hicle crashes left 22,084 people dead, many of these completely innocent victims (Journal of American Medical Association 303).
Others I know have had similar experiences because of mixing alcohol and driving. My friend Mark was one of those who drove while he was drunk. He is, as I speak, waiting for sentencing in the county jail in Orange County for manslaughter charges. He leaves behind a wife and three young children. He'll be lucky to get 30 years with maybe parole in 10 years. Mark will miss watching his children grow up, and what will happen to his relationship with his wife?
My ex-boyfriend Joe also was affected by drunk driving. He hopped on the back of a motorcycle after having a few drinks with his friends one afternoon. The bike ran into a car, and he was thrown off, and his head hit the center divider in the freeway. Joey has had eight brain surgeries. He is not the man that I once knew. He has had a plate put into his skull, loss of hearing in one ear, poor eyesight, and side effects from the medication he has to take to prevent his brain from swelling internally. His hip bones are deteriorating, and he walks with a severe limp. One day he will be in a wheelchair. He is too young for this, and I cry when I think of how all this could have been avoided.
Mark, Joey, and I are not the only ones involved with drunk driving incidents. Ten percent of all deaths in the United States are alcohol-related. Highway accidents are responsible for nearly 50,000 deaths annually, and a significant number of these could have been prevented, if the person driving were not drunk. Americans annually lose 15 million years of living from completely preventable causes (Rosato 5). Drunk driving is one of those causes. Over the past decade, approximately 250,000 persons died in alcohol-related vehicle accidents. In the year of 1986 alone, an estimated 21,000 people were killed and 320,000 people injured in accidents inv...