The distance between a drink and a tragedy

IMAGINE this for a moment. You are driving home — perhaps after work, a late dinner, or a quick errand for a loved one. You are alert, careful, doing everything right. You slow at traffic lights, check your mirrors, signal properly. By every measure, you are a responsible road user.

And yet, none of that can protect you from someone who chose, hours earlier, to compromise their own judgement.

That is what makes drunk driving so deeply unsettling.

It is not a single reckless act in the moment, but a chain of decisions. One drink, then another. The conversation flows, nothing feels out of control. The quiet confidence sets in: “I’m fine.” “It’s just a short drive.” “I’ve done this before.” The law is clear — everyone knows it. Do not drink and drive. And yet there is that persistent belief that nothing will happen. Until it does.

Years ago, I spent some time in Brunei, a country with a strict nationwide ban on the sale and public consumption of alcohol. Life moved at a different pace. Streets were quieter at night — no bar crowds spilling out, no late-night noise. Evenings felt slower, more subdued.

From my observation, there was a certain mindfulness, a greater sense of awareness and consideration on the roads. Not perfect, of course. No place ever is. But there was a noticeable absence of the unpredictability that intoxicated driving often brings.

It raises a difficult question: would things be different if Malaysia banned alcohol altogether?

Perhaps the roads might feel safer in some respects. There might be fewer incidents directly linked to drinking. But human behaviour is rarely that simple. Remove one risk and others remain. Speeding, distraction, fatigue — each one still has the power to take lives.

And history has shown that bans do not always eliminate behaviour. Sometimes, they simply push it out of sight.

So perhaps the issue is not only about alcohol, but about accountability. Because every drunk driving case begins long before the crash.

It begins with a decision made comfortably at a table, among friends, in a setting where consequences feel distant and abstract.

The tragedy is that those consequences do not stay there. They travel, often violently, into the lives of strangers who were simply trying to get home.

And for the families left behind, there is no real closure. No explanation ever feels sufficient. Only a permanent absence where someone once was.

We can debate policies, compare countries and imagine different systems. But in the end, one truth remains simple and deeply uncomfortable: no one accidentally becomes a drunk driver.

It is a choice. A choice that no one else should have to pay for with their life.