Causing Death on the Road

Many years ago I helped my best buddy celebrate his birthday at a bar where we drank Pernod. The year before we had visited Paris and had met a couple of French girls who insisted we learnt how to drink this peculiar beverage. In remembrance of that great time we had we started with a normal quantity of the stuff in our glasses, and by the end of the night we had bought the whole bottle and possibly we had drunk it all.

Finally we were told we had to leave because it was about 4am and they wanted to close, so I decided to take the bottle with me. We then made our way to our  respective cars and we "drove" home. I use the term loosely because I don't remember a thing about the journey, so it was more a case of the car driving itself and we ended up in my yard where the motor stalled because it was in the wrong gear.
I simply fell asleep in the car, but later I was awakened as I was terribly uncomfortable as my face was red hot. It turned out to be the heat of the sunlight directly on me, so I went into the house and collapsed on the bed.

I awoke at 5pm, holding a bottle of ketchup, which I thought was the Pernod. My mouth was super dry and my head was pounding like a wrecking ball. I asked God to please let me live; I promised not to ever drink so much ever again, which tends to mean until the next time. At some point while feeling sorry for myself my thoughts turned to the previous night, and in particular I wondered how I got home.

The thought first came to me as a flash and I immediately banished it from my mind. "Did I kill anyone last night?" It would not stay banished and eventually I had to get up and go and inspect the car. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done and it sobered me up better than anything else I could have done.

I approached the car slowly and reluctantly. As I made my way around the car there was no evidence to suggest that I had struck anybody or anything. I deeply exhaled and I vowed there and then that I would never allow myself to become drunk again if I had to drive, and I never have. That was 55 years ago.

Today I don't even take one drink of an alcohol based drink if I have to drive, but going back 55 years ago, what if I had killed someone in the state I was in? The problem is that no.one deliberately sets out to get drunk and to go and kill a stranger with their car, but one drink says it's fine to have another, and two drinks and who knows when to stop. However, the person we kill remains dead for a long time and the family have a life sentence.

Now, in the U.K. the government have announced that a person who is deemed to be a killer driver will face the possibility of a life sentence in jail. Had I killed someone back then and had been given a life sentence would I have regarded that as a fair punishment?

I probably would not have on the grounds that it was not my intention to inflict that outcome on another person, and that I was suffering from diminished responsibility as the alcohol had taken over my senses. That was the truth, but the person would be just as dead and the family would grieve because of my actions.

So, what can be done? At the back end we now know that should we drink and drive and cause the ultimate we will go to jail and rot there. Therefore, there should be a strong educational program to say this is the way it is so just don't do it.

As the Department of Vehicles are so fond of saying; "You have been warned!"

Copyright (c) 2017
Eugene Carmichael