Killers at the Wheel

Here’s a disturbing new federal statistic that unfortunately got buried in the recent trauma: Despite all the new laws in recent years, public service ads and designated drivers, last year 16,653 Americans died in alcohol-related traffic accidents, fully 40% of all traffic fatalities. That’s up from 38% in 1999. They perish one, two, maybe six at a time and certainly not on national TV. But drunk-driving victims are just as dead as any other homicide victim.

This is the first time the alcohol-involved percentage has increased since 1986, when the nation began the unnecessarily difficult process of getting serious about such slaughter. Highway deaths involving children, pedestrians, bicycle riders and large trucks declined last year. But drunks killing and being killed? They’re increasing--someone dies this way now about every 30 minutes. Can any conscious person still doubt the lethal dangers inexorably linked with drinking alcohol and driving? Is there any excuse for a drinker getting behind the wheel of a two-ton machine when incapable of discerning one lane from another? Experts speculate that social drinkers have learned the antisocial nature of such behavior and that we’re down now to the hard-core drinking drivers. About time.

New state laws lowering permissible blood alcohol content have helped, as have video cameras in patrol cars and medical and psychological treatment. But obviously it’s not enough. Too many repeat offenders get first-time punishment. Drunk drivers--and the judges who sentence them--need to hear, to grasp and to feel the full weight of American society’s opprobrium.

Smokers now know the social scorn and unacceptability of the secondary fallout from their habit. What about the more immediate deadly fallout from drinking drivers? We enforce no-smoking sections in restaurants and no-drinking sections at ballgames. Let’s enforce no-drunk roadways.

How many more crowds of 16,653 must perish before we get the message that we’ve each got to deliver this message of unacceptability to those who drink and claim they’re fine to drive?