factbat.com

One of the most disrespectful, disloyal, irresponsible and detestable acts that any person in this nation can commit is that of driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated from drinking alcohol. There are so many possible innocent victims in and around the entire environment created by this insolent act, and they are not merely reserved to the close proximity of whatever collision may occur as a result.

Any person who may be injured or killed by one of these people typically is survived by a cacophony of friends and family that are suddenly, and lamentably, thrown into a veritable whirlwind of inescapable consternation and sadness as they invariably attempt to make some sense of their angst, caused by such a senseless act. Not to mention, the inebriated driver is rarely seriously injured, if at all, leaving the victims with another confused and personally invasive quandary brought about by an infuriating measure of sadistic irony.

There are certainly a bevy of groups and individuals whom are justifiably incensed by this nearly immeasurable contemporary epidemic, and they are likely working around the clock on efforts aimed at decreasing or abolishing this culturally degenerative malady. Moreover, the MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) chapters working tirelessly all across the nation are literally filled to overflowing with parents who have sustained unimaginable loss, in light of the fact that motor vehicle accidents, caused by drunk drivers, have claimed the lives of some of this nation’s more talented and auspicious young citizens.

One victim of a drunk driver that comes to mind is a young 22 year old man from Sonoma County who was a promising musician, and just happened to be working at a local club as a sound tech, to make ends meet, and was therefore placed in a position to be traveling late at night when inebriated individuals are invariably peppering the highways.

He was actually driving with his girlfriend who luckily (but likely debatably by her) survived the accident because she was safely buckled in the passenger seat when their vehicle was t-boned, on the drivers side, at an intersection by the drunk driver running a red light. I am loathe to imagine this young victim’s final thoughts as the last seconds ticked off of his bright, and obviously graciously compassionate, clock. It likely bears resemblance to the last thoughts of a father of three young children, in the car with his family, when an out of control police cruiser, in hot pursuit, t-boned his car while he was waiting at a red light, and his last words, as told by his grieving widow, were a calm and benevolently gracious, but indefatigably gravitas…”ohhh…no”

The father of the victim killed by the drunk driver in Sonoma County is reported to have said that his son would not have wanted the offender to take it too badly, or be too hard on himself and possibly waste his life depressed or lethargic, but would want him to “spiral up and out of this”.

The amazingly generous and passionately homogeneous lives being snuffed out in such an untimely and unnecessary theatre of contemptuous degradation clearly must be minimized or curtailed completely. I for one have lost some of the most personally rewarding and enjoyably satiating friends I have ever known, to drunk driving accidents…two were killed by their own intoxication with one of them taking yet another promising friend with him on the back of his motorcycle.

While these deaths are terrible and avoidable in many ways, the truth is that the consternation and morbidity they engender are not reason enough for the law enforcement community to then begin breaking the law, or abusing citizen’s constitutional rights in an effort to reduce or mitigate matters of this sort.

It is bad enough that these offensively criminal acts are being pled down to a “wet and reckless“, or even dismissed, because of a pervasive incompetence being allowed to proliferate merely to satisfy the economy of the courts, or cover up for the unreliability of BAC (blood alcohol content) test equipment or procedures. To then employ unreasonable tactics which seek to brow beat and abuse those offenders who are caught in the act, is just as illogical as charging huge fines which then prove that if you have money, you are essentially innocent.

These crimes need to be treated as what they are. Indisputable acts of defiance which are engendered and enabled by a society which is incessant of pretending that those who are ensconced with the responsibility of creating and enacting proper legislation are ultimately responsible for public recourse in these matters, while these legislators seriously waffle under a system which is defiantly and irreverently refusing to hold each and every person in this nation accountable to the many citizens who are required by the United States Constitution to populate the courts with juries of peers who must adjudicate all persons guilty of public offenses, and require demonstrably equivalent measures of penalty designed to prevent recidivism of the offense…whether the guilty parties are wealthy, poor, famous or nameless…or shameless.