Change the Lane

The dimly lit road closes in and out, while each passing street light sets off a mystical haze that tails back like a falling star. Blurred vision of streaking head lights and a blasting horn jars composure for a moment, but the buzzing of the brain and numbing sensation quickly take back over. Familiarity of the surrounding makes cockiness a fore gone conclusion but the snaking wheels on a straight road tell another story. A story about drunk driving that ends far to often in the injury or death of innocent people, people who got out of bed with dreams, hopes, families, and the idea that they would see another day. Never knowing that they would be deprived of such day or even worse, to answer the dreadful knocking on their door and now live with the painful news that they have just lost a loved one. .

Drunk driving is an increasing epidemic all over the world, but even more so in the United States alone, "where in 2008 drunk drivers caused 11,733 deaths, a number that represents almost one-third of all traffic-related deaths that year. More than 1.4 million drivers were arrested in 2008 for driving while under the influence of alcohol" (Drunk Driving). This is staggering to think of when considering that if the 3,800 arrest made per day would waver in the wrong direction by just 1% we could see death tolls of up to 25,000 a year. Just 1%, can you imagine that? I don’t even want to go into the numbers if we had a 5% waver.

This is truly something that needs to be addressed and hard actions need to be taken for its offenders. We have to consider that more and more drivers are taking the wheel each day, and if we don’t try and solve the issues we have now, how much worse are those violations going to be. How many more lives of innocent people have to be taken before we decide to do something about it? We have to set an order put a wheel in motion, no pun intended, that well give us a handle on the growing problem we have running untamed on our streets. Something or someone has to make a choice, make a change on how we do things even if it has not directly affected us yet. With the growing number of violations and the decreasing value of concern it won’t be long before there could be a knock on your door.



"Drunk Driving." Current Issues: Macmillian Social Science Library. web. 18 Oct. 2010.