Liquor shops on highways add to drunken driving

Radhika M | TNN

Chennai: Somal, a software engineer, admits that having a few too many drinks doesn’t stop him from getting behind the wheel of his car. “Alcohol makes me feel more confident about driving at high speeds,” he says. “My friends and I always manage to dodge the police checks,” he boasts.

He’s just an example of the many who recklessly drive under the influence of alcohol, endangering themselves, and worse, and causing injury and death to other innocent road-users. Drunken driving is a problem the TN police is grappling with, especially since there are number of liquor shops on the highways. “ECR has a liquor outlet every five kilometres,” says KNS Varadhan, who works with an NGO.

“The 50-km stretch between Viluppuram and Ulundurpet has eight liquor shops,” adds A Bhaktavatsalam, who has worked with truck drivers.

Since 2008, TN has launched initiatives to cut road accidents. By 2013, it aims to reduce deaths and injuries by 20%. Efforts include checks, fines and cancellation of licences. Between April 2009 and March 2010, the government cancelled 755 licences for drunken driving.

However, most drunk drivers get away scot-free as policemen usually record cases of drunken driving as speeding. Police admit, on condition of anonymity, that they avoid mentioning ‘under the influence of alcohol’ on “humanitarian grounds”, so the injured are not denied insurance.

“Less than 1% of police officials record the alcohol bit,” says Hamsa Seshadri of Cholamandalam Insurance. “We hire detectives to check treatment in hospitals and counter false claims.”

Congress legislator C Gnanasekaran, who was injured in a road accident, says aggressive liquor retailing by the state through TASMAC outlets is to blame. “Tamil Nadu has 7,200 liquor outlets now, compared to 2,500 in 2003. Villages may not have medical shops, but have TASMAC outlets,” he says.

Realising that drivers tire past midnight, and tend to boost energy levels with alcohol Kancheepuram district officials, in August 2008, stopped truck drivers for coffee and biscuits on the NH-4. The practice was discontinued.

“The problem is bigger, and needs more than coffee and biscuits to tackle it,” says Kancheepuram superintendent of police Prem Anand Sinha.