Driving and Driving
Almost
every 90 seconds a person is injured in a drunk driving crash, many people do
not realize how often that this occurs (“Drunk). For every one of those 90
seconds there is another person who has to come stand trial to await their
outcome from their accident. Most will be given a fine and points put on their
license. But is this really enough punishment for someone who got lucky and did
not crash their car that night? Will that person learn that drinking and
driving is bad? Or will they continue to drink in drive.
“The
average drunk driver will drive up to 80 times before their first arrest”
(“Drunk”). More often than not if someone drinks and drives and gets arrested
they will be arrested again (“Drunk”). They can be arrested a few more times
before they will actually see jail time, there is a three strike rule in Ohio.
These people should be imprisoned at their first offense. Many people are hurt
from the drunk drivers, the scary fact is that “About 1\3 of all drivers
arrested or convicted of drunk driving are repeat offenders.” (“Drunk”) 50 to
75 percent of the people who have been arrested continue to drive under their
suspended license (“Drunk”). If these people were imprisoned on their first
strike then the amount of drunk drivers would be dropped, so therefore there
would be less accidents and deaths.
Not
only does drunk driving injure and kill people but it also costs a lot of money.
It costs the United States 132 billion dollars a year (“Drunk”). If people were
imprisoned on their first strike the United States could be spending the money
that they are saving on more useful things. Such as fixing the roads, or doing
more things to help the country get out of debt.
When
someone drinks and drives there are impaired in many ways. There vision,
reaction time and judgment becomes impaired. People sometimes think that they
are better drivers since they had a couple to drink, this would be a bad
judgment call. “Impairment is not determined by the type of drink, but rather
by the amount of alcohol drank over time.” (“Drunk”) When you drink your vision
becomes blurred and sometimes doubled. When you’re driving this presents are
large problem, the person can see double of the road and also they can see the
road moving when it actually is not. The last thing that is impairs is your
reaction time. If there happens to be a person who pulls out in front of you,
your brain is so impaired that the person may not have enough time to react
before they rear end the car in front of them causing a wreck, and sometimes
hurting the person in the car. A
standard drink such as, 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of liquor, and 12 ounces
of a beer, these all contain the same amount of alcohol (“Drunk”). It takes a
person about an hour to digest a single drink, so if you were to drink 5 beers
it would take you five hours to completely digest that beer.(“Drunk”) Until
then you are still under the influence of alcohol, therefore it is technically
not alright for you to drive. Time is the only way that you can truly sober up
the use of coffee, taking a shower or trying to eat bread does not help. Your
safest bet is to go and sleep it off.
“Drunk drivers can fall into any
category of people most of the people who drink and drive are between the ages
of 21 to 25 years old” (“Drunk”). Men are the mostly likely to drink and drive,
they are 7.2% more likely to drive drunk then what women do. Also, parents are
also people who think it’s a good idea to drive drunk (“Drunk”). 112 children
were killed last year because they were trapped in the care with drunken
parents and the parents crashed the car. On the other side of that the people
who drive drunk have killed 104 children, from driving erratically or not being
able to stay in their lane and crashing the car (“Drunk”). This is a total of
216 children killed. It is unfair to the children who are put in these cars.
Most of the time the parents are repeat offenders like everyone else. “Over 1.2
million drivers were arrested in 2011 for driving under the influence of
alcohol or narcotics” (“Drunk”). This is obviously a problem in the United States;
this is why it should be mandatory to be arrested on your first strike of drunk
driving. Among these people many of them happen to be celebrities, they do not
driver drunk more often than what normal people do, but they are spotlighted
more because they are famous. In 1988 Reggie Rodgers from the Lions starts to
drink at a bar. He ends up killing 3 teenagers and goes to prison for only 12
and half months (Lake). He was charged with negligent homicide. He had
previously been arrested for drunk driving in the past but was only given fines
and points on his license. He ended up killing those three children. If he
would have been arrested the first time that he had been caught then maybe the
lives of the children could have been saved.
Another
case of when a person should have been imprisoned for drinking and driving was
when a women in Wyoming was driving home drunk and she ran into a jeep that was
carrying 8 people in it (Lake). The woman was sentenced to 14-20 years in
prison for killing all 8 of the people (Lake). This was the not the first time
she had driving drunk but it was the first time she had gotten caught for doing
it. She will pay the ultimate price for it.
There
has been hundreds of case of the careless acts of people drinking and drivers,
mostly repeat offenders. The MADD organization is making it possible to raise
awareness of drunk driving and has cut the deaths in half since 1980 (“Drunk”).
Hopefully in the future it becomes possible for people to be imprisoned on
their first strike so that we no longer have to worry about that other 50
percent of people who still drive drunk. We still must ask ourselves this until
then, will these people ever learn their lesson of driving drunk? And can be
lucky enough for them to not crash their car and kill someone?
Works Cited
“Drunk Driving Statistics.” MADD. MADD.
Web. 23 Oct 2013.
Lake,
Thomas. “Drinking and Driving and Dying.” Sports
Illustrated 118.20 (2013): 54. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 23 Oct. 2013
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