A reality worse than death

After hearing about the horrific car crash that claimed the life of two teenage girls in St. Vital this weekend,  while aching for the tragic loss of young life, my thoughts turned to the 17-year-old that is now facing drunk-driving charges for causing the deaths.

Given her age, she is supposed to be part of the generation who is educated and aware of the serious consequences of getting behind the wheel with alcohol in her system.

According to a July 27 article from the CBC, while the instances of impaired driving rose 21 per cent over the previous year amounting in 3,700 more incidents in 2009, Winnipeg’s police sergeant Rob Riffel noted that younger drivers were getting the message.

Even Gord Kowalchuck of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) told the CBC that, “he believes as today’s young drivers get older the crime will become less prevalent.”

However, clearly this isn’t the case.

Regardless how much education, knowledge, fear and guilt you employ to beg today’s youth to stop the dangerous decision, it’s often tough to grab the attention away from teenage hormones and the seductiveness of partying.

Yet amid calls for raising the drinking age to 21-years old from Doug Mowbray, MADD’s chapter president to wondering how a 17-year-old obtained enough alcohol to get drunk when Manitoba introduced the country’s toughest laws against underage drinking this past spring, I still feel for that girl driving the Cavalier.

Maybe she listened and knew what she chose to do was wrong or maybe she was downright reckless. Perhaps she thought it wasn’t as dangerous because she was alone in the car and wasn’t putting her own friends or family at risk.

But the reality is by drinking and driving she turned her car into a weapon and put my family and friends in the line of fire as well as yours.

While death is heartbreaking and the families of her victims will most likely never be the same, the physical scars and scrapes of the driver will heal in time.

What won’t and shouldn’t heal is the fact that no matter where she goes or what she accomplishes, she once made a decision that took the lives of two living, breathing women out of this world.

That is the reality that all drivers, young and old, should think about before they start their engines after drinking because that reality may be even worse than death itself.