With the holiday season well underway across West Central Alberta this week, many families are no doubt planning trips and gatherings to celebrate the festivities.
For most of those families the season will be largely uneventful, except of course for all the visiting and sharing of good times.
However, for at least some Alberta families out on the roads and highways this month their good times may end up being marred by encounters with drunk drivers.
And in some cases the end result may actually be destruction and death at the hands of those impaired motorists.
It's troubling to contemplate, but judging by past Christmas holiday seasons, it is almost guaranteed that by the time the new year rolls around in a couple of weeks, some Alberta families, including some right here in this district, will have their lives turned upside down by drunk drivers.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, more than 1,000 Canadians will die at the hands of impaired drivers in 2012. With a dozen days left until the new year, that equates to 32 people dying over the next couple of weeks.
And that of course does not include the number of people who may end up being seriously injured – MADD Canada says more than 200 people will be hurt in impaired-driving crashes every day in 2012.
And the costs of drunk driving are, of course, not limited to personal death and injury.
Transport Canada says impaired driving crashes will cause $20.15-billion damage this year in terms of ruined property and insurance costs. That staggering amount is, by way of example, far more than Alberta will spend on every hospital, clinic, doctor, nurse and all other health-care providers and services in 2012.
As in past years, police are encouraging residents to do their part in helping fight the drunk driving scourge. And the best way to do that is to let police know it's happening.
“We all have a role to play in keeping our roads safe,” says Margaret Miller, MADD Canada's volunteer national president. “Calling 911 if we see a suspected impaired driver is a critical way to assist police in getting impaired drivers off our roads.”
Every Christmas holiday season newspapers and other media outlets across Canada try to get the message out there that drunk driving is simply not acceptable.
And yet, sadly, those same newspapers and media outlets will probably soon be reporting on the carnage and death and destruction caused by drunk drivers over this holiday season.
If you are considering driving drunk, please, for everyone's sake, think again. And if you see a drunk driver on the road, call 911.
