Two words to end drunk driving: Just stop

Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

The bedrooms are what I continue to see: Teddy bears on a child’s bed. A young woman’s calendar red-marked with celebrations planned. Back to school shoes still in their box. Running shorts tossed in a corner. Books on a night table, one with a bookmark midway. Different bedrooms full of different things, all stark and empty without the lives that gave them life.

And then there are the words, parents’ words, siblings’ words, the words of a man whose new bride was killed as she sat in her car in the breakdown lane. “If she just hadn’t stopped,” he said. Others said, “If I hadn’t been working that night.” “She was almost home.” “All she was doing was crossing the street.” “He was in a bike race.” “He was our life.” “She was my world.”

For years I wrote about these people drunk drivers kill and about people they almost kill — boys and girls, men and women in comas and in traction and in wheelchairs and on vents, people who are not part of the “killed by” toll because they’re badly injured, not dead. The dead are the numbers that get our attention, never mind the never-ending physical and emotional pain of the families drunk drivers destroy.

I stopped writing about victims of this problem we could solve in a nanosecond — and we could because driving drunk is not neuroblastoma, it’s not cystic fibrosis, it’s not San Filippo syndrome, diseases over which we have no control. It is a choice people make every day. I stopped writing about these victims of drunk drivers because one night after spending the afternoon with a woman whose 19-year-old daughter here for college was killed while crossing a street in Boston, I was out with friends and I could not stop thinking of this woman who had flown in from somewhere, who was alone in her grief, and sadder than anyone should ever be. “I think it’s my tears that are keeping me afloat,” she said that day as I hugged her goodbye.

And then there I was, the page turned, on to the next thing. But it wasn’t on to the next thing for her. And it would never be. And I thought then as I think now: This did not have to happen. But it keeps happening. And all the words and all the tears change nothing.

Now, decades later, in addition to drunk drivers, we have stoned drivers and distracted drivers and aggressive drivers and arrogant drivers. It is the Wild West out there, drivers on their phones, eating their breakfast or lunch, playing with the radio, with their navigation system, weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating, ignoring the speed limit, knowing that the police are not eager to pull over someone and risk their lives to issue a speeding ticket that stands a good chance of being thrown out in court.

I drive from Canton to Boston and from Canton to Rhode Island regularly. From Canton to Boston, on the Southeast Expressway, it’s all about tailgating and weaving in and out. And cutting off whoever is in the way. Unless it’s night. Then there are speeders, too. On Route 95 going south, the aggression is different. It’s all about speed. If you’re not going 80, you will be passed. On the right. On the left. Mostly by 18-wheelers.

I have been driving since the day I turned 16 and I have never been frightened. Driving frightens me now.

I am especially afraid for people who are new drivers. Do they learn in driver’s ed that all motorists do not stop for red lights? That when a light goes from green to yellow, many motorists don’t slow down? They speed up. At the intersection of Route 1 and University Avenue in Norwood, I have seen this dozens of times. A minimum of three, often five drivers run every red light. Are these very vulnerable, new drivers taught that green does not mean to go instantly? It means to look to your left, to your right, then to your left again. Do these very vulnerable new drivers know that the space they’re required to leave between their car and the car in front of them is not only the law but an invitation for some other driver to swerve into that space?

The flouting of laws and the rising number of car crashes should scare us all.

A few weeks ago, I read “Finding the Words,” a book about grief written by Colin Campbell whose two teenage children were killed by a drunk driver in California in 2019. Campbell was driving. His wife was in the passenger seat.

“The drunk driver T-boned us, hitting the rear passenger door,” he wrote. “At impact, my car was spun five hundred and forty degrees around … She never even touched the brakes. She slammed into us at full speed. Ninety miles an hour. Too drunk and stoned to even slow down.” He and his wife survived the crash. His children, Ruby, 17, and Hart, 14, did not.

We get what we tolerate. And we tolerate this. It’s a sign of the times. There is intolerance and disregard for other people everywhere. Most of it we can’t control. But we can control what we consume before we get behind the wheel and how we behave when we are behind the wheel.

We have the power to make choices. If we choose right, lives will be saved.