Mark GarlitNo matter how much you tell someone not to do something that is dangerous, their curiosity more times than not gets the best of them. Drinking and driving is an issue that has been addressed numerous times and still there has been no significant change in the way people act. Cabrini College students are at high risks of being victims of drinking and driving due to the many students living off campus.
It just fathoms me how often preventable incidences occur. It scares me to know how much ignore the signs of danger. I know that most people who are under the influence are stubborn and do not want to be told what to do but if you are sober use your common scenes; don’t drive with someone who has been drinking!
Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) is an organization that stresses the dangers of drinking and driving to prevent it from happening. I got involved in SADD during high school. My friend encouraged me to start going to meetings with her after a friend of ours crashed his new car into a telephone pole. I will never forget the night of his accident.
It was after a high school football game and there was a lot of drinking going on. I saw him earlier in the evening and had known that he was very intoxicated. This made me feel guilty in a way, because I never even questioned how he planned on getting home and I was sober that night. I wish I had realized that his car was amongst a street full of cars outside of a house party. For some reason no one had questioned if he was driving or not.
The morning following the accident I visited him in the hospital. He was pretty beat up. He had a fractured collarbone and ribs. Despite his condition he was more concerned about what the police and firefighters had done to his car. They had to lift part of the roof off of the totaled car along with the driver side door just to get him out.
His response to the accident that day when I was talking to him was, “I saved that deer’s life,” he said that referring to the alleged deer that ran out in front of his car causing the accident. I could not believe that he was in such denial of what had happened.
To this day it still bothers me that no one that night ever questioned how he was getting home. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and the reason that night happened was for me to tell the story to you. Hopefully people will start listening to all of the respective warnings, “Friends don’t let friends drink and drive.”
Cabrini students should start to be even more cautious when it comes to drinking and driving. This is a serious issue that should not be ignored. The high number of students living off campus makes each person driving at an even higher risk on the road.
Providing transportation to students during the weekend would be a great start to preventing anything fatal from occurring. Shuttle runs to apartment complexes such as Marquis and Kingswood would be in demand on the weekends. I think Cabrini should give it a try before it is too late.
Posted to the web by Paul Nasella
