Ignorance and Intoxication

Each year, countless lives are taken due to irresponsible driving. Personally, I have had the privilege of not losing anyone to one of these completely avoidable accidents. My choir teacher from High School, however, was not as lucky. Her daughter had a very close friend; they hung out all of the time and they did everything together. Then, one day, he was driving and was struck by a drunk driver. Sadly, he did end up passing away. While I was not affected, I felt awful, especially since that accident could have been avoided if that driver had not been drunk.

When my sister was in her drivers ed course, she was obviously warned about the dangers of driving irresponsibly and drunk driving, as well. She was shown a variety of small clips/short films that revolved around these topics. They weren’t incredibly explicit, but it was enough for it to stay with you. Three years later, I took my drivers ed course. Mine was incredibly different. We did not talk about drunk driving that often; they only taught us what we needed to know in order to pass our driving test. We didn’t watch any films, and it wasn’t drilled into our heads that much. And this scared me.

While the driving itself did not scare me, the thought that this course was becoming less and less strict about drunk driving scared me. We had the impression that everyone drove drunk every once in a while. This should not be permitted. I believe that young drivers have to be educated enough to know that even slightly intoxicated driving is not okay, just because “everyone does it sometimes.” It should not be a societal norm. It is dangerous and it kills people. Drivers have to be able to think about other people’s lives, as well as their own.