Column: Three Deadly Syllables

by Woody

Updated Henny Penny Warning

Instead of racing around warning everyone “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” in a 2014 revision of the tale “Chicken Little,” Penny Henny would be shouting, “Ebola! Ebola!”

To be sure, E-bol-a is a frightening collection of three syllables. However, the sky-is-falling panic in the United States seems a little Chicken Little-ish.

1drinkIn reaction to four cases and one death in America (two of the infections originated here, one in Liberia, one in Guinea) we are moving heaven and earth – and moving healthcare workers/heroes with no symptoms into forced quarantine.

So can you imagine the hysteria if the Ebola outbreak in the U.S. numbered 1,553 reported cases and 926 deaths as in Guinea this year through October 23?

What if Ebola were as epidemic here as in Sierra Leone with 3,896 cases and 1,281 deaths or Liberia’s ground zero with 4,665 cases and 2,705 deaths?

Combined, these three West African hot zones total 4,912 deaths in 2014. That is no small and tragic number, but if Ebola claimed more than twice that many American lives we would unleash unlimited resources in an all-out sortie.

And yet year after year we allow an even deadlier three-syllable collection – drunk driv-ing – to wreck havoc by claiming more than 10,000 lives annually with far too little outcry and fight.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s latest figures, 10,322 people died in drunk-driving related traffic crashes in 2012 in the United States accounting for 31 percent of all traffic deaths.

Additionally, someone is injured in a drunk-driving crash every two minutes – in less time than it will take you to read this column.

Someone like Anthony Pedeferri, a California Highway Patrol officer from Camarillo who at age 36 was paralyzed from the chest down a few years ago when a drunk driver struck another car that in turn slammed into Pedeferri during a freeway traffic stop.

And every 51 minutes, or in about the time you spend reading today’s newspaper, a life is extinguished by a drunk driver.

A life like Eugene Kostiuchenko, a 41-year-old husband and father and Ventura County sheriff’s deputy from Camarillo who was struck and killed early Tuesday morning by a suspected drunken driver after Kostiuchenko had finished a traffic stop on Highway 101.

A life like Chris Prewitt, a 38-year-old husband and father and local standout educator who while on a training run for a marathon this past April was fatally hit by a DUI driver on Victoria Avenue.

A life like Nick Haverland, a 20-year-old Ventura College student who was killed while riding his bike on a city street when he was struck by a drunk driver with a reported blood alcohol level nearly five times the legal limit.

A life like Victoria Castro-Ramirez, local high school senior who was killed because her own mother got behind the wheel drunk. More tragically, her mother had two previous DUI arrests.

And on and on.

1nodrink.png AMMADDenly, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, repeat offenders – as appears to be the case in Kostiuchenko’s tragedy – are responsible for roughly one-third of drunk driving arrests, crashes, injuries and deaths.

If Ebola was on pace to claim 10,000 American lives in 2014, there is no end to the money and measures – from technologies to education to zero-tolerance sentencing – we would employ to eradicate it.

If drunk driving was Ebola, breath alcohol ignition locks for all drunk driving offenders would be mandatory. Heck, every car would have a breathalyzer ignition lock.

If drunk driving was Ebola, people would not be allowed to exit a bar or restaurant without passing a breathalyzer.

If drunk driving was Ebola, we would have a national Drunk Driving Czar.

Two minutes have passed and there is not another new case of Ebola in America, but statistically there is another Anthony Pedeferri.

In the next 51 minutes there will not be another Ebola death in America, but statistically Eugene Kostiuchenko, Chris Prewitt, Nick Haverland, Victoria Castro-Ramirez and a dreadful roll call of Americans will grow by one.

The sky may not be falling, but neither is drunk driving merely an acorn falling on a head.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”