It was late at night,
and I was hungry.
That, of course, is not unusual in itself. I merely climbed into my little white foreign car, and headed toward my favorite fast-food establishment for the delectable delight of that demonstration of superb mastery of the culinary arts—the bacon double cheeseburger.
I waited quietly, patiently, at the north gate’s traffic light. The light for the Route 1 cross-traffic was green, so I waited.
It turned yellow, and I got prepared.
It turned red, so I shifted from neutral into first, but held back on the clutch.
My light then turned green, so I let out the clutch, and started across the intersection.
Zoooooommmmmm! A car whizzed across the intersection going about 50 in a 30-mile-per-hour zone, against a light that had been red for several seconds.
I slammed on my brakes, and when the lunatic had passed a safe distance up the road, I once again resumed my interrupted journey. I kept a close watch on the psychotic in the car that had come so close to turning my body into a quivering mass of protoplasm. The driver pulled into Town Hall Liquors with the same reckless disregard for life that she had when she almost crashed into my car.
A blond airhead staggered out of the car, jiggled her way around it and went running in like all the hounds in hell were after her. She must have been so blasted out of her mind and so desperate for another six-pack that all other considerations, like the continued existence of innocent bystanders, were completely banished from the narrow confines of her tiny mind.
Do I sound bitter? I should.
Not because of this incident, which was only a near-miss, and I was sufficiently awake and sufficiently suspicious toward the intentions of other drivers, that I was able to avoid becoming anyone’s hood ornament.
I am bitter because 2 1/2 years ago, one of my best friends was driving home after his last final of his next-to-the-last semester, and as he was crossing Kenilworth Avenue on Calvert Road, a drunk tow-truck driver ran the red light and hit his car exactly broadside.
Luckily, he was killed instantly.
The winch on the tow-truck crushed the passenger compartment to half its normal width at the point of impact, which was at the driver’s side door jamb.
Oliver was well-known and well-like by everyone who knew him. For his life to be cut short by some idiot getting sozzled and then getting behind the wheel of an automobile is enough to make my blood boil.
* * *
Let’s face it, everyone agrees: drinking and driving is stupid. Everyone knows that, right?
Federal Highway Administration statistics show that of the 49,268 fatalities that occurred on the nation’s highways in 1981, 50 percent involved alcohol or drugs. The catch-phrase is DUI—Driving Under the Influence. That means approximately 24,634 people were killed last year from drunk drivers.
That means that by the time I graduate, more people will have died from drunk drivers on our highways than were killed in the entire Vietnam conflict. Think about that. There are 57,939 names on the newly constructed Vietnam Memorial. In 2 1/2 years, just drunk drivers alone will kill that many people. Sick thought.
* * *
What’s the solution? Well, I have a few suggestions.
First, let’s get the age at which is termed an “adult” standardized. It does not make sense to consider someone old enough to be drafted and die for his country but not old enough to buy alcohol. We should either raise the draft age to 21 (which might not be a bad idea anyway, so in case of war we would get a more mature group of recruits), or we should lower the drinking age to 18.
Hold on, you’re probably saying that you thought I was against drinking, because it leads to drunk driving?
No, I’m against drunk driving. I have nothing against sober driving and nothing against drinking and not driving. I think people should have the right to do anything they want to to themselves, as long as it doesn’t affect other people. I think prostitution should be legalized and regulated, I think marijuana should be legal and taxed if cigarettes are legal, because they’re both bad for your health, and the same with anything else.
But, woe to you if you should screw up someone else’s life by your actions.
There should be a three-year mandatory sentence for DUI. No discretion of the court about it. If you’re drunk or stoned, and drive, you should go to jail. The penalty for being lenient and letting a drunk driver off easy, especially if they didn’t kill anyone this time, is that next time they probably will kill someone. It’s not fair to the someone they kill, and that person’s family, if you allow that.
That also takes care of lowering the drinking age. If someone is 18 and DUIs, they’ll be over 21 by the time he or she gets out.
I can imagine some people think that a three-year mandatory sentence just for drunk driving seems too harsh a price to pay for one moment’s bad judgment.
I don’t think so. Tell that to Oliver’s widow, his friends, and his family, and the 24,633 other Olivers that died last year.
There is no excuse for drunk driving. Get drunk all you want, within reason. But do it at home, or at a friend’s house where you can stay the night, or do it when someone else who hasn’t been drinking is going to do the driving back.
Andrew Coile is a junior radio, television, and film major.
First published in the Diamondback, the daily student newspaper at the University of Maryland, College Park, on November 30, 1982.
This column was published about four years before I discovered my own alcoholism, and treatment for it.
I was talking to my page editor in the newsroom after this column came out, because the paper had received absolutely no letters to the editor about it. In fact, my columns rarely generated letters, which was extremely unusual. It also makes the editorial page editor uncomfortable, because letters at least mean the columns are being read.
While we were discussing it, another editor came up and challenged me about the article. We started discussing it, and within five minutes the entire newsroom was embroiled in a hot debate about the points raised in the article. The editorial page editor just looked around the room, and sighed, “Why can’t these people write in letters?” The editor who started the newsroom in this whole discussion? None other than David Simon, who went on to fame and glory for his book “Homocide: Life on Baltimore’s killing streets” which served as the basis for the TV series Homocide on NBC.
Copyright © 1995 by Andrew C. M. Coile, all rights reserved. Please send comments to andrew@coile.com
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