It is utterly appalling that all the warnings the RCIPS have been giving over the past few weeks about drinking and driving a lot of motorists are ignoring them. There was a fatal accident on Esterley Tibbetts Highway on Nov 30 due to a driver who has now been charged with DUI and another who crashed his truck into a tree as he approached a police road check in the Breakers area early Tuesday (13) morning and arrested on suspicion of DUI. I, therefore, appeal to everyone driving out there – PLEASE DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE. It is not worth the risk, not only to your life but others. If stopped at the many police roadblocks this season and you fail the breathalyser test it could at the very least, if convicted, mean you lose your license. Just imagine how inconvenient that will be. You will be fined and you could spend time in jail. Your vehicle does not even have to be moving; you can be charged if you are impaired behind the wheel, even if you have not started to drive!

Taking drugs can also impair your driving, even legal prescription drugs and over the counter ones. Just imagine mixing those with alcohol. This is the season for colds and flu like symptoms, please read the instructions and warnings. If they warn of sleepiness and say they may impair your driving ability TAKE NOTICE.

This is also the season where fatigue and stress can affect your ability to drive and affect other people on the roads, so please be extra careful. What a miserable Christmas you will have if something happens and you have an accident – even a small one. You need to have your wits about you and quick reaction time.

The RCIPS position is this. “Just one drink and your driving will be impaired.”

I want everyone of you alive over this holiday season. I do not want iNews Cayman to have to report your accident and especially your death.

My warnings saying how the negative blogs can be harming our Country has been taken up by Lord Blencathra, Cayman’s new UK-based representative. Reporting in another news media house (that ironically has been criticised most by the premier for this very thing) he says whilst he is trying to sell a positive message it is being undermined by “things said and written by Caymanians.”

“These critics should spend a few weeks in winter in the poorer areas of Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Tower Hamlets in London, or Glasgow and then thank the Good Lord for their blessings,” he told those writing negative posts online as he referred to just a few of the many cities in Britain with severe problems of poverty and depravation.

I, too, have been accused by the premier of exactly the same thing in one of my editorials, but mine has been tempered with reasons why I make a stand against something. I have no problems with blogs that do that and there are a number there that do write sensibly making excellent points. It’s the majority that make extraordinary claims bordering on hatred that are uninformed, ignorant and almost unreadable which do the most harm. Who said, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”?

Answer: Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744) wrote ‘An Essay on Criticism’ in 1709. In it he wrote: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”

WikiAnswers goes on to say: “The modern meaning translates to mean that people with a small amount of knowledge often think that they have more ‘expertise’ than they really do. Sometimes, when this perceived ‘expertise’ translates into action, it can result in unpredictable, or even tragic consequences.”

At this present time we need all the help we can get. Let’s take heed of both Lord Blencathra and the RCIPS messages. They both make sense.