Drunk Driving by Erik Norred

Imagine driving down a long road that seems to have no end. Everything you are seeing is a blur, and everything you are hearing is distorted. You try to focus on driving perfectly but the pressure of trying to make it home safe causes your hand to shake at various at various intervals, which causes the car swerve in and out of your lane. While traveling down this road, your foot seems to be getting heavier the longer you drive forcing you to decide and what to focus on, your speed or your steering. However, those split seconds spent on deciding caused to crash into a building. This the risk every time a person chooses to drive under the influence. It is a pattern that can be seen more and more in today's times that often leaves questions that never receive an answer, for example: why does a person feel the need to drink to the point where the cannot think clearly, what can we do to prevent drinking and driving, should we increase the legal age limit to buy and consume alcohol, does poor mental health cause people to drink more, and how can we prevent drunk driving. With the main question "how can we prevent drinking and driving", if we can answer it, then we can solve the problem that this epidemic has caused.

            Before any of those questions can be answered, it is important that the history of drunk driving is known so we do not make past mistakes. Therefore, we must look at the very first incident, which happened in 1897 (Staff, History.com). On the night of September !0, 1897, a man name George Smith crashed his taxi cab into a building (Staff, History.com). When police came to the scene they immediately knew Smith was drunk just by the way he acted, also he admitted to it (Staff, History.com). Smith became the first man to be charged with drunk driving, and he was fined twenty-five shillings for his actions (Staff, History.com). This is incident is important to look at because it shows us how cops were not prepared for this situation at all. If Smith never admitted to being drunk they would not have been able to prove that he was drunk in a court of law.

They needed something that could prove that someone is drunk, however, that device would not come until another fifty-seven years. It took a little over a half of century for the breathalyzer, and it came at the right time too (Staff, History.com). By this time people were being socially influenced to drink. The pressure that society puts on people, mainly men at that time, was a lot higher than it is today. They were just recovering from the Great Depression, and they had to work all day to provide for their family, these factors caused a lot of men to drink, which led many of them to become alcoholics. However, socially it still was not okay to drink, because the media never endorsed it has much has it does in today’s times.

Fast forward another fifty years, and you will see that media has made it okay to drink, and if you do not drink then you are not interesting. Think how many times you have a Bud Light commercial, and then think about how that influences a person who just turned twenty-one, or how in movies, when there is a scene that shows the main character going to a bar when he gets stressed out. Or in music, for example, take this stanza from Power by Kanye West, “How Ye doing. ‘I’m surviving. I was drinking earlier now I’m driving.” (West). The list goes on and on about how the media has made it acceptable to drink, and then once people have spent all their money on alcohol, then they cannot afford to pay for a cab. This causes more and more people to drive while under the influences of alcohol, which increases the risk of the drunk person hurting themselves or someone else.  Now the argument that the media uses to keep on endorsing drinking alcohol, is that they are only endorsing drinking alcohol and not the driving. That the person made the decision on their own to drive the car. However, this still does not change the fact that they are endorsing manufacturers that are supplying people with a substance that causes them to potentially hurt themselves or others.

However, there are so many ways to prevent drinking and driving through technology, it is just up to the person to make the right decision. For the casual drinker who just drank too much, technology has made it more accessible for them not to drink and drive. Through Uber, Lyft, or any other taxi service app, they can order a car to come pick them up and take them where they want to go, so they do not drive while intoxicated. It is very simple because all have to do is open the app, and it will walk them through the process of order a car to get home safe. However, the safest and most responsible option is to plan ahead and get someone who would be a designated driver. Therefore, they can get home safely, and save some money. Now for the person who turns to the bottle when they are stressed, angry, or sad. Then they should seek professional help from a therapist, or go to rehab. Alcoholism is the second most common addiction in The United States, next to tobacco, and about 18 million people are addicted alcohol right now in the U.S. (AddictionCenter Staff). This is a socially epidemic that needs to be rejected socially for real change to happen, because if not then there are going to be more lives lost due to social negligence.

Our society has made it okay to live in a double standard, where it is okay to get wasted to the point where you cannot even logically think or reason. However, if you cause any damage while drunk (off the alcohol that is endorsed by the media), then you are a criminal and a liability to society. How is it okay to give someone the tools to fail, and then when they fail, blame them as if it was all their fault. Those people were only doing what they were told, shown, and heard to do. There needs to be a moral change in the media to stop endorsing alcohol if they want to end alcoholism. However, they do not want to do that, because it would hurt their profit. They would rather profit off alcoholics, who could potentially kill people while under the influence than save lives. This is why morals should be involved more when marketing a product that seems to cause more harm to people than good. Therefore, since the media does not want to help prevent people from drinking and driving, it is now our duty as good moral people to let a friend/family member know that they are drunk and should not drive home. We should either call an Uber or call a friend to come pick them up and take them home safely, thus preventing the possibility of him causing harm to an innocent person. In conclusion, it is important to hold people accountable for their actions, therefore, if a person who makes the decision to drive under the influences, and causes an accident, then they deserve to be punished. However, we need to consider the fact that the accident could have been prevented before he took his first sip of alcohol. Whether it was a friend who said, “I’m going to be the designated driver.”, or, “in a perfect world”, not making it socially acceptable to drink. That is how we can end this epidemic that is killing innocent people every day.

Drinking and driving can be related to Camus belief in two ways. One being that the people who are drinking are driving have adopted the belief that their life is meaning, and that their works in life will never contribute to mankind. That everyone should just played their role, and never deviate from their because it would be meaningless. Camus believed that life is a cycle, for example: we are born, we grow up, we do what we are shown, we die, and every person is in that same cycle. Therefore, if a person grew up with parents who were alcoholics. They will grow to be alcoholics, who choose to drink and drive, and whatever happens to them while under the influence does not matter, because of this belief that they have adopted.  

The second way is that the people are drinking and driving, because they simply do not care. They do not care about their life, or any other person’s life. This is because the person who is drinking and driving cannot sympathize with another person’s pain or struggle. Camus belief is that there is no point life, and we are just matter filled with energy, when we die the energy dies, and our works, that we did in life, are considered void. Therefore, life is pointless. If a person accepted that belief, then any person can see why they would choose to drink and drive. Because what is the point life, right? “If my life does not matter, then the next guy’s life does not matter too, right?”

Camus’s philosophy is negative and very ignorant. He believed that his life was pointless, and he did during his life is pointless. However, he is regarded as one of the best authors, also most of everything he published is considered a classic. Everything he did has been studied by many scholars for almost a century. And yet everything he did should be consider pointless. His life proves his own philosophy wrong. Life is about perspective. A person can look at the first drinking and driving accident as a start of a plague, or they can look at it as a cause and effect. The first drinking and driving accident was not pointless. The cause accident caused scientist to study the effects of alcohol, and why nobody should drink and drive because of the potential harm it could cause. Then police men got the breathalyzer. Now is the person who invented the breathalyzer life meaningless? No, because through his invention he saved multiple lives. Camus’s was a great writer, there is no question about that, but people should question what he wrote about. How can a man say “life is meaningless”, yet his life was not meaningless.

Drinking and driving is an epidemic, it is not absurd to think that, what is absurd is to think that people are willing choosing to do it because they believe that life pointless. This epidemic will only be cured when people accept the fact that they do need to drink too much to have a good time, or burry their pain from past experiences. It will be cured when people start to ask, “why do people feel the need to drink?”. Because when the “why” is solved then the epidemic will be cured.

      

Works Cited

AddictionCenter Staff. AddictionCenter.com. 2 February 2018. 18 March 2018.

 History.com. History.com. 2009. 18 March 2018.

West, Kanye. Power. Apple Music. Power. Hawaii, 2010. Music.