First, not all intoxicated drivers were using alcohol; second, any time any intoxicant is ingested, the first thing impacted is judgment skills. What that means is that the person using loses the ability to accurately judge his own abilities due to the intoxicant. How you and your husband choose to manage the use of such a substance is the only prudent manner, unless one stays home until the intoxicant has cleared the system entirely; and for some of them that can be up to 28 DAYS. But trying to make that decision after the ingestion is simply too late. And it really doesn’t matter what the intoxicant is, on that score.
Regarding this pair; yes, others, including the deceased, MAY bear some responsibility; however, laws in many states would implicate any person involved in a death incident as culpable, regardless whether he/she actually did the deed or not. A person driving a “get away” car after an armed robbery, for example, in which someone is killed is equally guilty as the person who pulled the trigger. Yes, he didn’t go in and shoot, but he was part of it. That also applies here; the deceased woman may have had choices, other than the 1 she made, and it obviously did contribute to the fact of her death, but that doesn’t remove the driver’s full guilt either. That’s the law. It’s maybe not perfect, but I don’t believe Yhwh God would exonerate him of any of the guilt for her death either, based on his choice to use an intoxicant and then drive a vehicle. He MAY be forgiven, if he repents, but not excused from the civil penalties of his crime.
It is a tough discussion to have; and the bottom line, as you pointed out is that NONE has the right to endanger others, by making the decision to use an intoxicant and then a “lethal weapon”, which is what a car really is. What one chooses to do with his own life is his choice. What one does to another’s life is NOT his choice. In years of working EMS, only 1 time did I ever see the intoxicated driver hurt worse than the person/people he/she hit. More often the victims died, or were hurt seriously enough to impact them for life.
