BloG PoSt 4- Drink-Driving

Article 4 URl:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/cgi-bin/search/search_7days.pl?status=&search=drink%20driving&id=275329

Recently, newspapers have been screaming over the punishment for Christopher Lee. He was charged with drink driving, and as such causing injury to a motorcyclist and the pillion rider in his hit and run accident. The jail and fine term for the famed actor will no doubt tarnish his reputation and leave his future in doubt. No doubt, he is appealing against the sentence.

For this article, I would like to respond to the issues of drink driving, escape from the scene and the appealing.

The problem with drink driving occurs after one tries to unwind after a hard day’s work by having a cup or two. There is certainly no problem in doing so, but there certainly is with drink driving.

After one is drunk, one should never drive, as drinking blurs your vision and slows down your reaction speed. If he drives, all h*ll breaks loose, as he might knock down many pedestrians, ending the future endeavors of many and causing their families grief. This act of irresponsibility should be condoned; for it is easy to get a cab or one’s friend to send you home after drinking. Given the saying “Drink-Driving shatters lives”, I have come to realized that not only drivers are not caring for others, but also their own lives too.

The underlying reason as to why people drink and drive is simply due to laziness. They are unwilling to pay extra money for a cab to get home, or having to go back to the pub yesterday to retrieve their car. It could also be due to peer pressure, where everyone is driving after drinking.

However, those reasons are not acceptable and are merely just excuses. If one gets killed by a drunk driver, how is the latter going to explain to the deceased family? "I wanted to save $15..." Those reasons are unacceptable and the driver's point of view should be condemned.

Personally, I feel that it is very unfair for the deceased families to bear the full brunt of a stranger’s actions, which could have been prevented easily. If the driver’s relative were to get knocked down by a drunk driver, he too would feel the same amount of emotional angst as what other families would feel too. Placing himself in other people’s perspective would suffice to stop one form drink-driving anymore.

Now, after an accident, the worst thing Christopher could do is to escape from the scene. Fleeing reflects the cowardice, irresponsibility of one and proves even more that the offender should never be forgiven. I know that the subsequent punishment will bleak one’s future, and waste all his hard work in the past. If a guy dies from your moment of foolishness and irresponsibility, the least one could do would be owning up and receive punishment. To the estranged family, no matter how much gold or accomplishments would never bring their loved ones back.

On to the appeal itself, Christopher has no right to appeal. He did not even suffer any injury; and that the fines to such a huge local celebrity like him is nothing. Next, for celebrities like him, acquitting him would only set a bad example for his fans, and he himself would never learn from his own mistakes. Although he may not have caused any casualties, he might cause some the next time if he does not learn hard from this lesson.

Not only that, given the recent spate of drink driving accidents, a message must be sent to the public that such risks are not acceptable and will continue to be sternly treated. If not, everyone would start to go drink-driving and causing even more unnecessary deaths. Those drivers would then use Christopher’s case ‘If he can get away scot-free, why can’t I?’

Hence, I firmly believe in prosecuting Christopher. Only then, will others follow suit and check their own behavior. Only then will we be able to walk peacefully on the roads.


*At this point in time, I might still not know how important career is to me, since I am not in the working world yet. To a few, being sentenced to jail would mean the end of their hard work and their slogging and sacrifices for the past few years. As such, we should have a general sense of pity for the accused. Not only that, we all always feel that drink-driving is a condemnable action, but what if the driver what not at fault, and that the pedestrian was jay-walking? So, we should not always be biased agianst the drivers in road accidents, but instead analyze on a case-by-case basis.