There are times when we must be our brother’s keeper
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SO HERE’S the scene: you’re out with family and close friends at a celebration in a local pub. The company is convivial and the drink is flowing. At closing time, nobody wants to go home, so you invite them back to the house. More drink is taken. The stories and the banter continue until the early hours, at which point one of the guests indicates that he’s going to drive home.
You know that he’s had a bucketful, and shouldn’t be driving. You invite him to stay overnight, but he says he needs to get back home. You plead with him, but he insists that he is fit to drive. He closes the door, and you hear the car engine rev up. What do you do next?
For many readers, this scenario – or one with more than a passing resemblance to it – will not be entirely unfamiliar. Many of us will have been in situations in which a family member or friend has got behind the wheel in less than safe circumstances. Maybe we’ve done it ourselves, and have got home safely. Or not.
Do you feel that you would have a moral responsibility to stop a family member or a friend getting behind the wheel of a car when you know that he or she is over the limit? And if they refused to take your advice, would you feel it your duty to phone the police?
A survey published last week by the Automobile Association revealed that nearly half of motorists say they know someone who drinks and drives, but are unlikely to inform the police unless they consider them to be considerably over the legal limit.
The poll found that two-thirds of respondents said they would notify the police only if the driver had consumed a large amount of alcohol.
Statistics are a bit dry, so let’s put some flesh on them. Here’s one example. Ten-year-old Arron Peak and his brother Ben, aged eight, were killed in June when the people carrier in which they were travelling was struck by a Range Rover driven by Plymouth Argyle goalkeeper Luke McCormick, who was over the limit.
McCormick is currently serving a seven-year sentence after admitting causing death by dangerous driving and drink-driving.
Supposing McCormick had been at your party, and you knew that he had got behind the wheel of his vehicle having had more booze than the law allows. Would you have tried to stop him and, if he had ignored your advice, would you have phoned the police?
What if McCormick had been, say, the best friend of your son? Would that have made any difference? How would you have felt when you were told of the news of the death crash?
The scenario I outlined at the beginning of this article was the subject of a court case in France a few years ago. Jean-Sébastien Fraisse, aged 31, and his wife, 29-year-old Angélique, invited friends back to their house after a celebration at a local cafe. More drink was consumed at the house.
Then, at four in the morning, their friend Frédéric Colin, aged 29, announced that he was going to drive home.
Knowing how much alcohol he had consumed, the couple tried without success to persuade him to stay overnight.
After leaving their flat, Colin drove three miles down the wrong side of a main road before hitting another car head-on, killing himself and a couple and two of their three children.
The grandmother of the only surviving child, aged five, launched a private prosecution, claiming that the Fraisses should have done more to stop their guest from driving, and could at least have called the police when he insisted.
The verdict of the court was that the couple were not guilty of charges of failing to prevent a crime involving bodily harm.
So let me ask again: what do you think? What would you have done in the circumstances?
It’s worth recalling the biblical story of Cain, who kills and buries his brother, Abel. Cain protests that he doesn’t know where Abel is, and asks: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The Lord responds: “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”
This issue is far from simple. Suppose your son failed to heed your warnings about drink and drove off in his (or even your) car.
Should you/would you “shop” him to the police, with the consequence that he would lose his driving licence?
There are other angles to this. Do bar staff who serve drink to an already over-the-limit driver, knowing that he has a car outside, bear any responsibility if he ploughs into a bus queue on the way home? We tend to think that individual adults must stand or fall by their own choices.
But the problem with drink-driving is that too much alcohol impairs the judgment of the individual to the extent that he or she is indignantly convinced that it is perfectly safe to drive.
Put it this way: if you were the grandparent in the French case in question, would you not feel that those who watched the perpetrator drive off were culpable, and should face consequences under the law?
I do. I believe that the French couple had a moral obligation to phone the police the minute their friend left the house and got into his car. If they had done so, two adults and two bairns might have been spared death.
If someone had shopped Luke McCormick, young Arron and Ben Peak might be alive.
Part of the reason I feel so strongly about this is that, in my time, I have buried too many young people. I also believe that the law should reflect that culpability.
There are times when humanity – if not God – demands that we have to take adult responsibility and be our brother’s keeper, as he might have to be ours at other times.
More than 400 people were killed in drink-drive crashes in Britain last year. Many more were injured. That’s too high a price to be paid by the innocent.
Think about it.
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