It just gets worse

[cjsmith]

I've recently learned that it's not at all clear whether my uncle had a heart attack BEFORE or AFTER his car was hit.

My uncle and one of my cousins had planned to meet for a concert. The accident occurred in the parking lot of their destination. My cousin arrived while emergency personnel were still clearing up the accident. He watched his father being loaded into the ambulance. He says he smelled alcohol on the other driver's breath, but the policeman on the scene did not choose to (? refused to?) demand a breathalyzer test. My cousin surmises that this refusal was because the other driver happened to be a firefighter and there was some level of "professional courtesy" going on there.

At some point it doesn't matter -- I mean, nothing's going to bring my uncle back, and if this guy was drunk he's going to have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life whether or not someone ruins his career as well -- but my cousin is understandably pissed off.

Comments

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Yes, but is it going to take him killing someone else first?

Color me disgusted.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I hope it doesn't. I know I've made mistakes, and if I ever made the mistake of driving drunk and I knew in my heart of hearts that I killed somebody, it would shake me to the core. I wouldn't want to drive a car even sober and fully awake. It might take me years before I drank alcohol ever again. Maybe this guy, if he was in fact drunk and knows what happened, will recoil from it the same way and clean up his act. I can hope.

I'm disgusted just by the *possibility* that my cousin's view of it is true. It might not be; he was understandably extremely upset at the time, and he might have smelled alcohol from someone else nearby, or some other misunderstanding could have occurred. Still, just the doubt is very disturbing.