For Sarah Shuttleworth, the Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere (RIDE) is just too important to have it not operate for a third year in a row.
So the granddaughter of program founder John Shuttleworth made a point of ensuring area residents have a safe way to get home after celebrating this holiday season
“Obviously we couldn’t do it through the height of the pandemic, but I felt like this year would be a good year to get it going again, so I kind of got my parents and grandparents to agree to do it,” Shuttleworth said. “I thought for the 30th season it would be a good year to start.”
With RIDE celebrating such a long history, the 22-year-old Shuttleworth has had a lot of exposure to the program, but still found it useful to tap into her grandfather’s wealth of knowledge.
“I’ve gone every year since the year I was born, so I’ve learned a lot from him and my grandmother and my mom, of course, about how the program is run and how to run it successfully. So I really asked him a lot about how it started, just with an understanding of why it’s running, how it runs, things like that, she said. “So he shared a lot of his knowledge with me, for sure.”
While RIDE volunteers are committed to being out keeping the streets safe from impaired drivers this year, more help is needed, Shuttleworth said.
“Our last year was 2019, so unfortunately our volunteer list has dwindled quite a bit since then. We are in need of volunteers, the program runs solely on volunteers, we don’t have any paid staff,” she said. “So we’re really hoping that we have a lot of new volunteers, that haven’t volunteered for the program yet, to come out this year.”
Anyone interested in helping out can leave a message on the group’s Facebook page or can call 204-638-1463 and leave a message and someone will get back to them.
“The ideal number would be 20 volunteers a night because it’s teams of two, so that would be 10 teams. but that is quite a bit. We don’t have nearly that for each night yet, but ideally that’s the number,” Shuttleworth said. “Lots of people like to go out and celebrate and may not have a safe ride home, but they have their vehicle with them. So I think it’s really important to have this program running in order to provide everyone with a safe ride home.”
RIDE volunteers will pick you and your vehicle up from a provided location. They will then drive you and your vehicle to your destination, preferably your home residence.
RIDE gets underway Dec. 2, and will run each Friday and Saturday night in December, except for Dec. 24 and 30.
