Dangers of Drunk Driving

Almost everyone has a connection with someone who has been injured or killed in a car accident. For me it is my father, who has been in many car accidents during his time with the police force. It is necessary for him to drive at a fast speed to respond to those in need and sometimes that ends in a car crash. One particularly vivid memory is him having to spend a couple days in the hospital when another driver ran a stop sign and t-boned my dad while he was on the way to help an officer in distress. He injured his back and had to get multiple stitches. However, this is not the only thing that my dad contributed to my view on driving, his stories play a big part in my actions on the road.

My dad was a police officer in Miami, Florida for over ten years, and with that comes many stories. I have heard them all, from people flying out their windshields because they were not wearing a seatbelt to drunk drivers killing entire families. He has seen first hand the way that reckless driving has affected people’s lives and he wanted to make sure I understood that before I got behind the wheel. While this was scary for me at first, but I grew to understand his reasoning behind telling the stories. I was a much more cautious driver because I knew what could happen if I was not. I was under the impression that everyone was like minded, but that reality came to a sudden halt.

On two separate occasions this past year my peers had come to class with stories of their car accidents. One girl was driving at a very high speed and tried to turn, and ended up getting into a head on collision with a tree. Her car was completely totaled and you could see the bruise from her seatbelt on her collarbone, which was the only thing that kept her from serious injury. A couple weeks later another student came in with a similar story. He was driving too fast during a turn, spun out and hit a guardrail. He was not wearing a seatbelt and ended up with a concussion and could not play for part of his lacrosse season. They both were laughing about it like it was no big deal because they never thought that they were in actual danger. Even with them being in the car during the accident they were in very high spirits and joking like it didn’t even matter, which came as a huge shock to me. I would soon realize that this mindset was an epidemic at my school.

During prom season every year they do a demonstration of the aftermath of a drunk driving incident. This year they put makeup on students and placed them in a crashed car. They showed how the firefighters would have to extricate people from smashed up cars, when they would pronounce people dead on scene, and they even did a fake surgery on one of the “victims.” The demonstration ended with everyone in the car dying as well as the people that they hit. After this, the whole school was buzzing with opinions, the most popular one being that it would never happen to anyone at the school.

The mindset that “it would never happen to me” is not only wrong but dangerous. My solution to this would simply be a different kind of presentation. A video with students their age that were killed while drunk driving showing who they were, what they wanted to do with their lives that they will never get the chance to, how their deaths impacted their families, and a story from the police officer who arrived on scene. This way they will not only see the direct impact of drunk driving, but that it has long term effects on everyone around them. I also believe that it is important to see real pictures of the crash to show them that it does in fact happen to people like them. While some may see this as harsh, it is vital to show young drivers that it does happen and that they are not invincible.

Teenagers are often reckless and dont always think about the future or what affect their actions have on others. If they are able to see the face of someone who also thought that it would never happen to them, maybe they will think more before they get behind the wheel drunk. It might not work for everyone, but if one person decides against driving drunk then it is worth the trouble.