‘One for the Road’

WE HEARD the sirens, but we thought they were just from fire trucks rushing to a fire. I called my neighbor across the street, since he is a fireman. ‘He’ll know what’s going on,’ I thought. But his line was busy. Then I figured, ‘Let me call my son Jeff. Maybe he saw what happened on his way home.’ There was no answer. Now I really started to get nervous.

My 29-year-old son Jeff had come over that Sunday night to have dinner and to say good-bye​—he was leaving for vacation the next day. About a half hour earlier, he had hugged and kissed his father and me, and then he left. But why wasn’t he home yet? He lived only a few blocks away.

I called my neighbor again, and this time his wife answered. She said she would get her husband and have him call me back; he had gone out to see what happened. While I was in my bedroom waiting for his call, a police car pulled up in front of our house.

The police sergeant approached the front door. My husband Steve, his heart pounding, opened the door. Groping for words, the sergeant finally managed to get out: “I hate to say this, but there’s been a terrible accident and your son . . . your son is . . . is dead.”

That’s when I heard Steve yell, and I ran out to see what had happened. In disbelief I insisted: “It can’t be true. It’s got to be the other guy.”

“No, I don’t like to have to tell you this, Mrs. Ferrara,” the sergeant explained. “It was very quick, very sudden, but, yes, he’s gone.” I don’t remember another thing I said or did that evening.

At 9:50 p.m. that night, February 24, 1985, our son Jeff, an outgoing, curly-haired young man, died instantly when his pickup truck was struck by another car. And the other driver? According to the newspaper reports I’ve cut out and saved, he is an executive assistant district attorney. Among other things, he was charged with drunken driving. Only time will tell whether he is convicted. Regardless, our Jeff is gone.​—As told to Awake! by Shirley Ferrara.

Drinking and Driving​—A Deadly Problem. The statistics are sobering. About every 20 minutes a scene like the one described above is repeated somewhere in the United States. Alcohol contributes to more than half of all traffic fatalities, claiming from 23,000 to 28,000 lives each year on American roads. It is estimated that 40 percent of the drivers killed on the roads in Canada each year have blood alcohol levels above the legal limit. Germany has its share of the problem​—approximately one out of every four road deaths is due to drinking and driving.

And as Jeff’s tragic experience illustrates, even if you yourself don’t drink and drive, you’re by no means safe. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States estimates that on Friday and Saturday nights, when consumption of alcohol is at its highest, in some areas one out of every ten drivers on the road is legally drunk! So how safe are you if the driver around the next curve is too drunk to control his car?

But statistics don’t tell the whole story. Statistics can’t tell the grief of the mother, like Shirley, whose son or daughter has been killed in an alcohol-related car accident. Statistics can’t convey the guilt of the driver who, after sobering up, realizes that he’s taken another’s life. As one young man lamented: “No matter what the jury decides, I’ve got to live with the fact that four people are dead because of me. There isn’t a moment since it happened that I don’t think of it. It’s always there, when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night.”

Of course, it’s up to you whether you drink moderately or not at all. But driving while under the influence of alcohol (or any other drug) is not a private matter​—not when the lives of others are at stake! Yet, how many times have you heard of someone saying the proverbial ‘one for the road’ and then snatching a quick drink before slipping behind the wheel and driving home?

Drinking and driving is a problem, a death-dealing problem. What can you do to protect yourself and your family from the driver who has had too much to drink? Before answering that, it will be helpful to consider how alcohol affects you and your ability to drive.