"Over the Limit, Under Arrest."
"Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk."
"Buzzed Driving IS Drunk Driving."
All the slogans we've heard over the years in countless media campaigns against driving under the influence. All of them dwarfed in meaning and power on this day, when one of the harshest lessons ever on the dangers of drinking and driving is blaring from television sets and radios and websites across the Tri-State and the nation: Diane Schuler, the Long Island woman behind the wheel in the Taconic Parkway accident that killed her and seven other people, including four children, was drunk. She was plastered, blitzed, wasted, however you want to put it; her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, and she was high on marijuana, as well.
This story has haunted people since the day the accident happened late last month, first because of the shared communal pain of such an immense tragedy happening nearby; now because of the knowledge that it never had to happen at all; that it wasn't a cruel twist of fate, or the result of an unknown medical condition. Those consolations we wishfully projected have been eradicated, now that we know it was the worst of human errors that was behind it all: a woman drank to excess, smoked pot, and then drove with a vehicle full of children. Little suffices as a response, except to say, God have mercy on her soul.
So many questions remain: did anybody know, really KNOW, that Diane Schuler had been drinking and getting high before departing that Sullivan County campground where they'd been on a family getaway? Her husband? Anybody camping nearby? It was a Sunday morning, for God's sake. Why did she have enough sense left to pull over and call her brother to tell him she was feeling sick and disoriented, but then get back in the minivan and continue on to their doom? Was she known to have a drinking problem, or was this an inexplicable one-time binge? If so, what set it off? If she was known to be a problem or binge drinker, why was she left as the sole source of transportation home for her children and nieces?
And then the hardest questions of all: what did those little children know as they climbed into that minivan? Did they know something was terribly wrong? Were they calling for Schuler to please stop and pull over? Or did they sit quietly, trusting that as strange as things might have felt, their mom, or their aunt, was a responsible adult who would take care of them?
It's the harshest drunk driving lesson I can recall, beyond any slogans or media campaigns. Don't, don't, don't drink and drive. I say that today to myself, to my family members and friends, and to you.