The photos on the front page of the paper last week were simply heartbreaking. Two mothers holding each other as they looked at pictures of daughters they will never again hold in their arms. A dad wiping tears from his eyes as he watched a slide show of the young lady who will always be his little girl but who is no longer around to grow into the amazing woman she held out promise to be. And a man in a prison jumpsuit with tears streaming down his face as he viewed the pictures of the two girls whose lives he took while driving drunk. There were no winners in the courtroom that day. There were only people whose hearts were broken and whose lives were forever altered by one single decision made over two years ago, the decision to drive drunk.
I’m not sure what else society can say or do to get people to understand what a horror drunken driving is. I don’t know what else we can do to convince people that when in doubt, err on the side of caution and call a cab. I don’t know what other advice we can give people after they’ve tried to take the keys away and been met by belligerence and anger as their drunk friends insist they can drive.
When I was growing up, drunk driving was a legitimate excuse for the devastation left behind after causing an accident. You were not guilty because you were too incapacitated by drink to know what you were doing. It has taken decades to change that attitude. But every time we think we’re gaining ground, there’s another drunk driving tragedy and we wonder all over again how that driver could have possibly not gotten the message. Because we really don’t want to think that people could have gotten the message and just don’t care. We really don’t want to think that they are so cavalier about the potential for causing untold heartache and pain inherent in drunk driving that they do it anyway.
I think what angers me most is when a tragedy occurs and the drunken driver has a string of DUI convictions in his or her past. We wonder how these people are still on the street, still outside of a prison, still able to get into a car and drive drunk. Clearly taking their license away doesn’t stop them; such petty issues do not bother drunk drivers. Somewhere in their past they got the idea that driving was some sort of right that could not be taken from them. And so they drive despite laws, court dates and jail time. Until we find a way to keep drunk drivers off the road completely – aside from putting them in jail for life after a first offense – we all need to be aware that they are on the road and are not safe drivers.
As we enter the world of legalized pot here in Alaska, I hope the powers that be are able to ascertain a THC level that is as clear as the blood alcohol level we use for drunk driving. Because no one should be driving who is in anyway impaired, whether the impairment comes from prescription drugs, over the counter cold meds, pot, alcohol or anything else available in our modern society. While public transportation in Anchorage doesn’t make it easy to use the bus system for traveling to and from a party or bar, there are always taxis. And the argument that a taxi is expensive is just stupid. If you have enough money to go to a bar and drink, then put enough of that money aside for the taxi you’ll be needing.
As for the people pictured on the front page of the paper last week, their lives are forever altered. For the parents, the best they can hope is that the pain will ease as they remember the joy their daughters once brought them. For the drunk driver, his life is pretty much in ruins. The thirty odd years he will spend in jail will cover the majority of the years he could have been a productive member of society. For society at large, we will forever be deprived of the good that those girls might have provided in their adulthood.
There are no winners here, no matter how long the jail sentence. There is only loss.