The N&R follows up Sunday’s story on the rise in drunk driving fatalities with today’s lead editorial:
Smooth and in command as a morning TV anchor for WXII (Channel 12), Tolly Carr always seemed to know what to say and when to say it.
Months later, during his sentencing last week for striking and killing a pedestrian in March while driving drunk, Carr groped for the right words in a tearful apology. Twenty-six-year-old Casey Bokhoven was gone and nothing Carr said or wrote would bring him back……
As Jennifer Fernandez reported in Sunday’s News & Record, alcohol-related crashes have decreased nationwide, but fatalities from such crashes are rising, locally and nationally. In Guilford County, 35 people died in alcohol-related accidents in 2005, the most recent year for which the statistics are available.
It’s not as if there haven’t been enough high-profile examples of the deadly consequences of mixing gasoline with alcohol. Carr’s case merely is the latest.
The U.S. Department of Transportation, however, reported 2 percent decline in drunk driving fatalities between 2005 and 2006.
Not a significant drop, no doubt, but a drop nonetheless.