AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
When I was in Year Nine, my parents had gone out for a walk at night, and I started to watch the telemovie “A Long Way From Home”. When they arrived home, my father asked my mother, “What’s he watching?” She replied, having heard the name Kevin Barlow, “He’s watching Kevin Barlow.” (If you’re not an Australian reader, the movie was known, overseas, as Dadah Means Death). I later mentioned to my parents that I didn’t think they’d let me watch it but my mother said, “We wouldn’t stop you from watching something about real life.” (Kevin Barlow and Brian Geoffrey (known as Geoffrey) Chambers were hanged at Pudu Prison, in Kuala Lumpur, on July 7, 1986, the first Westerners to be hanged under Malaysia’s mandatory hanging for drug traffickers).
Today, I read something about somebody affected by a drug that is commonly available to people over the age of eighteen and is legal. Alcohol. The story was an extract of a book by the son of a former Victorian Premier whose son crashed the family Saab after he’d been drinking heavily.
Just like I point to the story I wrote about why the father watched A Country Practice with his kids, about chroming, I say that, despite some saying, “Oh, he was just a brat who crashed his car,” rather than dismissing it as that or a slow news day or a plug for a book, that it is a book that sensible parents should encourage their 15–16–17 year old sons, daughters and non-binary to read and the parents should read their own copies.
I remember, when I was in year Eleven, doing Driver Education, and for all the talk about defensive driving, I remember a lot of what I learnt from that subject at school. I remember a lesson that showed how a man had a car run into the back of his car, and the narrator said this, “The car behind was at fault,” and then posed the question, “But was he (the driver of the car in front) right, morally? He was looking out for an address, and nearly drove past it, when he braked suddenly.” Yes, the car behind should have been able to brake in time, but as the narrator showed, with a different take, the man was driving along, and say he wanted to find Number 20, a more defensive way was to think, “Okay, Number 14, Number 16, and indicate then rather than slam on the brakes as he’s nearly at Number 22.”
I also remember where the myth of “I can drive better pissed,” comes into play. A man was out on a track, driving and when he heard a sound like a pistol firing, but was a chalk gun leaving a mark on the bitumen, he had to brake. Sober, he was fine. The second time, after a few drinks, he didn’t hear the chalk gun and kept driving, and his reflexes and reaction times were slower and longer!
Most people would be aware that the consequences of drink-driving are typically licence suspension and a fine (depending, also, you can even be imprisoned, if it’s not your first offence), but that is the least of your worries. If you have an accident while under the influence, even if nobody is injured, the insurance company will not pay out. If somebody is injured, you could be up for huge bills and you could be sentenced to a period of imprisonment. And, you also have to live with it for the remainder of your life.
So, this is a book that parents and teenagers should be reading and discussing it openly as a family, and thinking that if they can save one teenager from making the dangerous call to get behind the wheel while drunk, and they can save one person from death or serious injury, they are doing something right.