The holiday season makes people take chances.

Friday, December 03, 1999

The holiday season makes people take chances. A bit too much holiday cheer and a jovial party atmosphere and some people think they can "make it home" even if they should not have been behind the wheel in the first place.

What they don’t stop to think about is that it only takes one wrong decision and one piece of bad luck to change your life forever and to destroy another family’s Christmas and millennium celebrations.

Although most people who are involved in drunken driving accidents are repeat offenders, there are many who just got behind the wheel when they shouldn’t have. They ended up in an accident that seriously injured or killed an innocent fellow driver.

They did not mean to kill the person they encountered that night, but that does not erase the horror of what they did – or the guilt that goes along with it.

It is not really that much of a sacrifice to designate a driver for your holiday office party or to take the keys away from a friend or acquaintance who has had too much to drink. If everyone tried to be a little more responsible this holiday season, there might be a lot fewer stories about families grieving at the senseless loss of a loved one this holiday season.

Celebrate Christmas and the millennium, but make sure you do so responsibly. The alternative is not worth the risk.