DUI and Death on Harrison

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a young adult with an undeveloped brain who drank a lot and I never drove impaired. IT WAS EASY. This “mistake” and “accident” thing is so stupid. It’s a “mistake” or “accident” like he had picked up a gun.

I don’t care about the parents, they can just live with the shame forever. But the “kid” is an adult who needs to go to jail for at least a few years.

Just so we know, what did you do when you drove your friends somewhere, drank, and then everyone was ready to go home at 2am? Did you call your parents, and then go pick up your car together the next day? So your parents knew what you were up to? Just checking whether you had supportive parents and/or figured out how to live with the fallout.

Called my parents. When I was home during freshman year of college my friends and I were going out and would be drinking. My parents are not fools and were fully aware of this so my dad told me "call me and I will give you and and friends who want it a ride home". So that is what I did. Other friends at the same party decided to drive home after drinking. One was actually pulled over that might but the cop immediately let them go because something more important came up.

Sounds like you were lucky enough to have a proactive dad who deserves a lot of credit for bringing this issue up with you to give you the solution to a problem so you didn't have to figure things out on your own. Just noting that not all parents think to do this and not all kids think through the issues before they are drunk, as your friends' experience showed. OBVIOUSLY everybody should. Please all parents use this as an opportunity to tell your kids to call you for a ride without blame. But not everybody has this and not everybody does this, and it kind of sounds like the fact that YOU did has as much or more to do with your father's preventative measures than your own, even though your post noting you did this every time boasts that "IT WAS EASY." It's not as easy when your parent doesn't bring it up with you beforehand and specifically tell you what to do, including a solution for all the friends who were with you as well.

[Anonymous]

Were any of the kids current APS students? Just got a message from kids high school talking about services available at school tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

Gross negligence from all parties. Dont get into a car with someone who is drunk, don’t drive drunk, don’t raise your kids to think that’s it’s okay to do either. Parents in Arlington really don’t care. Arlington dads are cucks and the moms are bimbos.

[Anonymous]

I really hope the community comes together and insists on more effective law enforcement efforts to combat underage drinking. The consequences for grown ups who enable this need to be severe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were any of the kids current APS students? Just got a message from kids high school talking about services available at school tomorrow.

no, but obviously current students were friends and teammates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I really hope the community comes together and insists on more effective law enforcement efforts to combat underage drinking. The consequences for grown ups who enable this need to be severe.

They need to combat DUI— and speed. Resident in Arlington that has had 2 crashes on their street. 30 year olds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gross negligence from all parties. Dont get into a car with someone who is drunk, don’t drive drunk, don’t raise your kids to think that’s it’s okay to do either. Parents in Arlington really don’t care. Arlington dads are cucks and the moms are bimbos.

So what are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were any of the kids current APS students? Just got a message from kids high school talking about services available at school tomorrow.

Siblings go there and many current students likely knew the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were any of the kids current APS students? Just got a message from kids high school talking about services available at school tomorrow.

I don’t know about the other passengers but the driver and the deceased were both class of ‘24 so lots of friends and teammates still at W-L, HB and Yorktown.

[Anonymous]

As long as we’re talking about underage drinking, I’m curious to know what coaches are doing about it. Do athletes actually follow the no substance rules, or is it all with a wink and a nod and just laughing it off as a rite of passage? Also, what behavior is being modeled at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a young adult with an undeveloped brain who drank a lot and I never drove impaired. IT WAS EASY. This “mistake” and “accident” thing is so stupid. It’s a “mistake” or “accident” like he had picked up a gun.

I don’t care about the parents, they can just live with the shame forever. But the “kid” is an adult who needs to go to jail for at least a few years.

Just so we know, what did you do when you drove your friends somewhere, drank, and then everyone was ready to go home at 2am? Did you call your parents, and then go pick up your car together the next day? So your parents knew what you were up to? Just checking whether you had supportive parents and/or figured out how to live with the fallout.

I am not the person you are responding to but what we did in our day was 1) sleepovers or 2) designated drivers and the designated drivers didn't drink. Not a drop. We took turns.

It sounds like what you were suggesting is these kids have no other choice but to drive to a party where they know they plan to drink to excess, do drink to excess, and then drive all their friends home at 2am. Because otherwise their parents would be mad at them. But maybe I read that wrong.

No. What I'm saying is that if you are a kid living at home or visiting at home during college and you don't work out a plan in advance with your parents, or had parents that were not amenable to hearing that you were drinking, or did not work out a plan ahead with your friends, you might get caught in a situation that you hadn't fully thought through beforehand without having worked out a solution to it before you were drunk.

I notice that PP is listing sleepovers as a potential solution to this issue, which suggests to me that the drinking was going on/sponsored at one of the kid's own houses. That is also a course of action that has its own separate liabilities, which it seems like you might not have fully considered or thought through, but YMMV.

Good for you on the taking turns though, that seems like a good solution.

You still seem to be presenting this as some sort of acceptable excuse to driving drunk. I understand what you’re saying. This is how it happens. This is how they get to this place of making this choice. I think it’s reasonable to expect more from young adults. We really have to expect more because the outcomes are too terrible. And honestly most of them don’t do this and the ones who do it are usually blatant repeat offenders.

As the kid participating in the drunk sleepovers, my liability was zilch. But agree it’s a bad option for the parents who own the house who are either clueless or pretending to be clueless. It’s better than kids driving away from their house though.

Wow. That is one take, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many adults in this community enable and look the other way and normalize a high school drinking culture. Most kids aren’t a part of it but the ones who are, everyone knows it. That’s just how it is and for those of you getting your first window into it, you should be shocked. Don’t let that feeling wear off.

Terrible tragedy for all those affected.

This. In my neighborhood the parents don't care on whit that their kid is coming home drunk in 8th grade. They also smoke pot almost completely out in the open. They barely hide it from their parents. My neighbor's kid has been driving at 50mph in our residential street with the parents outside watching doing nothing. There are definitely more parents who believe their children never do wrong even when they do terrible things in front of them.

[Anonymous]

This is really the worst of DCUM, pointing fingers and exposing the name of the barely 18 year old who is at fault. Yes, technically I guess there is no reason not to since it's public information, but I would say that common decency would dictate that people recognize that these are actually people whose lives have been irrevocably changed. Can we take a few days to let the community mourn before we tear each other apart blaming parents? Many, if not most, of our children will be exposed to dangerous circumstances. Maybe not DUI, but there are pills at parties, sexual assaults, muggings, fraternity hazings, etc. It does nobody any good to have a bunch of parents up on their soapboxes preaching about how it couldn't be their children.

[Anonymous]

There is no need to keep the name of the 18 yo drunk driver secret. He was arrested, is an adult and the info is public. Protecting him is part of the Arlington problem - coddling kids instead of enforcing consequences.

[Anonymous]

Another uncomfortable conversation is parent drinking. Kids see the hypocrisy in a parent telling his kid not to drink and then pouring himself a glass of wine. To unwind. Or to celebrate. Or to deal with stress. But parents don’t want to stop drinking so they just have to hope their kids buy into the “do as I say, not as I do” expectation we’re setting for them.

For every parent on here saying they’ve given their kids a standing offer of a no questions asked ride, how many other parents out there might be a couple of drinks in themselves if they got the late night call?