Yes, America had fewer traffic fatalities in 2008 than in any year since 1961. Yes, it’s heartening that while 37,313 people died this way last year, that was 9.1 per cent fewer than the year before.

But no, that number is still unacceptable. And any progress we’ve made is still tempered by the grim fact that so many traffic deaths come from one particular source of galling carnage: drunk drivers. No matter how much we strive, exhort and pray, drunk drivers are slaughtering innocents on America’s streets and freeways.

Sadly, such innocents include Los Angeles Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart who, just hours after throwing six shutout innings in his season debut, had his enormously promising life and career cut short — at the age of 22 — by the scourge of America’s roads and highways: a drunk driver.

Two others in the car with Adenhart, who wasn’t driving, also were killed when they were broadsided by a minivan which ran a red light last week in Southern California. The minivan driver fled the scene on foot but later was captured, and he proved to be a man with a suspended driver’s license due to a prior drunk driving conviction. Police said the man had over the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream.

Just because many Americans have fought against drunk driving for many years, and yet such tragedies persist, is no reason to give up. If anything, it’s a reason to press harder for laws, convictions and educational programs which give innocents more of a chance to live and suppress the awful tendency of drunks to drive.

If you or a loved one has been harmed by a drunk driver, you need not stand alone. Alert a drunk driving lawyer or auto accident attorney with Jim S. Adler & Associates to fight for the justice you deserve — and to keep a light shining on an unacceptable source of senseless tragedy: the killers known as drunk drivers.

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