When Choice Becomes Homicide: The Urgent Need to Treat Impaired Driving Deaths as Manslaughter

In Memory of Aidan River Starkey

A life taken too soon by a repeat offender.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Every 39 minutes in America, someone dies because another person made a choice. Not an accident. Not a mistake. A choice.

They chose to drink alcohol. They chose to use drugs. They chose to get behind the wheel of a multi-ton vehicle. They chose to drive while impaired, knowing—as every adult in this country knows—that this choice endangers lives. And when that choice ends in death, we call it an 'accident.' We process it through a system that treats intentional recklessness as though it were an unforeseeable tragedy. We watch as repeat offenders walk free, sometimes to kill again. When Travis Wheeler CHOSE to drink, take drugs, and drive knowing that he could get another DUI or kill someone as he did, Aidan. He chose to kill, just as he chose to drink and drive.

This article is dedicated to Aidan River Starkey, whose life was stolen by a repeat offender—a person who had already demonstrated, through prior DUIs, a willful disregard for human life. Aidan should be here today. He should be laughing, learning, growing, living the decades of life that were his right. Instead, his family lives with an unfillable void, and his killer remains free while the Maricopa County Attorney's Office continues to fail in its most basic duty: delivering justice for the innocent.

Aidan's story is not unique. It is one of thousands that repeat, with sickening regularity, across this country every single year. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 13,384 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2021 alone—that's 37 preventable deaths every single day. When you include drug-impaired driving, the number climbs even higher. Behind each statistic is a person like Aidan. A family shattered. A future erased. A justice system that failed.

The Myth of the 'Accident': Understanding Causality and Choice

Language shapes reality, and nowhere is this more dangerous than in how we discuss impaired driving deaths. We use the word 'accident' reflexively, as though these deaths resulted from unforeseeable circumstances, acts of God, or genuine mistakes. But an accident, by definition, is an unintended event, something that occurs despite reasonable precautions. When someone consumes alcohol or drugs and then drives, there is nothing unintended about the risk they create. They know the danger. They choose it anyway.

Consider the chain of deliberate choices: First, the person chooses to consume an impairing substance. They feel its effects—the loosening of inhibitions, the slowing of reaction time, the impairment of judgment. Then comes the critical choice: they locate their car keys, walk to their vehicle, insert the key or press the start button, and drive. Each step requires conscious action. Each step moves them further down a path they know is dangerous.

Research in cognitive psychology confirms what common sense tells us: even impaired individuals retain awareness that driving while intoxicated is dangerous and illegal. Studies published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs demonstrate that impaired decision-making doesn't erase knowledge of right and wrong—it merely weakens the inhibitions that normally prevent people from acting on dangerous impulses. The person who drives drunk knows they shouldn't. They do it anyway. That's not an accident. That's a choice.

The criminal justice system recognizes this principle in other contexts. If someone chooses to wave a loaded gun in a crowded room and it discharges, killing someone, we don't call it an accident—we call it reckless homicide or manslaughter. The person didn't intend to kill, but they engaged in behavior so obviously dangerous that the law holds them fully accountable when death results. Impaired driving is morally and practically identical. The impaired driver has transformed their vehicle into a weapon. When that weapon kills, the law should respond with commensurate severity.

Hollywood's Deadly Influence: The Normalization of Impaired Driving

Turn on almost any television show or movie, and you'll see it: characters drinking heavily at bars, restaurants, or parties, then casually grabbing their keys and driving home. Like any show on Bravo. Sometimes it's played for laughs—the stumbling drunk trying to find their car in the parking lot. Sometimes it's treated as sophistication—the successful executive having 'a few drinks' at lunch and then driving back to the office. Sometimes it's simply invisible—characters drink with no acknowledgment of how they'll get home, the screenwriters apparently forgetting that cars don't drive themselves.

This constant, casual depiction of impaired driving in media creates what social psychologists call 'normalization'—the process by which dangerous behavior comes to seem ordinary, acceptable, even expected. When audiences see beloved characters engage in impaired driving without consequence, it shapes perceptions of risk and acceptability. Research published in Communication Research found that exposure to media depicting substance use without negative consequences correlates with increased substance use and risk-taking in viewers, particularly young viewers whose attitudes are still forming.

The impact is particularly insidious because it operates beneath conscious awareness. Viewers don't think, 'I should drive drunk because I saw it on TV.' Instead, the repeated exposure gradually erodes the sense of danger, creates an impression that 'everyone does it,' and suggests that the risks are exaggerated. When real-world consequences are rarely shown—when the character who drives buzzed arrives home safely rather than killing a child—the message is clear: this behavior, while perhaps not ideal, is manageable.

Consider the genre of comedy that treats public intoxication and drunk driving as punchlines. Films like 'The Hangover' trilogy, countless sitcoms, and teen comedies routinely feature characters driving while obviously impaired, with the humor derived from their impairment rather than any acknowledgment of danger. When was the last time you saw a mainstream film or TV show where a drunk driving incident resulted in a graphic, realistic death scene? Where does the story follow the grieving family? Where the driver faced serious criminal consequences? These stories exist, but they're vanishingly rare compared to the thousands of instances where impaired driving is depicted as consequence-free.

Even more troubling is the normalization of drugged driving. As marijuana legalization expands and opioid addiction continues as a crisis, television and film have been slower to acknowledge the danger of driving under the influence of these substances. Characters casually smoke marijuana and then drive. Characters take prescription pills and get behind the wheel. The dangers of alcohol impairment are at least sometimes acknowledged in the media, but drug impairment often isn't addressed at all, contributing to the dangerous misconception that only alcohol impairs driving ability.

The entertainment industry has shown it can change its depiction of dangerous behaviors when motivated. Seatbelt use in films and television increased dramatically after public health campaigns. Smoking in film and television has declined significantly. These changes didn't happen accidentally—they resulted from conscious decisions by writers, directors, and producers to stop normalizing deadly behaviors. The same shift must happen with impaired driving. Every script that shows a character driving after drinking without consequence, every comedy that mines drunk driving for laughs, every drama that treats it as a minor character flaw rather than potential homicide—these choices have real-world impacts. They cost lives.

The Injustice of Inadequate Consequences: Why DUI Is Not Enough

When an impaired driver kills someone, they typically face charges for vehicular manslaughter or vehicular homicide. On paper, these sound serious. In practice, the outcomes are often shockingly lenient, particularly compared to other forms of manslaughter. The message sent is clear: if you want to kill someone with minimal consequences, use a car while intoxicated.

Consider the typical trajectory of a DUI-related death case. The driver is arrested and charged. If they have resources, they hire an attorney who immediately begins working to reduce the charges, questioning the blood alcohol testing, challenging the legality of the traffic stop, and negotiating plea deals. The victim's family watches as the person who killed their loved one appears in court multiple times, often released on bail, living their life while the victim is buried. Months or years pass as the case winds through the system. Eventually, there's a plea deal or a trial. The sentence, even in fatal cases, is often measured in single-digit years. Sometimes it's suspended. Sometimes it's probation. The killer may serve two, three, or five years—a fraction of the life they took.

According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the median prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter is approximately 4-5 years, with many offenders serving only a portion of that sentence before parole eligibility. In contrast, other forms of manslaughter—deaths resulting from reckless behavior without a vehicle—typically carry significantly longer sentences. Why? Is a life taken by an intoxicated driver worth less than a life taken through other forms of recklessness?

The leniency becomes even more unconscionable with repeat offenders. A person's second DUI conviction should ring alarm bells—here is someone who has already demonstrated that they will drive impaired, has faced consequences, and has chosen to do it again. They have shown they care more about their convenience than about other people's lives. Their third DUI conviction should result in permanent license revocation and serious incarceration. Instead, we see people accumulate four, five, or six DUI convictions, continuing to drive (often illegally), and continuing to endanger the public. When these repeat offenders finally kill someone—and the statistics show they frequently do—the previous DUIs are treated as background information rather than what they actually are: evidence of persistent, willful disregard for human life.

Aidan River Starkey was killed by precisely this kind of repeat offender. This was not the killer's first brush with DUI. The system had multiple opportunities to prevent Aidan's death by taking the killer off the roads permanently. It failed. And then, adding insult to devastating injury, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has failed to deliver even the inadequate justice the current system allows. The killer remains free. The family remains in agony. The system that failed to protect Aidan now fails to deliver accountability for his death.

This pattern repeats across the country. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) tracks these cases and has documented thousands of instances where repeat DUI offenders kill while facing minimal consequences for prior offenses. The organization's research shows that approximately one-third of all drivers arrested or convicted of drunk driving are repeat offenders. These aren't people making a single terrible mistake—they're people demonstrating a pattern of choosing their own desires over public safety. When they kill, calling it 'vehicular manslaughter' feels inadequate. It's more accurate to call it what it is: a killing that was entirely preventable, committed by someone who had multiple warnings and opportunities to change course and chose not to.

The Psychological Devastation: What Justice Failure Does to Survivors

To lose a loved one to impaired driving is to experience a unique form of trauma, layered with rage, helplessness, and the devastating knowledge that the death was entirely preventable. But when the justice system fails to hold the killer accountable, that trauma compounds into something even more destructive: the feeling that your loved one's life didn't matter.

Research on traumatic bereavement shows that surviving family members of homicide victims experience rates of complicated grief, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder far exceeding those who lose loved ones to natural causes or true accidents. A comprehensive study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress found that families of homicide victims showed persistent psychological symptoms years after the death, with particularly severe outcomes in cases where they perceived the justice system as failing to deliver appropriate consequences.

Imagine the psychological reality: You lose a child, a spouse, a parent, a sibling. The loss itself is incomprehensible, a rupture in the fabric of your life that can never be fully repaired. You learn that they died because someone chose to drink and drive, or to use drugs and drive. In your grief and shock, you assume that justice will be served—that the person responsible will face serious consequences, that the system will acknowledge the gravity of what they've done. Instead, you watch as the legal process grinds slowly forward, as the killer makes bail and goes home while your loved one lies in a grave, as plea deals are offered and accepted, as the sentence comes down and it's measured in mere years rather than decades.

Worse still is the experience of families like Aidan's, where even that inadequate justice is denied. Where the case stalls, where bureaucracy and indifference prevail, where the killer remains free while the family is left in a nightmarish limbo. Research on the psychological impact of prolonged justice delays shows that this uncertainty and lack of closure significantly worsen traumatic grief. The family cannot fully mourn because the process isn't complete. They cannot achieve any sense of resolution because none has been provided. They live in a state of suspended rage and pain, watching as time passes and their loved one's death fades from public consciousness while the person responsible faces no consequences.

The psychological damage extends beyond the immediate family. Siblings watch their parents destroyed by grief and rage. Children lose not only the person who died but also the functional presence of surviving family members who are too traumatized to fully engage with life. Extended family and friends experience secondary trauma. Entire communities feel the ripple effects when a member is killed by an impaired driver and justice is not served.

Psychologists working with survivors of DUI deaths report common themes: a pervasive sense of injustice, corrosive anger at a system that seems to value the killer's convenience over the victim's life, profound helplessness in the face of legal processes they cannot control, and often, what clinicians call 'existential crisis'—a fundamental questioning of whether society has any real moral foundation if it treats such deaths so cavalierly. These are not symptoms that resolve with time. They are wounds that, without proper accountability and acknowledgment, fester for lifetimes.

For Aidan's family, every day that his killer remains free is another day of torture. Every bureaucratic delay, every instance of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office failing to act, is another message that Aidan's life didn't matter enough. That's not just a failure of the justice system—it's an ongoing victimization of those who already carry an unbearable burden.

The Path Forward: Treating Impaired Driving Deaths as Manslaughter

The solution is both simple and profound: we must treat all impaired driving deaths as manslaughter, with the understanding that the choice to drive while impaired is itself the criminal act that makes the driver culpable for any resulting death. No more 'vehicular' qualifiers that implicitly diminish the severity. No more sentences measured in single-digit years for taking a life. No more lenient treatment because the weapon happened to be a car.

Legally, the framework already exists. Manslaughter, in most jurisdictions, is defined as the unlawful killing of another person without malice aforethought but with either criminal negligence or recklessness. Driving while impaired is textbook recklessness—it's the conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a reasonable person would not take. When that recklessness results in death, it fits squarely within the legal definition of manslaughter. We don't need new laws; we need prosecutors to charge impaired drivers who kill with standard manslaughter and judges to sentence them accordingly.

This would mean several critical changes. First, sentencing guidelines for DUI-related deaths would align with those for other manslaughter cases, typically 10-20 years or more, depending on aggravating factors. Second, repeat DUI offenders who kill would face enhanced penalties, with prior DUIs treated as evidence of extreme recklessness warranting upper-range sentences. Third, there would be no possibility of suspended sentences or probation in cases where death resulted. If you choose to drive impaired and you kill someone, you will serve serious prison time. Period.

Some will argue this is too harsh, that it doesn't account for the fact that the person didn't intend to kill. But intent to kill is not required for manslaughter—only reckless disregard for human life. And that's exactly what impaired driving represents. The person who drives drunk or high may not want to kill anyone, but they've chosen to engage in behavior they know creates exactly that risk. The law already recognizes this principle in countless other contexts. A person who fires a gun into a crowded area may not intend to hit anyone, but if they do, they're guilty of reckless homicide. A person who drives while impaired has made an equivalent choice.

Others will worry about the impact on first-time offenders who 'made a mistake.' But this framing is flawed from the start. Driving while impaired is not a mistake—it's a series of conscious choices. Moreover, if the prospect of 15-20 years in prison for killing someone while driving drunk seems harsh, consider that it's exactly that harshness that might cause people to think twice before getting behind the wheel. Every study on deterrence shows that certainty and severity of consequences reduce offending. When people know that driving impaired could result in decades in prison if someone dies, more of them will call a cab, use a rideshare service, stay where they are, or arrange a designated driver. Lives will be saved—not just the lives of potential victims, but also the lives of potential offenders who will be prevented from making the choice that would destroy their own life along with their victim's.

The research supports this approach. A comprehensive analysis published in Accident Analysis & Prevention examined DUI rates in jurisdictions with varying penalties and found that stricter, more consistently applied penalties correlated with significant reductions in impaired driving incidents. When people know they will face serious consequences, their behavior changes. The key is both certainty—the knowledge that you will be caught and prosecuted—and severity—the understanding that the consequences will be life-altering.

Preventing Deaths: Comprehensive Strategies Beyond the Justice System

While appropriate punishment is crucial, prevention must be the ultimate goal. We have the knowledge and technology to dramatically reduce impaired driving deaths. What we've lacked is the collective will to implement these solutions comprehensively.

Mandatory ignition interlock devices for all convicted DUI offenders represent one of the most effective interventions. These devices require a breath sample before the car will start, preventing operation if alcohol is detected. Studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety show that interlocks reduce re-arrest rates for DUI by approximately 70% while installed, and continue to show benefits even after removal. Currently, most states only require interlocks for repeat offenders or high BAC cases. This should be universal and permanent for anyone convicted of DUI. If you've shown you will drive impaired, you should never be able to start a car again without proving sobriety.

Mandatory installation of advanced impairment detection systems in all new vehicles would represent a more comprehensive solution. Technology currently exists or is in development that can detect impairment through steering patterns, reaction times, eye tracking, and other behavioral markers. These systems could prevent vehicle operation when impairment is detected. The National Transportation Safety Board has called for such technology to be standard in all new vehicles. The automobile industry has resisted, citing costs and technical challenges. But we mandate seatbelts, airbags, and backup cameras. Why not mandate technology that prevents one of the leading causes of traffic deaths?

Sobriety checkpoints, while controversial in some communities, are proven effective at reducing drunk driving. The CDC's systematic review of traffic safety interventions found that sobriety checkpoints reduce alcohol-related crashes by approximately 20%. These checkpoints don't need to be intrusive or violate rights—brief interactions, clearly publicized in advance, consistently administered. The deterrent effect comes not just from catching impaired drivers, but from creating a general awareness that impaired driving may be detected.

Lowering the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.08% to 0.05% would align the United States with much of the developed world and save lives. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed extensive research and concluded that 0.05% should be the maximum legal limit, as impairment begins well below 0.08% for most people. Other countries that have lowered their limits to 0.05% have seen significant reductions in alcohol-related traffic deaths. The pushback comes largely from the alcohol industry and hospitality businesses worried about reduced consumption. But if reducing alcohol sales slightly saves thousands of lives annually, that's a trade worth making.

Comprehensive drug testing at all DUI traffic stops and accidents would address the growing problem of drugged driving. Currently, many jurisdictions test only for alcohol unless there's a specific reason to suspect drug use. But with increasing marijuana legalization, widespread prescription drug use, and ongoing opioid addiction, drugged driving has become as significant a threat as drunk driving. Every traffic stop involving suspected impairment and every accident should include comprehensive drug screening. The technology exists; it simply needs to be deployed consistently.

Education campaigns that emphasize the choice aspect and consequences of impaired driving need to replace the current messaging that often treats it as a mistake or lapse in judgment. Effective public health campaigns change behavior by changing perceptions. Anti-smoking campaigns succeeded by making smoking socially unacceptable and by graphically illustrating the consequences. Anti-drunk-driving campaigns need to be equally uncompromising. Show the crash scenes. Show the funerals. Show the families destroyed. Interview people serving decades in prison for DUI deaths and have them explain how their 'one bad decision' ended multiple lives, including their own. Make it visceral and unavoidable.

School education programs starting in middle school need to explicitly address the choice element of impaired driving and the reality of consequences. Current programs often focus on risks without emphasizing culpability. Young people need to understand that if they choose to drive impaired and kill someone, they will go to prison for a very long time. They need to hear from survivors and from incarcerated offenders. They need to understand this isn't a mistake that ruins your evening—it's a choice that can end your life and someone else's.

Accessible alternative transportation must be part of any comprehensive strategy. While personal responsibility is paramount, we should also reduce barriers to making the right choice. Subsidized late-night public transportation, easily accessible rideshare services, safe ride programs—these all reduce the likelihood that someone will choose to drive impaired because they feel they have no alternative. This doesn't excuse the choice, but it removes one rationalization.

Finally, license revocation for repeat offenders must be meaningful and enforced. Too many repeat DUI offenders continue driving on suspended or revoked licenses. Vehicle impoundment or immobilization should be automatic for anyone caught driving on a revoked license. The message must be clear: if you've demonstrated you will drive impaired, you lose the privilege of driving, and if you do it anyway, the consequences escalate dramatically.

Demanding Accountability: What Must Change in Prosecution

The failure of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in Aidan River Starkey's case is not an isolated incident. Across the country, prosecutors' offices routinely undercharge impaired driving deaths, accept unconscionably lenient plea deals, and allow cases to languish while families suffer. This must change.

District attorneys and county attorneys are elected officials, accountable to the public. When they fail to prosecute impaired driving deaths with appropriate severity, they should face consequences at the ballot box. Voters need to demand answers: How many DUI-related death cases has your office prosecuted in the past five years? What were the outcomes? How many involved repeat offenders? What were the sentences? Why are killers like Aidan's still free?

Families of victims should have automatic standing to address the court at every stage of proceedings and should have the right to object to plea deals before they're accepted. Currently, many jurisdictions notify families only after deals are struck. This is unconscionable. The family should be present when any deal is proposed, should have the opportunity to explain to the judge how the proposed sentence fails to account for their loss, and should be able to formally object.

Mandatory minimum sentences for DUI deaths involving repeat offenders should be enacted at the state level, removing prosecutorial discretion in the most egregious cases. When someone with multiple prior DUIs kills someone while driving impaired, there should be no possibility of a plea deal that results in minimal incarceration. The prior convictions demonstrate that lesser consequences failed to deter. The death demonstrates the ultimate result of that failure. The sentence should reflect both.

Public transparency in DUI death prosecutions should be mandatory. Every case should be tracked and publicly reported: charges filed, plea deals offered and accepted, sentences imposed, time actually served. This data should be easily accessible so that voters, victims' families, and advocacy organizations can hold prosecutors accountable. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the darkness around DUI prosecutions has allowed far too many cases to result in inadequate justice.

For the Maricopa County Attorney's Office specifically, Aidan River Starkey's case demands answers. Why has justice been delayed? Why does the repeat offender who killed Aidan remain free? What bureaucratic failures allowed this case to stall? And what will be done to ensure that other families don't experience the same nightmare of watching their loved one's death go unavenged? These questions deserve answers, delivered publicly, with accountability for those who failed.

How Many Lives Could We Save? The Magnitude of Preventable Death

The statistics are staggering and should shock us out of complacency. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have remained relatively constant over the past decade, averaging around 10,000 to 11,000 deaths annually. When drug-impaired driving is included, the number increases to approximately 13,000 to 14,000 deaths per year. That's more than 37 people dying every single day because someone chose to drive while impaired.

But here's the crucial point: unlike deaths from natural disasters, unlike deaths from diseases we haven't yet learned to treat, these deaths are entirely preventable. Every single one represents a choice that didn't have to be made. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that comprehensive implementation of proven interventions—sobriety checkpoints, ignition interlock programs, 0.05% BAC limits, and consistent prosecution—could reduce alcohol-impaired driving deaths by 50% or more. That would mean saving approximately 5,000 to 7,000 lives every single year. Over a decade, that's 50,000 to 70,000 people who would be alive rather than dead.

Think about what that means in human terms. That's 70,000 parents who get to watch their children grow up. That's 70,000 children who don't lose a parent. That's 70,000 futures that continue rather than end. That's hundreds of thousands of family members and friends spared the trauma of sudden, violent, preventable loss. The ripple effects are almost incomprehensible in their magnitude.

Countries that have implemented strict impaired driving laws with serious enforcement provide proof of what's possible. In Scandinavia, where drunk driving laws are severe and consistently enforced, alcohol-related traffic deaths are a fraction of U.S. rates. Sweden, for example, has an alcohol-related traffic fatality rate of approximately 1.5 per 100,000 population, compared to the U.S. rate of approximately 3.4 per 100,000. If the United States achieved Sweden's rate, we would prevent roughly 6,000 deaths annually. The difference isn't cultural—it's legal and social. Swedes don't drive drunk because they know the consequences are severe and certain, and because their culture treats impaired driving as absolutely unacceptable.

We have the knowledge. We have the tools. We have the examples from other countries proving these interventions work. What we've lacked is the will—the societal commitment to treat impaired driving with the seriousness it deserves. Every year we delay implementing comprehensive solutions is another year of unnecessary death. Another year of families destroyed. Another year of people like Aidan River Starkey, who should be alive, whose deaths could and should have been prevented.

A Call to Action: What Each of Us Can Do

Reading about this crisis isn't enough. Understanding the problem isn't enough. Each of us must act, in whatever capacity we can, to change the culture and the laws revolving around impaired driving.

If you're a voter, research how your local prosecutor handles DUI death cases. Ask questions. Demand transparency. If the outcomes are inadequate, vote for someone who will take these cases seriously. Prosecutors respond to public pressure—make impaired driving prosecution a voting issue.

If you're a legislator, sponsor bills that treat DUI deaths as manslaughter, mandate ignition interlocks for all DUI convictions, lower BAC limits to 0.05%, and require impairment detection technology in new vehicles. The automobile and alcohol industries will oppose you. Do it anyway. Lives are more important than industry profits.

If you're in the entertainment industry—a writer, director, producer, or actor—refuse to participate in content that normalizes impaired driving. When you read a script that treats drunk driving casually, object. Suggest changes. If necessary, walk away. Use your platform to tell stories about the real consequences of impaired driving. Show the devastated families. Show the lengthy prison sentences. Make it real.

If you're a parent, have explicit, serious conversations with your children about impaired driving, starting earlier than you might think comfortable. Don't just tell them it's dangerous—tell them it's a choice, that if they do it and kill someone, they will go to prison for a very long time. Make them understand the reality. And model the behavior—never drive after drinking, always use alternatives, make it clear this is non-negotiable.

If you're an educator, implement comprehensive programs that go beyond current superficial approaches. Bring in speakers—survivors, incarcerated offenders, law enforcement, prosecutors. Make students understand that one choice can end everything. Don't soften it. Don't pull punches. The stakes are too high for comfort.

If you're someone who drinks or uses drugs, plan ahead. Every time. Not most times—every time. If you're going somewhere where you'll consume impairing substances, decide before you leave how you'll get home. Download rideshare apps. Exchange keys with a sober friend. Stay where you are. But never, ever convince yourself that you're okay to drive when you're not. That moment of self-rationalization is the moment when you might become a killer.

If you see someone about to drive impaired, intervene. Take their keys. Call them a cab. Drive them yourself if you're sober. Don't worry about being rude or overreacting. The temporary awkwardness is infinitely preferable to a lifetime of knowing you could have prevented a death and didn't. People may be angry in the moment, but if you save them from killing someone—or from being killed themselves—they'll thank you eventually.

If you're a victim's family member, speak out. Share your story, as painful as that is. Contact advocacy organizations like MADD. Attend court hearings. Make victim impact statements. Write to legislators. Your voice carries weight that statistics cannot—you can make the abstract real, put a face to the numbers, force people to confront what impaired driving actually means.

And for all of us: stop calling these incidents 'accidents.' Stop using language that minimizes choice and responsibility. Call them what they are—preventable deaths caused by someone's decision to drive while impaired. When we speak about these cases, frame them correctly: 'killed by a drunk driver,' not 'died in an accident.' 'Chose to drive impaired and killed someone,' not 'was involved in a fatal crash.' Language shapes thought, and thought shapes action. If we want to change outcomes, we must first change how we talk about the problem.

Remembering Aidan, Demanding Justice, Preventing Future Deaths

Aidan River Starkey should be alive today. He should be laughing with friends, pursuing his dreams, experiencing all the joys and challenges and ordinary moments that make up a human life. He should have decades ahead of him. Instead, his life ended because someone made a choice—a choice that person had made before, a choice the system had failed to prevent through adequate consequences, a choice that should never have resulted in Aidan's death.

And now, adding insult to devastating injury, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office continues to fail Aidan and his family. The killer remains free. Justice remains undelivered. The family lives in a nightmare of unresolved grief and rage, watching as the system that failed to protect Aidan now fails to hold his killer accountable.

This cannot stand. Justice delayed is justice denied, and in this case, justice has been denied for far too long. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office must answer for its failures. The killer must face consequences commensurate with the life taken. And the system must change so that future families don't experience what Aidan's family has endured.

But beyond this individual case, we face a broader moral imperative. Every 39 minutes, someone in America dies because of impaired driving. That's 37 people today. 37 tomorrow. 37 the day after that. Each one preventable. Each one a person with family, friends, dreams, futures. Each one a victim of someone else's choice.

We have allowed this carnage to continue because we've treated impaired driving with insufficient seriousness. We've called these deaths 'accidents' when they're nothing of the kind. We've sentenced killers to a handful of years when they've taken entire lifetimes. We've allowed repeat offenders to accumulate DUI convictions without permanent consequences, then acted surprised when they kill. We've watched Hollywood normalize the behavior that leads to these deaths. We've chosen convenience and comfort over the hard work of changing laws, culture, and enforcement.

That must end. Now. Not next year. Not after the next legislative session. Not after the next study or task force or awareness campaign. Now.

If we treated every impaired driving death as manslaughter, with sentences to match, we would save thousands of lives annually through deterrence alone. If we implemented comprehensive prevention strategies—mandatory interlocks, impairment detection technology, 0.05% BAC limits, consistent checkpoints—we would save thousands more. If we changed our cultural conversation, stopped normalizing this behavior in media, and made it as socially unacceptable as drunk driving should be, we would save thousands more still.

The question is not whether we can prevent these deaths. We can. The question is whether we will. Whether we value human life enough to make the changes necessary. Whether we care enough about the Aidans of the world to ensure their deaths are never dismissed as accidents, their killers never walk free, their families never left without justice.

Aidan River Starkey deserved better. His family deserves better. The thousands who will die this year deserve better. We owe it to them to act. To demand justice in individual cases like Aidan's. To change laws. To change culture. To prevent future deaths.

Every 39 minutes, we have a chance to be better. To save a life. To spare a family from devastation. To prove that we value human life more than we value the convenience of treating impaired driving with insufficient seriousness.

This is not complicated. This is a choice. Just as impaired driving is a choice.

The choice before us is clear: accept the status quo and watch thousands more die, or demand change and save those lives.

For Aidan. For all those we've lost. For all those we can still save.

The time for action is now.

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If you have been affected by impaired driving, resources are available through Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) at madd.org, the National Organization for Victim Assistance at trynova.org, and local victim advocacy services. If you are struggling with substance use and need help, contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

For information about Aidan River Starkey's case and to demand accountability from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, contact your elected representatives and local media.