EDITORIAL — A rash of drunk driving incidents

Last week saw another fatal drunk driving incident. A man was driving along Gen. Maxilom Avenue when he fell asleep at the wheel and struck a couple.

The woman was caught under the vehicle and run over; her American boyfriend was thrown some distance away.

The driver then woke up and drove to the Osmeña Rotunda where he was stopped by a barangay tanod who said he had hit someone. To his credit, he did go back to the scene of the accident to check what had happened, but the damage had been done as the woman was later declared dead.

A breathalyzer test showed that he was legally too drunk to be driving at the time.

This wasn’t the only drunk driving incident this month. Two weeks ago the father of a town mayor got into what seemed like a demolition derby after ramming several motorcycles and even a bakery trying to escape from barangay tanods along V. Rama Avenue.

Also two weeks ago, two drivers suspected of being drunk, decided to race in Banilad, Cebu City, and ended up killing a call center agent crossing the pedestrian lane at the time.

Last July, a drunk driver didn’t just counter-flow and plow through a traffic sign in Barangay Basak, Lapu-Lapu City, he hit one of the two children sitting on the sign. Fortunately, the boy survived.

But this wasn’t the case last February also in Barangay Banilad, Cebu City, when a drunk driver hit a car, then hit a young businessman walking nearby as he tried to flee the accident, before finally totaling his own car.

It would seem that drunk driving incidents, formerly a rarity in Cebu, are becoming more common.

Did something change to bring on this attitude in some of our drivers? Are they not taught during driving school that drinking and driving shouldn’t mix? Are smarter cars giving rise to dumber drivers? Or are there simply just more places to drink on the way home than there used to be?

More importantly, are drivers not deterred enough by the penalties of existing laws against drunk driving?

Until we definitively know why such cases are on the rise, we suspect they will keep happening.