Drunk driving is dangerous in many ways. Alcohol intoxication can be insidious because as one becomes more and more intoxicated, one loses the powers of judgment and decision making. To a sober individual, their condition when inebriated would clearly render driving out of the question. Yet to someone intoxicated, their intoxication removes their ability to recognize that impairment.
Last week, yet another example of devastating results of this kind of recklessness occurred in
Van Nuys when a woman suspected of driving drunk ran a red light in a Volkswagen and collided with two other vehicles. The victim, a woman a Nissan which received the main force of the
crash, was killed and the driver of the Volkswagen was seriously injured.
What makes catastrophic drunk driving crashes all the more tragic is the fact that they are so preventable. If you are out drinking and start to become somewhat buzzed, you should consider slowing down or stopping. If you need to leave, perhaps a cab or Uber would be the better choice instead of driving yourself home.
Sure, it would cost the price of the fare and you may have to go back and retrieve your vehicle later, but that expense pales in the light of the staggering sums involved when someone suffers catastrophic injuries, like a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury. Even less severe collisions can still produce life-changing injuries that will require ongoing medical treatment or therapy, or multiple surgeries.
For the victims of such injuries, not only is there the physical and mental trauma caused by the crash, but there are the issues of insurance coverage and litigation, which produces its own stress. Most individuals have to obtain their own legal representative in these complex cases to ensure that their injuries receive the proper compensation and that they are not forced to accept an inadequate offer from an insurance company looking to quickly settle a case.
