Texas lawmakers know they must act, but how is the big question. Our state leads the nation in alcohol-related traffic deaths, and Dallas County is the nation’s third-worst for per capita drunk driving fatalities. Such tragic distinctions cannot continue.

One huge problem is that many drunk driving fatalities are caused by multiple offenders — people who already have been arrested as a drunk driver, but keep driving drunk anyway. While repeat offenders represent only 20 per cent of those arrested for drunk driving, they are a very dangerous one-fifth. How can they be rehabilitated — or kept from driving?

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According to Houston’s Fox 26 TV, Harris County residents are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than those of any other highly-populous county in the United States. (Harris County ranks third, with more than 4 million residents.)

This sobering threat to public safety is why local law enforcement agencies are gearing up to bring down the number of drunk drivers. They’re doing this via a multi-agency crackdown. Through Labor Day weekend, law officers will be working overtime to spot drunk drivers and get them off our roads, streets and highways.

Another part of the campaign is Choose Your Ride. This program emphasizes that those who drink should do anything but drive a vehicle. Instead, they are urged to take a cab or a bus, or ride with a sober friend or designated driver. Otherwise, they may wind up riding with a police officer — to jail.

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In Houston, a baby is on life support in a hospital because a car crashed into her family’s home. In San Antonio, a woman is hospitalized with serious injuries after a car crashed into her while she drove to church. In Dallas, four people are in a hospital after a three-car accident on North Central Expressway.

What do all these tragedies over the weekend have in common? They all involve suspected drunk drivers who lost control of their vehicle. But when the DUI suspect truly lost control was upon making a conscious decision to drink and then drive.

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Why should we get mad about drunk drivers, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)? Why should we have zero tolerance toward drunk drivers, pushing for more and stronger laws? Why are drunk driving car wreck accidents like a war against America? And why should anything change?

The answer to each question is simple: Drunk drivers are slaughtering us. They’ve been doing so virtually since autos were born, and though death numbers have risen and fallen, they’ve never disappeared. Put simply: Drunks kill — and isn’t that reason enough to do something about it?

Yet for many, news of another drunk driving fatality seems routine and, unless a loved one was killed, acceptable. Drunk drivers seem to be just a fact of life. But not all facts are unalterable.

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Drunk driving accounts for a whopping one third of all U.S. traffic fatalities, or about 12,000 Americans killed in the past year. But drunk driving isn’t the same throughout America. Some cities have worse problems than others with alcohol, as surveyed by Men’s Health magazine. It found Fresno, CA as the “most drunk city in America.”

The magazine’s survey included a city’s alcohol-related car crashes, its number of drunk driving arrests and the severity of its drunk driving penalties. It also based conclusions on death rates from alcoholic liver disease and the frequency of binge drinking.

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Americans love their holiday traditions, including New Year’s Eve. In Japan, the new year isn’t widely acknowledged until people rise the next morning. But in the USA, millions of revelers party past midnight to ring in another year. The only trouble is, such partying often includes heavy drinking and unleashes drunk drivers on our roads.

It’s always the same story, so you’d think Americans would wake up and learn a vital lesson: Don’t drink and drive. Yet such deaths spike during year-end holidays, and thousands of Americans (nearly 14,000 in 2008) become yearly statistics in drunk driving fatalities.

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As we brace for the drunk driving tragedies which inevitably accompany year-end revelries, we applaud Montgomery County officials for a new tactic in the war against drunk drivers. County District Attorney Brett Ligon will start posting tweets on his Twitter account for the world to see whenever a person is arrested for drunk driving, DUI or DWI in that county.

As Chief Prosecutor Warren Diepraam told KPRC News, “We’ve kind of simplified it by using Twitter, putting that information that’s already out there as a public record . . . on Twitter so that people could follow who’s been arrested.”

The idea is to discourage persons from drunk driving via the threat of public humiliation — on top of arrest and possible prosecution. Ligon believes such a tactic could “embarrass the right offender” with the threat of “collateral damages” (public shame) beyond the legal case itself.

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When holiday stress spawns rudeness, if not recklessness, the holiday season can be a tough time for innocent drivers and passengers. But in this age of talking, texting and otherwise distracted drivers, it’s gotten worse. In Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and throughout Texas, car accidents will put Christmas coal in many stockings, because drivers — who are already preoccupied — will magnify their disengagement with even more heedlessness.

Sometimes that can come from an overly fierce focus. How else do you explain the fact that a woman was run down by an SUV in a southwest Houston parking lot recently? The reason? Another driver thought the parking place she’d claimed was rightly his — and took it out on her by running her down. Apparently, holiday shopping stress can do that to people.

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Drunk drivers’ undeclared war on America has raged for decades, killing more than half a million U.S. citizens since 1982. Such a terrible toll mandates strong counterattacks, and one is requiring ignition-interlock devices in the vehicles of those who are known to be drunk drivers.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), most states have laws requiring such devices, which involve detecting alcohol via a driver’s breath and not allowing a car to start if the test fails.

In Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana and eight other states, the devices are required after an .08 reading for a DUI conviction. In Florida, North Carolina and six other states, they’re required after a .15 reading for a DUI conviction. In Texas, Missouri and four other states, they’re required after a repeat DUI conviction.

In California, it’s up to a judge’s discretion, but the state’s lawmakers just passed a bill which would launch a four-county pilot program for using such devices, including Los Angeles County.

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Time magazine reports that a cultural shift toward bemused tolerance of moms’ drinking so they can cope with busy days is circling the drain along with discarded martinis. Indeed, as advanced by books and commercials, the thought of a happily drinking mom has become less liberating than sobering — especially since a big-news tragedy this summer.

That tragedy, of course, was the horrific drunk driving accident near Hawthorne, N.Y. which claimed eight lives, including that of Diane Schuler, a mother who’d reportedly had 10 drinks before hitting the highway with five kids in her car. Her wrong-way collision killed four of them and herself, along with three men in another car.

Time says this sensational story has had a wrenching effect on women whose routines and responsibilities include ferrying kids from place to place. Drinking isn’t as funny or fun now that Schuler’s catastrophe has served as a wakeup call, especially for women who relate to her life.

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