Caught once,pledge never to drink & drive again

“We have called in over 150 drivers whose licences were either suspended or cancelled after being arrested for drunken driving. We will make them take an oath in public to never repeat their mistakes,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Nandkumar Chaugule.

To drive home the point,the campaign also plans to rope in around 500 NCC cadets holding placards with messages at 20 major junctions for a couple of hours a day. During the campaign launch,Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Vivek Phansalkar urged the NCC cadets to come up with novel methods like a door-to-door campaigning to spread the message. “Statistics show there are around 12,000 deaths due to accidents every year in the state. The two major reasons for such accidents are: the driver is sleepy due to driving long distances in the night or is drunk. Despite our crackdown on drunk drivers,incidents like the one at Marine Drive recently continue to happen. Hopefully,the campaign involving NCC cadets will help us bring down the rate of drunken driving cases,” Phansalkar said.

Addressing the event,WIAA chairman Nitin Dossa said,“The Mumbai Traffic Police has done a great job in cracking down on this offence. In fact,it had recently come to my attention that the London and Singapore police departments had come here to gather inputs on how to effectively curb drunk driving. We hope this new initiative would also contribute in curbing this menace.