I believe that drivers should treat alcohol-impaired driving issue very seriously as they are responsible for their family and other people, who might be involved in a car accident and get hurt. The best approach to prevent alcohol-impaired driving problem is to enact strict law and improve public knowledge of alcohol-impaired driving.
As such a hard punishment, tough new law against drinking under the alcohol influence has cut 40% of car accident which relate to alcohol over past years in B.C provincial roads ("CBC.ca - Canadian News Sports Entertainment Kids Docs Radio TV", 2016). This statistics shows that governments should accept strict laws against alcohol-impaired driving that truly can help the society to prevent alcohol-related car accidents. Furthermore, some countries did not enact strict law against alcohol-impaired driving problem before, such as China. Since 2008 the government of China has started to be concerned about the serious problem of road crashes and established the program aim to prevent alcohol-impaired driving and decrease the rate of people who would die in accidents. Serious alcohol-impaired driving offense may lead to permanent revoking of driver's licenses. As a good result of strict laws against alcohol-impaired driving, the number of drunken driving issues in China has dropped 40 percent over 4 years ("Xinhua news", 2016). To my mind, enacting hard punishment against alcohol-impaired driving is an effective way to let drivers be afraid of drunk driving. As a sum up, enacting strict laws against alcohol-impaired driving helps society to prevent people from getting hurt in car accidents.
Secondly, improving public knowledge about alcohol-impaired driving can also prevent such cases because people believe that drinking a little bit alcohol would not have any effect on driving skills. Actually, even a very little bit of alcohol will make a huge impact on peoples brain. It can slow brain functions so they cannot react quickly ("Transport Roads &Maritime Services", 2016) Most of drivers lack this kind of knowledge. That is why millions of car accidents happen as a result of alcohol-impaired driving problem every year. There is a famous student organization called “SADD” – Students against alcohol-impaired driving. SADD is a very effective educational program that units millions of secondary aged students in New Zealand to reduce the damage caused by intoxicated drivers. Moreover, SADD helps in reducing road deaths and injuries from drunk drivers by giving education of children in the range of 13-17 years old, now over 7 million of students join to SADD to study and advertise the knowledge of alcohol-impaired driving ("SADD New Zealand", 2016). It is very difficult to let government and society spread knowledge about alcohol-impaired driving as they need to spend a lot of money to create a setup program. Spread knowledge about alcohol-impaired driving is a good way to prevent car accidents, because the education of alcohol-impaired driving will help people improve their conscious of the danger of alcohol-impaired driving.
Thirdly, the effective way to prevent alcohol-impaired driving is improving the road regulation. I believe that police should use the Sobriety checkpoints during the random road checkpoint and briefly stop vehicles at specific, highly visible locations to see if the driver has the alcohol in his blood. Police may stop all or a certain portion of drivers, especially at night time. Breath tests will be given if police have an appropriate reason to suspect the driver consuming the alcohol before driving. There are some researches that indicate that people are less likely to drink and drive if they believe they would encounter a checkpoint during the driving. Sustained and well-publicized enforcement is the best way to let potential drunk drivers know they would not get away with it. They will have their license revoked and would be taken into custody if they are caught because of alcohol-impaired driving. However, to set a checkpoint at certain locations and doing the breath test would have requirements of increasing the number of police officers, which is a big challenge for the government.
In conclusion, I think that enacting strict laws and improving the regulation of alcohol-impaired driving problem will let drivers feel afraid of strict punishment. Hence, it is a good way to prevent alcohol-impaired driving problem. Meanwhile, improving public conscious about the danger of alcohol-impaired driving will help more people to understand that even a little bit of blood alcohol concentration still can affect people’s brain and let drivers lose control. Government and other organizations should spend more money to improve public education of alcohol-impaired driving. Alcohol-impaired driving may cause people’s deaths and injuries during the car accident and it also brings sorrow and pain. As considering of your family and friends’ happiness, please keep reminding yourself and people around you don not drink before driving.
References
CBC.ca - Canadian News Sports Entertainment Kids Docs Radio TV. (2016). Cbc.ca. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://www.cbc.ca/
SADD New Zealand. (2016). SADD New Zealand. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://www.sadd.org.nz
Transport Roads &Maritime Services. (2016). Roads and Maritime Services. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au
Xinhua news. (2016). News.xinhuanet.com. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://news.xinhuanet.com
