A couple friends asked me how I could be so sympathetic to the drunk driver in the prior blog post. To clarify in brief, lemme just say it was the way the whole lawsuit operated that drove my post. The ease in which someone can be sued, and the way the jury in such a case is given a blank check to write, is a huge life lesson that I felt everyone should know. No matter what side of the courtroom you’re sitting on.

I also recognize alcoholism as a disease, not simply a habit. My stepfather died of it, perhaps indirectly as there were no witnesses, but he died brutally. My mother didn’t get enough to bury him from the insurance company because of his history of alcohol abuse.

I do not condone drunk driving. But I’m also of the opinion that in the court case I witnessed, the guilty party had experienced sufficient punishment, and going after him for two million dollars on top of it, wasn’t justice as much as a lawyer-driven lottery effort.

Have I ever driven drunk? Not flat out drunk, no. But I was somewhat buzzed once, and drove, many years ago, doing a 25 mph crawl from the bar to my apartment. It was probably a mile drive, if that. But does that make it okay? No. Was I too buzzed to drive? I didn’t think so, and I made it home without incident, so I must have been fine, right?

I don’t know. And trying to figure out if you’re over the legal limit or not isn’t a good idea. Odds are you’ll guess wrong; and people within the legal limits have been known to cause accidents. It’s never “ok” to drive under the influence. I’ve lost friends from high school to drunk driving; I’ve lost a family member to alcoholism. I treat booze fairly lighthearted in my blog, but alcoholism is no joke, and drunk driving has no excuses.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 12:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.