December again brings call for halting drunken and drugged driving

It's time to underline and re-underline that tried and true "None for the road" rule in living rooms, break rooms, barrooms, and other potential imbibing rooms all across America. In unhappy fact, however, these upcoming winter holidays will likely suffer a greater than usual number of impaired motorists thoroughly terrorizing our thoroughfares -- hence December's stature as National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. Most every citizen knows the wrenching anguish of losing a loved one, a friend, a co-worker, or an acquaintance to drunken driving – or perhaps at least knows someone who has been either injured or involved in a DUI accident or arrest.

The MADD website notes that at any given hour of the day or night, two million repeat drunken drivers are driving drunk. Again.

The tragedy hit awfully close to home for one legislator this past July. A young father is gone, killed in a car accident involving a driver under the influence. The young father was a neighbor of state Rep. Roger Goodman, who has sponsored several successful anti-DUI bills in the Legislature. Goodman said that the gentleman left two kids behind and "our whole neighborhood is in trauma." He emphasized that a drunken driver should be required to pay child support for kids who've lost their parent. The Kirkland lawmaker is fine-tuning a child-support bill as part of a comprehensive anti-DUI package for consideration in the 2012 regular session beginning Jan. 9.

To read this blog post in Spanish, go here.