The safest way home

If you’re well into your cups after a night on the town and wouldn’t mind being driven home in something a tad classier than a taxi, the new U Drink I Drive service provides well-trained and well-mannered chauffeurs. They’ll take care of your own car, too, wherever you left it, and all at a reasonable fee.
Worry-free partying is even easier now that 24-year-old college classmates Nichamon Wiriyalampa and Sirasom Borisutsuwan have decided to do something about drunk driving with this safe and sensible service. There surely have to be many takers in Thailand – the world’s third-worst country for traffic accidents, a lot of which are blamed on booze.
“People usually aren’t drunk when they leave home, so it’s okay to drive,” says Nichamon. “The problem is at the end of the night, when they’re intoxicated and try to drive back home.
“A lot of partygoers know where the police spotchecks are around Bangkok and can avoid having to take a breathalyser test and thus avoid jail time or a handsome fine. But our service isn’t about dodging the law – it’s about saving the lives of both the drivers and other people.”
U Drink I Drive is completely user-friendly. You call the dispatch centre at least 30 minutes before you want to head home, anytime from 10pm to 4am. Tell them where you are and where you’re going, plus the name of someone else to contact if you pass out in the back seat en route or are just too smashed to communicate.
You get an SMS to confirm the arrangement, and that’s it. Now you can enjoy happy hour and let it turn into happy wee hours without fretting about cops, crashes – or premature death. Of all the things we do that are fun and exciting, drinking and driving should never be on the same agenda.
U Drink I Drive has a small army of great drivers on call, trained and supervised by the Limousine Express Group. They wear a video camera so that headquarters can monitor your progress in real time. GPS is used to locate keep track of both the chauffeur and your own car.
And all of this is going to cost you just Bt500 for the first 50 kilometres, within the Bangkok metropolitan area. Heck, the driver even shows up with a bottle of water and a cold towel. And women can request a female driver if they prefer.
“I’m happy that finally we have this kind of service,” says party enthusiast Wiwat Patcharinsak. “Normally I plan my nights out well and I often take a taxi when I drink. But you know taxi drivers in Bangkok – they’re picky and unreliable, and oftentimes they don’t want to go where you want to go.
“So sometimes I have to drive, but I try to restrain my drinking and keep my eyes out for police checkpoints. I once ran into one and had to park and hide at a 7-Eleven until dawn, when they finally left. It wasn’t fun, I can tell you.”
Most drinking drivers know where the spotchecks usually are. They also know that not wearing a seatbelt, or a helmet on a bike, or blowing the speed limit, or not using child restraints aren’t going to draw anywhere near the heavy punishment that drunk driving demands. If you have half a milligram of alcohol in your blood, you could spend a year in prison, and get hit up for Bt20,000 to boot.
If the cops had noticed Wiwat avoiding their checkpoint they could have charged him with reckless driving and failing to comply with official orders. That’s good for three months in jail and a Bt10,000 fine. And, of course, if you injure someone while driving drunk, consider the penitentiary your new home.
“I became a criminal because of four glasses of wine,” says the source, who prefers to remain anonymous. “I felt perfectly fine and I was confident I could drive safely – I’d done this hundreds of times! But it turned out I had .80 milligrams of alcohol in my blood.
 “At first I blamed my bad luck for running into a checkpoint, but then I realised that, not only was I breaking the law, but also putting lives in danger. If something horrible had happened that night, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
The source, who vowed to never drink and drive again, had to do 12 hours of social work alongside other convicted offenders, including drug peddlers, snatch thieves and burglars. She also paid a Bt20,000 fine, is serving two years’ probation and lost her driver’s licence for six months.
Despite the best efforts of governments, law-enforcement authorities and educators, 1.24 million people are killed every year in road accidents, according to the World Health Organisation’s “Global Status Report on Road Safety 2013”. Between 20 million and 50 million people sustain non-fatal injuries each year.
And the report says Thailand has the world’s third-highest traffic-accident rate, a deplorable record topped only by the Dominican Republic and the tiny South Pacific island of Niue.
In Bangkok alone there’s at least one death and 41 injuries from road accident every day. Forty per cent result from drunk driving. Pick up the phone and ask for a lift home.

THINK, THEN DRINK
The U Drink I Drive service is available in the Bangkok metropolitan area daily from 10pm to 4am.
Find out more at (091) 080 9108 and www.Facebook.com/UdrinkIDrive.th.