It Won't Happen to Me

An acquaintance of mine had only one or two alcoholic beverages under their belt. They were not in the least bit intoxicated. Their blood level was one hundredth of a point or two above that which is deemed sober—barely buzzed—nearly legal.

And so, as it was late at night and the journey home led the acquaintance through a few short residential blocks with no likelihood of encountering another vehicle, they chose to use their keys and drive the very familiar route home.

 It was something that person had done hundreds of times before without issue.

And again because the acquaintance was only driving from here to there in the wee hours of the morning with no moving vehicles likely present in their vicinity they chose to come to a rolling stop at the stop sign which was a mere hundred yards from their driveway.

And that is when the cop in the unmarked police car sought to fracture his own nocturnal boredom by turning on his red flashing lights, pulling the acquaintance over, and issuing two citations: running a stop sign and a DUI.

Because the easy thing to do is to think It won’t happen to me. The easy thing to do is to repeat behavior that has been done hundreds of times before without incident. The easy thing to do is to ignore borderline impairment because you are only traveling from here to there.

The hard thing to do is to accept that if hundreds of times have transpired without incident it means that you are statistically due—your number is up. The hard thing to do is to accept  that a million deleterious things can happen even from here to there—that distance has no bearing on the predictability of mishaps.

Which is why among the hardest things to do in this world is to surrender your keys.

And yet, it is among the bravest.

Because anytime you sit behind the wheel of a multi-ton vehicle and are even a little bit impaired, you risk it all.

Driving a car while impaired in any degree and in any capacity is a flirtation with vehicular manslaughter.

And the certain risk annihilates a wishful reward.