Driving under the influence of alcohol have affected and devastated countless of people’s lives. Driving under the influence is one of the most dangerous situations you can put yourself or someone else into. The evidence against driving while intoxicated is massive and it has left a long trail of broken dreams and lives. If you drink and drive, not only do you possibly put yourself at risk, but your passengers and pedestrians, and other people on the roads.
According to the most recent statistics by the National Commission Against is that 17, 000 Americans die each year in alcohol-related traffic crashes and 600, 000 Americans are injured. (National Commission Against Drunk Driving, 2003). That’s an average of one fatality every thirty minutes. Just think about that. Every thirty minutes someone’s life is cut short and families are devastated. These victims could easily be your friends, relatives, or neighbors.
The majority of the injuries related to the alcohol-related crashes are not just cuts and bruises, people got paralyzed, severely disfigured, or lost the ability to live a normal life, work, or play with their children and now rely heavily on the aid of others. The reasons why alcohol and driving do not mix are plenty. The body is a very complicated organism is everything in it has to go just right for it to function properly. Alcohol only affects how your body functions negatively. Alcohol is a downer that reduces activity in the central nervous system.
The person exhibits loss muscle tone, loss of fine motor coordination, and often have “drunken” gait. (Camping Survival, 2003). Depression and alcohol also do not mix. When people get depressed from everyday life they have the tendency to do succumb to the easy but temporary solution of alcohol. When people are depress and drink, a beer is live a potato chip, you cannot have just one.
“After drinking people usually feel pleasure and become talkative at first. These feelings are usually replaced by drowsiness as the alcohol is eliminated from the body, and the drinker may then become withdrawn. This pattern often encourages people to drink more to keep the buzz going.” (Kuhn, Swartz welder, Wilson) When people get like that they usually get a little bolder and want to do normal tasks and routines like driving a motorized vehicle. The effects of alcohol result in poor coordination, slurred speech, double vision, decrease of self-control, lost of consciousness and maybe even death.
The legal consequences of drunk driving are also severe. The more a person drinks, the more their ability to make important decisions erode and becomes impaired. After even just one drink a person can lose the ability to operate a vehicle. At certain parts in the state of intoxication, it becomes illegal to drive a car and if you get caught it can possible lead to fines, or even imprisonment. The legal limit of alcohol you can consume changes from state to state, but the penalty of driving under the influence is always severe. Getting arrested and maybe being forced to sleep in a drunk tank is just some of the problems you also have to carry the humiliation and the shame of being caught and that person might just end up with their name written up in the local news paper.
Alcoholism is a disease and it can make you do some things you would not want to and to repeat your past mistakes. More than one-third of drives arrested for intoxication are repeat offenders. Drivers with a prior DUI offense have a much higher likelihood to be in a fatal crash. (National Commission Against Drunk Driving, 2003). Repeat offenders also face the risk of ruining their own lives. They have the risk of possibility losing their license and that could also result in the losing of their jobs if their employer finds out about the conviction.
Teenagers and young adults are constantly bombarded with alcohol. From the funny beer commercials with the beautiful women who drink and from friends and other outside influences it is getting harder for kids to resist the lure of alcohol and say no. More than 40% of teenage deaths occur in motor vehicle accidents 38. 9 % were alcohol related crashes. (MADD, 2003).
Just last year alone 1877 teenagers died as a result of drunk driving (MADD, 2003). These are young people who could have possibly grown up to be the next Michel Jordan, John F. Kennedy or Mother Teresa. These kids’ lives were cut short because of alcohol. They don’t tell you that in beer commercials. There is no safe amount that you can drink and still drive.
Even one drink can influence your driving ability. It is a sad fact but it is usually too late to seek help. Today’s society has accepted alcoholism and the effects of alcoholism. People are not holding them self accountable for their own actions anymore and do not look at the effects of them. It has become acceptable to drink and drive as long as you do not get caught. They do not think of all the innocent victims, including entire families who had to pay the ultimate penalty for their actions.
If you do not think of the innocent victims on the road or the pedestrians, think of yourself. The people who get convicted can face losing their licenses; having embarrassing court appearances, press coverage and heavy fines. Many are just ordinary people who have a few social drinks, get behind the wheel and get pulled over by the police for a minor traffic violation and end up in jail because they are one tenth of a point over the legal limit. So try to manage your life, by not drinking and driving. If you do go out for a drink, try to go somewhere that you can reach either on foot or by public transportation. Think about sharing the driving and on different days with a group of people so that you can take turns at driving.
If you do drink even though you meant not to, and you went out with your vehicle, consider taking a taxi and leaving your vehicle behind. This is a whole lot better than living with the guilt and shame of having killed a person or even a friend. Do you really want to be known as the person who has killed someone because of your stupidity?