Scholarship Application -- Drunk Driving Essay

By contrast, teenagers who begin drinking before they are allowed to and young adults who just started drinking at the age of 21 frequently drink so much they become extremely intoxicated even when they do not mean to. They overestimate their ability to function; they underestimate their relative degree of impairment from alcohol; and they are the most prone to becoming more bold and more careless (or fearless) when they are intoxicated.

Whenever I have the opportunity to talk to my peers, I try to promote the idea that there is simply no such thing as any "safe" amount of alcohol that can be consumed before driving any kind of motor vehicle. Even is the statutory limit "allows" a certain cutoff point before a person is considered "intoxicated" by legal standards, the relative risk of being involved in an accident skyrocket after even a single drink as compared with the risk of being in an accident completely sober. To avoid losing the receptivity of my audience, I avoid the issue of the legal drinking age because, unlike the issue of drunk driving, it is very hard to convince people that underage drinking is a moral issue.On the other hand, when my peers have to confront a person who almost lost a family member to drunk driving, they can relate to the horrible feelings associated with losing a family member. I always stress that a single bad decision could conceivably kill an innocent person and permanently change the lives of everybody in their family in addition to their own lives and the lives of the families of their victims.

As a college student at ____, I hope to continue my work publicizing the dangers of drunk driving on a larger scale. In addition, I hope to use the opportunity to recruit some of my classmates to join my efforts and, ultimately, promote this extremely important message as broadly….....