And he hit their car broadside. The girl, the daughter of our family s friends, was killed instantly. The driver of the pickup truck was drunk. An innocent victim, killed unfairly, needlessly, by a drunk driver. Maybe you can recall several cases, but any are too many.
Statistics show such alcohol-related violations occur in more than half the fatal accidents.
And in most cases, the drunk driver is seriously drunk, well beyond any legal limit. The easy answer is zero tolerance. They do it in other countries, where drunk drivers lose their right to drive, or serve jail time, or suffer heavy financial penalties, and they ve pretty well done away with drinking and driving. That probably won t happen in the U.S., or in Minnesota, because drinking social drinking, nightclub hopping, having a few belts with dinner is too ingrained in our society to be extinguished. Having a designated driver is the easy way out, but most people who have had too much to drink don t think it s too much, and when their ability to reason is compromised by alcohol, their ability to make such judgments are seriously impaired.