Drunk driving disrupts more than just the driver’s life.
An ECG 100 Views and Voices student has witnessed the destruction that drunk driving can cause in ripple effects on the lives of people.
“Last year two of my friends got into a car crash drinking and driving and the passenger died and the driver lived,” Danielle Pasqua said. “They were best friends and now he’s getting sentenced to prison for years because of a stupid decision that affects so many other people.”
This event led Pasqua along with classmates Sarah Monaghan and Hugo Ballon to present on the topic during Cabrini Day. The statistics and stories that they uncovered on Madd.org, the Mothers Against Drunk Driving website, were shocking.
According to the site founded by a mother who lost her daughter because of a drunk driver, 300,000 people drive drunk every day but less than 4,000 are arrested with the highest rates for drunk drivers being among 21 to 25-year-olds at 23.4 percent.
The numbers only grow scarier as the National Highway Traffic Administration found in 2011 that 15 percent of crashes during the week involved a drunk driver but that number more than doubled for weekend crashes.
“You never think about everything that can happen unless it happens to you personally,” Pasqua said.
The point of the presentation put together by Pasqua, Monaghan and Ballon was to educate fellow students on the horrible effects of drinking and driving and about the magnitude of the problem. They provided students an opportunity to pledge that they would always drive sober and agree to trying to take action to prevent others from driving drunk.
Drunk driving costs more than just lives. The crashes that result from drunk driving cost the United States $199 billion every year with 29.1 million people admitting to driving drunk in 2012.
Underage drinking is a major part of the problem. Drinking young makes people seven times more likely to be involved in an alcohol-related crash. While one in six teenagers will binge drink, only one in a hundred parents believe their child binge drinks.
One of the three major goals of MADD that could change this major issue involves supporting technology developments. This would enable a car to determine alcohol levels and fail to operate if a driver drunk.
“I never really thought about it until that personal experience but the statistics were mind blowing,” Pasqua said.
@samjacobspa
