There is no joy for reporters to cover stories involving death. There is no thrill of the big scoop when we witness the heartbreaking loss caused by an accident or crime. We do not forget when we see the strong, everlasting love a parent or spouse casually wasted by some thoughtless but deadly act committed by a stranger.
These things stay with us. A mother leads a reporter into a small pink bedroom where her 17-year-old daughter grew up. Favourite stuffies lean against the pillow waiting. A half-filled bottle of hand lotion sits unused for years among the objects of a young woman’s life on the dresser – hairbrushes, barrettes, small trinkets and souvenirs from long forgotten vacations. But what is that brass box, the mother is asked. That’s my daughter’s ashes, is the reply.
Every seat in a rural courtroom is filled. Some onlookers stare stoically ahead, holding back their tears. Others weep silently as those in the family section hug each other for elusive strength. Today those who knew the young woman speak of the promise that has been lost. A father speaks of the accomplished daughter he will never accompany down the aisle. A mother breaks down. Words cannot express the loss of the light of her life. The loss of the little girl she raised to the cusp of success as an adult.
A young man sits almost alone at a table before a judge. He sits next to an older man in a suit who is a fine lawyer but not a friend. The young man stares straight ahead. He hears the mother’s words about the night of the crash. He hears how the mother could not say farewell to her daughter’s body because it was not gathered from the highway in one piece. The young man, who went to prison that day, must think of those words for the rest of his life.
The stories above are true, so you see there is no joy in writing about drunk driving. There is no making sense of something that is so completely preventable. There is only loss, yet every year about 8,600 drivers in Alberta are convicted of this selfish, dangerous act. From April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2014, that number totalled almost 44,000 criminal convictions.
Every day, on average, four Canadians are killed and 175 are injured because somebody thought it was OK to get behind the wheel of a car or truck. Mothers Against Drunk Driving estimates that between 1,250 and 1,500 people are killed and more than 63,000 are injured in Canada because somebody thought they could get away with it and nothing would happen. In Alberta, the yearly death toll appears to be nearly 90, with more than 1,300 injured.
Alberta’s transportation department says males between 18 and 21 are most likely to have been drinking before a collision. That, on average in Alberta, one in five drivers involved in fatal collisions had been drinking before the accident. The truth is, drunk driving is not limited only to young males, or irresponsible alcoholics. Impaired drivers include people of all ages (except children, of course) and from all walks of life, from professionals to the retired, from the wealthy to the struggling, men and women.
With booze flowing so freely in the spirit of Christmas celebrations, police beg us again and again to call a cab. If you can’t believe that a reporter is telling the truth about a family’s grief, please believe the police and other first responders. They have seen far, far worse.
