Holiday travel: Take charge of your own safety

Over the past few weeks, public safety agencies and private entities have hammered home the message that we all need to work together to make the holiday season safe. The People Daily family supports these efforts.

During this time of year, there’s typically a significant increase in travel, with more people driving long distances or using public transport to visit their families. This higher traffic volume creates elevated risks on our roadways.

There’s also an increase in theft and property crimes during this period. With many people away from their homes, burglars may see opportunities to break in and steal.

On top of that, social gatherings during the holidays often involve heavy consumption of alcohol. This can lead to impaired driving that could result in deadly crashes.

While what seems like an overload of safety messages may make us jaded, we need to recognise their urgency and remember that public safety efforts must be complemented with personal responsibility.

That means individual citizens need to make responsible choices. They should properly secure their homes before they leave, drive carefully and monitor their use of alcohol. These are personal choices that combine to make our roads and communities safer.

But the public safety messages shouldn’t lull us into the lazy posture that we have a Big Brother protecting us. People who are old enough to obtain driver’s licences, for example, are also old enough to vote, have families and serve on committes. They are not children to wait for the government or its agencies to make decisions for them.

We need to think of this as a partnership – citizens taking primary responsibility for their own safety and public agencies providing the information and emergency support that helps make individual efforts more effective.

As we have seen numerous times in our lives, one person’s safety choices often affect others in the community.

When someone drives under the influence of alcohol or drugs, they put others at risk. The public safety messages we have been hearing from the police and other agencies reinforce how our individual choices impact our collective well-being.

As we travel during this holiday season, we may see greater police presence on our highways.

This shouldn’t be a cause for anxiety, even with our history of police extortion and public acquiescence in this form of corruption. Drivers who break the law should be referred to the appropriate agencies for prosecution, not be extorted.

Police should not be seen as triggers for problems but as problem solvers – providing information to travellers, helping them find their way to their destinations or to the nearest hospitals and other facilities.

Drive carefully. Help a fellow traveller who may be in distress. Reach out to the police if you see road behaviour that bothers you. Be safe.