Intoxicated Driving by Alyssa Smith

  Picture yourself letting your son or daughter go out on a Friday night and have them promise to drive safe and to text you when they get back to where they’re going. You get a phone call from them saying they’ve made it to the concert, but you did not get a phone call from when they got home. You imagined everything would be okay and maybe they’d forgotten, but two hours later you get a phone call from the police department saying your child was taken to the hospital with major injuries. You show up to the hospital to find your child barely alive on life support and they’re friend had died due to a drunk driver hitting them. Drunk driving is now not just an issue for people over the age of twenty-one but is becoming more common within teens as well. Without helping prevent intoxicated driving, we will continue to lose so many life and ruin so many lives all because of one poor decision. Many people know of this tragedy all too well, including me and it is time to find a way to solve it.

            Intoxicated driving has been an issue since cars and alcohol were first introduced. Cars were first introduced in 1670, fueled by gunpowder, but alcohol has been around from the early Greek ages (Bellis, 1). Although both have been around together for 350 years, it was not illegal to drive intoxicated until the Road Safety bill was first introduced in 1966 making it illegal to drive with 80mg of alcohol in the body. When cars were first introduced, many people who drove them, had money and with money came, alcohol and showing to others what you have and living a so called “lavish” lifestyle. Overtime, it became more and more dangerous to drive cars, to when the first four wheeled automobile was created in 1885 by Daimler (Bellis,1). From then on, by 1889, he had created a two-cylinder, four stroke engine which is a base for cars then onward. (Bellis,1). As many people began driving, many men would drink and drive around the towns and men would develop strong alcohol problems, which led to the prohibition act that was from the first decade of the twentieth century all the way until 1933. Over time, we have created breathalyzers and blood test analysis to see the alcohol concentration in the blood to help figure out how much a person has put into their body. We have also created a breathalyzer that gets installed into a vehicle that you have to test before you can start the car in order to drive, if you’ve been caught with a DUI.

 

            Many people’s lives are shattered, and families are torn apart from loved ones due to intoxicated driving. While drinking and driving may not seem like a big deal to many people, many people fail to realize losing a loved one to this experience can cause post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression for families or those involved if they lived through the traumatic experience. Intoxicated driving mainly occurs with two vehicles contacting one another rather an intoxicated driver hitting a pedestrian walking. Either way it goes, it creates a larger number of not just lives lost but creates a larger number of broken families and people who struggle with day to day living activities. Having a friend or family member taken away to this, causes exponential damage. Anyone who knew the victim or victims who lost their lives, will be changed forever.

 I lost my neighbor, Kelsey, to a drinking and driving accident in April of 2017. She was eight years old when an intoxicated driver came and hit the back of her family’s car causing her dads seat to hit her head and cause brain damage and she died two days later. I watched her grow up and they’ve known my family since my dad was seventeen years old. After the accident I watched her family break down and hit the absolute rock bottom and I hit it with them. It took such a toll to the point nobody was eating, sleeping, talking or even driving. I was terrified of getting behind the wheel and I have been in therapy ever since and it has been two years. Her family and mine have such a strong bond now, because while we all were hurting we had to lean upon one another. It does not get any easier going through what happened and we all still get afraid to drive sometimes, have dreams of the accident and were all still mourning after two years. Not only does it affect the families who lost Kelsey, but it also affects the driver and their family. I knew the driver who killed Kelsey and after the accident she locked herself away in her apartment and became depressed and would barely eat. She lost her two kids and ruins her future all because of one decision she made April 6, 2017. People need to understand that these actions and choices they’re making ruin not only their own lives, but so many other people’s lives.

            While drinking and driving can cause an emotional and mental damage those involved, it can also affect anyone who was involved with cleaning up the mess and outcome of the accident. Many times, Intoxicated drivers run into stop signs, mailboxes, poles and sometimes even businesses’ or homes and this can often wreck a family involved with the business or home and our government has to help put forth the money to pay for the mess that person has created so others are not put at risk. Drinking and driving has no positive outlook, you risk the chance that you will ruin someone else’s life and your own.

            Also, our first responders who have to attend a scene where a victim has been involved in drinking and driving absolutely can make or break them. Every first responder has a case that sticks with them for the rest of their life and does not ever leave them. When Kelsey’s accident happened, one of the first responders said this was one of the most tragic and heartbreaking accidents he had seen. He even said during one of her trails that he had dreams about the accident and if there was another way to save Kelsey’s life. Many people don’t take into consideration that accidents based on drinking and driving and what happened at the scene can be the factor that makes them leave the job they are in right now.

 

            The most common time people drink, and drive is when it is the rodeo and fair season and people fail to realize how intoxicated they truly are when they get behind the wheel. These drivers are so focused on having a good time and many times are peer pressured into the “come on you’ll be fine, were invincible” mentality. “Within fifty-two minutes, one person dies from a drinking and driving accident, within one year approximately 10,381 people died, and 345,00 people are injured a year” (Zador 1). Drinking and driving is a problem that is growing tremendously in the United states and recently seen in the Houston area. Many people who drive do not realize that these actions have consequences and are too lost in what is going on in the moment, are worried about what their friends may think or are too scared to call someone to pick them up to realize the long-term repercussions it may have.

            Intoxicated driving affects more than just the families and friends who are involved with the victim and suspect, but it ruins many store owners, first responders and others who have seen the accident happen. Drinking and driving is more common in those who are over the age of twenty-one because, they feel that since they have been driving for longer periods of time, they will be able to handle drinking a few drinks and drive safely home. If we can put a stopping or limitation to how much people are serving, or buying, then we can help slowly stop the drinking and driving rates.

If you are a server or bartender and you can tell your customer is intoxicated it is your responsibility to stop serving the customer. Before automatically saying, “oh they are drunk,” look at; how much they’ve eaten, the amount of consumption of alcohol, the behavior and how loud they are getting. As a server, it is hard to cut off customers because we are worried about the tip we will receive, but the tip is not nearly as important as the lives you are letting them risk by over serving and allowing them to get behind the wheel. Also, finding a solution for this can be difficult depending on where you work and the management. At many restaurant’s, they do not care about how intoxicated a guest gets, in fact they are mainly worried about the profit they will make off the consumer. It does make it more challenging to stop serving when the company thrives off alcohol and they do not want an upset guest.

            The most efficient way to stop over serving is by avoiding it in the first place. There can be many ways to reduce letting drunk drivers walk out of the restaurant or bar over intoxicated, but the most important way is to bring a call to action and educating everyone on the effects of drinking and driving. Raising a bigger call of awareness to this life changing decision, became more common when the Mothers Against Drunk Driving board was created to spread the awareness of intoxicated driving. With organizations reaching out to schools and people within our communities, people can hear stories and understand the true detrimental effects of this decision before doing it.

            The Mothers against drunk driving group, started in 1980 in a woman’s house with a goal to stop drunk driving, drugged driving and to help support people who were victims and is to put an end to teenage drinking. This program (Mothers Against Drink Driving) is also used for those who were the intoxicated driver. When an intoxicated driver causes an accident or takes a life, man court officials will make them join a Mothers Against Drunk Driving board group and attend the meetings and listen to the stories of mothers who have lost kids due to intoxicated related accidents (1). Throughout the years, this group has so many volunteer ways to get involved and spread the awareness about intoxicated driving (1). They also have how to prevent teenage drinking, statistics, ways to find attorneys, hear stories of other moms, joining the panel (1). They are acting on spreading the news so far and so many people are involved in the movement in spreading these stories and to put an end to this tragic decision.

            There are many ways to help put an end to this outcome, but you can’t make everyone stop. It is always good to offer a ride home if you see someone is intoxicated or even offer to get an uber for them. There should be no excuse to drink if you are driving, because you have so many alternative ways to get home and all the solutions will be better than you getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and put everyone in danger. There should not be any sort of putting up with the outcome and whatever it may be, they should face whatever consequence follows through behind the action they have made.

            Camus’s mind was something many people will not be able to ever fully comprehend. He made sure to include “what is the meaning of life?” in all of his work without us being able to truly comprehend what he is trying to tell us (Maguire). The epidemic of Intoxicated driving does have to do with his thoughts and process of the meaning of life when it came to this. One of his main goals was to make people think and question life and what the purpose of it is. He began to make many questions why we were even alive when he brought up children dying. Intoxicated driving was a process that was done by someone getting behind the wheel and risking their life, you only get one life, one body, one time to make a mistake and ruin it all. Camus would believe my social epidemic was something that is an issue and he would appreciate what I had chosen to do because I do discuss the psychological toll and brought up death of children and families throughout life.

            Drinking and driving is detrimental and will affect someone who is involved and has the overall chance of completely ruining their life mentally. Drunk driving is becoming an issue for people all ages and is still a very common problem that people fail to realize can be permanent. Without helping prevent intoxicated driving, we will continue to lose and ruin so many lives all because of one poor decision. Overall, as a country and whole, we need to understand that our actions have consequences and effects we may not even think of. After you lose a loved one to this tragedy, it doesn’t get easier every day and the pain doesn’t go away, you just learn how deal with it.

Works Cited:

Tertiary: “BBC ON THIS DAY | 18 | 1965: Drink-Drive Limit to Be Introduced.” BBC News, BBC, 18 June 1965,

Secondary: Bellis, Mary. “Who Invented the Car?” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 24 Sept. 2018, www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-the-car-4059932.

Primary: “Drinking and Driving - Effects of Drinking Alcohol.” Alcohol Rehab Guide, www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/dui/.

Secondary: Jean.yoder.ctr@dot.gov. “Drunk Driving.” NHTSA, 15 Apr. 2019, www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving.

Secondary: MADD. “Our Story.” MADD, 2002, www.madd.org/about-us/our-story/.