Facebook pals campaign against drunken driving

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘’A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defence. Don’t drink and drive!’’ - this was the message from the volunteers of Facebook group ‘Trivandrum (let’s find out how many of us are here in fb)’ who organised a campaign against drunken driving in Technopark on Wednesday.Rather than spending free-time to jam-pack the virtual space with status updates, likes, comments and smilies, these techies have decided to work for the good of the society. The campaign against drunken driving, their first initiative, was held on the main road leading to the Technopark campus. Nine volunteers distributed small cards with candies attached to around 450 motorists when the traffic ground to a halt for the red signal. Nithin S R, senior software engineer at Xminds, Technopark, who volunteered for the campaign says: ‘’We met the City Police Commissioner last month to discuss our intention to launch a campaign against drunken driving. He advised us to adopt a different strategy to propagate the message rather than going in for conventional methods,’’ he said.The team decided Onam as the right time to put across their message, as the festival season witnesses a spurt in liquor sales. The team had a meet-up on August 15 and from among the different ideas, they zeroed in on ‘drunken driving’ as the topic of their first campaign. The card also bore the e-mail id [email protected] for the public to record their pledge against drunken driving.When Althaf Mohammed, who works as a senior engineer at Honeywell, Bangalore, created the group a few months ago, he just wished to know the number of Trivandrumites on Facebook. ‘’Though it was created without any serious motive, later we realised that we could do a lot for the society through it. The group has around 50 volunteers who donate blood in the capital city,’’ he said. The team will meet up soon to decide the topic of their next campaign. ‘’Several topics are being considered. It may be a campaign for people who hardly use footpaths. We plan to welcome those avoiding the footpaths with a chocolate or a flower to make them aware of the space allotted for the purpose,’’ Nithin said.