-year sentence and/or a Rs1000 fine.
DSP Abbasi believes that the punishments for drunk driving need to be made stricter, and more weight should be given to police officers’ testimony in court. The CPLC chief notes that the reason these cases are never reported in the press is because there is always a settlement, a “muk mukaa”.
Aslam, whose friend died in a tragic car crash, says that there should be repercussions for driving under the influence of alcohol and that the priorities of the police need to change. “Instead of looking for booze, the police should be looking for drunk drivers. The focus should not be on ‘badnaami’. Serious action should be taken — it shouldn’t be a Rs500 payoff. There should be no social stigma attached to it.”
Given that the police force is barely equipped to investigate simple cases of theft, let alone testing for drunk driving, it isn’t surprising that these cases end up being haggled over and settled. But at the end of the day, is this the state’s responsibility? Most people are willfully ignorant of the consequences of getting behind the wheel with even one drink in their system, let alone more, unaware that they could easily become a statistic tomorrow.
“It was always in the back of my head,” Aslam says, when asked whether anything had changed as a result of his friend dying in the accident. “We should go out with a driver now, but we still don’t. It is totally out of convenience — ‘the driver isn’t available, he’s been awake since the morning’. It’s stupid. We should’ve learnt our lesson. I’ve failed to realise why we’re not more careful. That’s one of the things that strike me over and over again.”
The standard field tests:
• Try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.
• Tip your head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of your nose with the index finger.
• Stand on one foot.
• Recite all or part of the alphabet, forwards or backwards.
If you feel that you, or someone you know, is too drunk to drive, here’s how you can be sure
Administer the (In)sobriety test
You are considered drunk if you...
• Can’t talk without slurring words.
• Cannot multitask.
• Have weak coordination, control, and reaction time.
• Thinking appears to have slowed.
You’re never too drunk to use an app
• If you have nobody around to take your test, download the “BreathalEyes” app on your IPhone. This app lets you know if you’re too drunk to get behind the wheel. It tracks eye movement to estimate the blood alcohol level and discerns the eye waggle from left to right as you look at the maximum deviation from side to side.
Look me in the eyes! Here is how you can make sure your friend is not too drunk to drive back home:
• The Eye Jerk: The horizontal gaze “nystagmus” is an involuntary jerking of the eyes when they attempt to follow an object moving across their field of vision horizontally. Move your finger across your friend’s field of vision. If the person is under the influence of alcohol you’ll notice that the eyes will jerk. The greater the level of intoxication, the more profound the jerking.
• The Eye Bounce: Another noticeable sign of intoxication is that the eyes “bounce” (literally!) when they are at the extreme limit of horizontal tracking (i.e. not able to move any farther in that direction).
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 17th, 2013.
Like Express Tribune Magazine on Facebook to stay informed and join the conversation.
But on occasion, the tales begin to filter out — of the young men and women injured, of mangled cars, of cops asking questions, of pain and of parties gone wrong.
Pakistanis’ utter disregard for traffic rules is made even more evident on weekends, when people frequently turn without signaling, break the speed limit and signals alike and speed by so fast that even presidential cavalcades seem like a procession of turtles by comparison.
And just a few months ago, one man — reportedly driving while inebriated — ran over and killed a man and a woman on Karachi’s Korangi Road. The case was eventually settled after a payment of ‘blood money’ under the country’s Qisas and Diyat laws.
With alcohol being ‘illegal’ in Pakistan (except for non-Muslims and foreigners), the debate on drinking, much less drunk-driving, is non-existent. Unlike the US, where advocacy groups such as ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ have driven the debate and raised awareness, there are no similar organisations or examples available here. There is, similarly, no notion of having a ‘designated driver’ — someone who is abstaining from alcohol for the night and is fit to drive at any hour of the night, and most people avoid calling cabs if they’ve had too much to drink.
According to Pakistan’s driving license rules, “tighter rules apply for drivers who have been disqualified for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) of alcohol, drugs or narcotics. Such drivers will not regain their license until thay (sic) have satisfied the Medical Adviser at the Traffic Police Office that any drink / drugs problem he/she may have had is under control and there is unlikely to be any road safety risk if he drives.” Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs means eight penalty points on the license. Not surprisingly, alcohol doesn’t even get a mention in the tests required to obtain a license in Karachi.
“There are laws,” says Ahmed Chinoy, the head of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). “Drunk driving is prohibited… drinking is illegal. There is a need to enforce these laws.”
Statistics on drunk driving however do not exist, because few cases are charged officially. Drunk driving hardly ever gets a mention in the press, save for the odd report about someone being found inebriated or the occasional letter to the editor calling for stronger regulations. But the accounts of those who have been injured or even killed in drunk driving accidents can serve as a cautionary tale.
Saad Khan* was injured in an accident after his car nearly swerved off the highway a few years ago. “I was at a friend’s place, drinking — not even drinking heavily actually — and left around 1 or 2 am. My friends asked if I was fine, and I felt I was, because I did this pretty often.”
Khan was driving on a steep section of the highway and a truck came up in front of him. He says his delayed reaction was likely because of the alcohol he had consumed. By the time he noticed the truck, he slammed the brakes “a lot harder than was needed”.
“There was still a lot of space between the truck and my car, and I was going around 90 to a 100 km/hr. The wheels abruptly turned to the right and the car went out of control. It was going off the road — and there was a pretty big drop — but I just held on to the steering wheel.”
Saad Khan passed out. By the time he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by a number of people asking him if he was okay. “I was still disoriented, but I had been wearing a seat belt and that saved me from further damage. I had cut my tongue quite badly and there were bruises everywhere.” The passers-by pulled him out of the wreckage of the car, and a well meaning cab driver helped collect his possessions and drove him home.
The episode left Khan feeling nervous and he now never gets behind the wheels of a car that doesn’t have a seatbelt. However, Khan echoes a familiar refrain: that you have no choice but to drive home even if you have been drinking. “You think you should be careful and not have too much to drink, but at the end of the day, it’s a matter of whether you can discipline yourself.”
Adil Aslam* lost a friend in a drunk driving accident a couple of years ago. “It was after a party, and he was clearly drunk. I had put him in a car with a friend who needed to get home and made sure that his girlfriend was driving. After they dropped the friend home, at some point he convinced his girlfriend to let him drive. The next thing we heard was that they had been in an accident. He crashed the car straight into a wall,” he recalled. The girl survived with injuries, but Aslam’s friend was not so lucky.
Alcohol, along with reducing inhibitions, also impairs motor function and judgment. While those around you can usually tell that you’re in no shape to drive, saying this to an intoxicated person usually gets the response: “I’m not drunk.” While some may actually realise that it would be safer not to drive themselves, the majority of drunk drivers naively believe they’ll be fine, their confidence artificially boosted by alcohol.
Others have devised rules for themselves. Mohammad Ali*, in his 30s, says that he has a “third gear rule” — not driving higher than the third gear after drinking. When asked if it would not be safer to simply not drive at all, he replies, “the problem with leaving your car behind and calling a cab is that you wake up far from your car and then it›s a hassle to retrieve it the next day.”
The third gear rule seems to work for him, as he has rarely been stopped by the police. Others of course, are not as lucky.
Drive down any major city’s main streets on a weekend night, and you can spot a number of cars being stopped by the police. One by one, the drivers get out, let the cops check their car or the registration papers, and answer a couple of questions about what they’re doing and where they are going. There’s no breathalyzer test, and cops asking questions about alcohol are often more concerned about the quantities present, and the money that can be extorted, as opposed to whether the drivers are a danger to themselves and others.
“You see these police mobiles parked in Defence on the weekends and checking cars?” Chinoy says. “They are only extorting money from people who are drunk and driving. People are stopped; they pay the police and then go away.”
Khan recalls having been stopped by the police. “Once, they found beer in the car and the other time, they could smell it on my breath. One cop was drunk himself, so he let me go.” But he said no officer has ever tried to take him to the police station or the hospital. “They assume they can get money or alcohol out of the person, and that’s how it usually ends.”
DSP Zameer Abbasi, who has served at the Gizri and Frere police stations in Karachi, doesn’t dispute that officers are often paid off. But he claims it depends on how cops are “tuned” by their in-charge, quoting episodes where he’s stopped influential young men in Karachi for traffic violations. According to him, police officers haul away anyone driving under the influence for a blood test to ascertain the level of alcohol in their system. “If someone is rude and is misbehaving, then they are definitely taken in,” he stresses. “The person and the car are both booked.” Those driving under the influence, he says, are always found in the upscale neighbourhood of Defence and are men aged between 20 and 30.
Ideally, Chinoy says, these drivers need to be taken right away to a public hospital to be tested and charged accordingly. But, as always, the problem in Pakistan boils down to enforcement: Chinoy says medico-legal officers can be bribed to produce any report one wants. DSP Abbasi has another complaint: that if the “level of alcohol is less, then the report is ‘reserved’ by the medico-legal officer, and the police have no authority.”
Dr Seemin Jamali, who heads the Casualty department at Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, describes the profile of those who end up in the hospital after drunk driving incidents. “Usually these are people who enjoy having a drink, and then they start driving. They’re very prone to having accidents, often crashing their car into poles or on traffic islands. They are brought into the hospital by ambulances or passers-by.”
For the few who end up going through the legal process, charges are usually filed under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code that include unintentional murder committed as a result of ‘rash or negligent driving’, which carries a 10-year sentence and diyat. ‘Rash driving’ that endangers lives carries a two-year sentence and/or a Rs1000 fine.
DSP Abbasi believes that the punishments for drunk driving need to be made stricter, and more weight should be given to police officers’ testimony in court. The CPLC chief notes that the reason these cases are never reported in the press is because there is always a settlement, a “muk mukaa”.
Aslam, whose friend died in a tragic car crash, says that there should be repercussions for driving under the influence of alcohol and that the priorities of the police need to change. “Instead of looking for booze, the police should be looking for drunk drivers. The focus should not be on ‘badnaami’. Serious action should be taken — it shouldn’t be a Rs500 payoff. There should be no social stigma attached to it.”
Given that the police force is barely equipped to investigate simple cases of theft, let alone testing for drunk driving, it isn’t surprising that these cases end up being haggled over and settled. But at the end of the day, is this the state’s responsibility? Most people are willfully ignorant of the consequences of getting behind the wheel with even one drink in their system, let alone more, unaware that they could easily become a statistic tomorrow.
“It was always in the back of my head,” Aslam says, when asked whether anything had changed as a result of his friend dying in the accident. “We should go out with a driver now, but we still don’t. It is totally out of convenience — ‘the driver isn’t available, he’s been awake since the morning’. It’s stupid. We should’ve learnt our lesson. I’ve failed to realise why we’re not more careful. That’s one of the things that strike me over and over again.”
The standard field tests:
• Try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.
• Tip your head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of your nose with the index finger.
• Stand on one foot.
• Recite all or part of the alphabet, forwards or backwards.
If you feel that you, or someone you know, is too drunk to drive, here’s how you can be sure
Administer the (In)sobriety test
You are considered drunk if you...
• Can’t talk without slurring words.
• Cannot multitask.
• Have weak coordination, control, and reaction time.
• Thinking appears to have slowed.
You’re never too drunk to use an app
• If you have nobody around to take your test, download the “BreathalEyes” app on your IPhone. This app lets you know if you’re too drunk to get behind the wheel. It tracks eye movement to estimate the blood alcohol level and discerns the eye waggle from left to right as you look at the maximum deviation from side to side.
Look me in the eyes! Here is how you can make sure your friend is not too drunk to drive back home:
• The Eye Jerk: The horizontal gaze “nystagmus” is an involuntary jerking of the eyes when they attempt to follow an object moving across their field of vision horizontally. Move your finger across your friend’s field of vision. If the person is under the influence of alcohol you’ll notice that the eyes will jerk. The greater the level of intoxication, the more profound the jerking.
• The Eye Bounce: Another noticeable sign of intoxication is that the eyes “bounce” (literally!) when they are at the extreme limit of horizontal tracking (i.e. not able to move any farther in that direction).
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 17th, 2013.
Like Express Tribune Magazine on Facebook to stay informed and join the conversation.