24/7 Buhr

On Sunday, I was driving with my family to church. Going the way we always go, we happened upon a huge traffic jam about 10 minutes away from our church. Come to find out, the jam was due to an accident that had taken place a few hours earlier. Normally I would not blog about something like this, but I was so frustrated when I found out that the driver of the vehicle that caused the accident was drunk. Here is the kicker though, the drunk man was 73 years old. He hit and critically injured a 60 some year old man at an intersection. This terrible "accident" ( in quotes because the man willfully chose to get drunk) started me thinking about what a terror alcoholism has become in our country. I started searching around on the internet and came up with some pretty scary figures from sources that I believe are reliable.

Now, I know that the numbers do not correlate, and I am not a statistician who can relate the numbers correctly. However, these facts alone are startling. . . . So far this year ( 6 months) there have been approximately 2,600 deaths in the United States directly caused by drunk driving. Now, lets think about the war in Iraq. From about the time the war started in May of 2003, there have been about 4,200 deaths of U.S. soldiers. This is over a SIX YEAR PERIOD. Far fewer soldiers have died in Iraq over 6 years than will die in the U.S. this year alone at the rate we are going. I know that there are more people in the U.S. so the numbers are not directly related but STILL!!!! Think about it. Right now, I wonder if it is actually safer for a 20 year old guy like myself to be hear in the States, or over in Iraq. I am a total supporter of the troops and am confident that the Iraq war was justified, but lets not forget about the battle on the home front. The battle for broken families and ruined lives due to the awful effects of alcohol.