“Southern Missouri’s first responders are on the front lines of law enforcement and emergency medical services every day.  When we find ourselves in danger, just one quick call is all it takes for the authorities to begin their response.  There is one call no one ever wants to get, however, because it is so easily avoided.

 

That is the call caused by a drunk driver.

 

We cannot be reminded enough that when a drunk driver takes the wheel it is not just one life in that person’s hands, it is also the life of anyone who might be traveling that same road.  One person who didn’t call for a friend to pick them up.

 

Of the 1,130 traffic fatalities in Missouri in 2004, 449 were alcohol related.  Nearly 32 percent of all those fatalities, 359 of them, were caused by an individual over the legal Blood Alcohol Content of .08.  That is a sobering statistic.  Just by not drinking and driving, nearly half of the deaths on our roads last year could have been prevented.  One terrible decision to pick up the car keys instead of the telephone.

 

The decision to drive drunk on each of those nights was probably made flippantly, without considering those consequences.  Those individuals thought, “It could never happen to me.”  “I am fine.”  “I know my limits.”  They were wrong, and most of them will live with the shame and regret of their error.  The rest of them are listed among those fatalities.  If this sounds harsh, it is. Like the Highway Patrol and County Sheriff units that canvas our region, I can’t accept any excuse for drunk driving.

 

During the holiday season and in the winter, drunk driving is at its most severe peak.  Our rural roads are dark and slippery on any given winter’s night.  Add a drunk driver to the equation and you have a real recipe for disaster. 

 

In rural America, we cannot always rely on the transportation available in a big city when we go out to celebrate.  Urban areas have subways, buses, taxi services and other ways to safely make it home after an evening that includes alcoholic beverages.  Those solutions can be difficult to come by in rural America. 

 

There’s still no excuse for a drunk driver.

 

What we do have – and this is a great point of pride – is a close-knit community full of good family, friends and neighbors.  Any one of them would rather you give them a call at any time of night rather than get into a car, intoxicated, and head out on the road.  In the technological age of the cell phone, drunk driving is inexcusable.  Even the bartender wants you in the passenger seat, not on the driver side, when you leave.

 

So, too, does your family, your community, the mothers and fathers of each young man and woman sharing the road. 

 

An officer of the law who pulls you over to see if you have had too much to drink or stops you at a sobriety checkpoint is doing you a tremendous favor.  The men and women of law enforcement are doing their job so the men and women working in ambulances and hospitals don’t have to. Programs in our high schools also emphasize the pictures and stories of the wreckage and destruction of drunk driving.

 

Even when the drunk driver manages to get home safe, there is no victory for anyone.  Thinking that skill or luck or anything but sobriety is what gets you home is a huge mistake.  The confidence given to drunk drivers by alcohol is perhaps the worst influence of all.

 

Please join me in making the right decisions this holiday season; don’t drink and drive.”