Let me tell you about Robert Bradley. He was 20 years old, a university student with a habit of prank calling his mum by impersonating a TV game show host. The last time he dialed home, he announced, Anne Bradley, this is Chris Tarrant! Who wants to be a millionaire? Your son Robert is here and he picked you as phone a friend! His mother played along, laughing, The wee bugger if I don’t get this right he’ll kill me! Robert’s punchline? Wise up mum, it’s me!

Six days before Christmas in 2000, Robert and his friend Alex were walking home when a car speeding the wrong way down a one way street plowed into them. The driver was three times over the legal alcohol limit. Robert’s father Bobby describes his son as a character, someone whose memorial service drew over a thousand people. But what he describes next is quieter, heavier. After Robert died, my wife never went out the front door. Or up the stairs. She just lost her way.

Twenty five years later, Bobby Bradley still speaks about this loss with raw bewilderment. He now chairs Life After, supporting families gutted by road tragedies. His voice gains a particular thickness when discussing this year’s holiday season in Northern Ireland, where police report that 50% of drivers tested for drugs during their winter safety campaign came back positive. Add to that 129 arrests for suspected drunk or drugged driving in just 15 days. Fifty two traffic deaths since January. Numbers so stark they feel abstract, until you realize each digit represents someone’s version of Anne Bradley, frozen at the foot of the stairs.

Here’s what staggers me. Not just the persistence of this problem, but the mythology surrounding it. There exists a collective fiction that certain substances don’t count, that short drives are exempt, that rural roads are empty stages for our misjudgments. Police Chief Sam Donaldson calls it out plainly: There’s a misconception that you can take some alcohol and still be fit to drive. Let’s dismantle that fairy tale with steel toes. If your system contains any alcohol or drugs, prescription or otherwise, your driving ability is impaired. Period. Yet somehow, this remains controversial dinner table debate material, like pineapple on pizza or the merits of manual versus automatic transmissions.

I think about how we frame risk during the holidays. We fret over turkey cooking temperatures to avoid salmonella. We debate whether to light real candles on the tree or go electric. We swap tips for soothing Aunt Margo when she overindulges in sherry. But when it comes to driving impaired, societal judgment softens into something suspiciously laissez faire. Oh, I’ll be grand, people murmur, the Irish equivalent of it won’t happen to me. It’s the same magical thinking that convinces us we’ll stick to New Year’s resolutions or remember to water that poinsettia. Except failure here doesn’t mean wilted leaves. It means metal twisting around lampposts like tinsel.

The cognitive dissonance is breathtaking. We live in an age of hyper vigilance. We sanitize shopping cart handles. We obsess over sleep trackers and step counts. We’ll interrogate a barista about almond milk sourcing. Yet many still cling to the notion that driving after a few pints or a joint is acceptable holiday behavior. Bobby Bradley’s summation cuts through the noise: People are so selfish. They don’t think of anybody else.

Selfishness feels like harsh lexicon during the season of goodwill, but consider the mechanics. Choosing to drive impaired isn’t an isolated decision. It’s voting that your convenience matters more than a pedestrian’s right to cross the street. That your shortcut home outweighs a cyclist’s journey. That your ability to avoid police checkpoints trumps another family’s intact Christmas. Yes, substance abuse disorders exist. Yes, systemic issues around transit infrastructure and addiction treatment persist. But many incidents stem from sheer entitlement, the belief that rules bend for special little us.

What’s particularly galling is how preventable these tragedies remain. Unlike cancer clusters or unforeseen genetic conditions, drunk and drugged driving solutions are embarrassingly straightforward. Don’t do it. Call a cab. Designate a driver. Sleep on a friend’s sofa. Walk. We possess more technology and options than ever before, yet the death toll keeps its grim rhythm. Northern Ireland’s roads have claimed 52 lives this year alone. Let me reframe that with Bobby Bradley math: That’s 52 families who’ll set extra places at holiday tables for ghosts.

Here’s where I want to pivot from frustration to warmth, because condemnation alone never changed behavior. Think of those ads where friends gently confiscate car keys amid laughter. The camaraderie of volunteering to be the group’s sober shepherd. The quiet pride in waking up without wondering whether you crossed lines invisible until it’s too late. Change happens through accountability served with compassion, not shame.

Ironically, the solution might lie in embracing selfishness of a different flavor. New Year’s resolution style selfishness. The kind where protecting yourself becomes the priority. Because here’s the secret: Not getting arrested feels fantastic. Avoiding five figure fines and license suspensions? Glorious. Never enduring the suffocating guilt of knowing you orphaned someone’s child? Priceless. Stay sober behind the wheel, and you’ll never become the villain in someone else’s tragedy. That’s self care even Gwyneth Paltrow might endorse.

As I write this, police across the UK are running campaigns with names like Operation Limit. There’s something almost sad about that branding, the bureaucratic acknowledgment that humans require external guardrails against our own worst impulses. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we evolved beyond needing such reminders? If choosing not to risk lives became as instinctive as hugging loved ones under mistletoe?

Bobby Bradley still answers interview questions 25 years later because the alternative is silence, and silence implies acceptance. He does it despite the cost of reopening wounds with every microphone pointed his way. When asked about drug driving surpassing alcohol incidents in recent years, his reply lacks surprise. I can imagine the drugs are getting even more so than the drink. That many people take them now of all ages. His tone suggests weary prophecy, a man who’s seen society’s vices shift while consequences remain constant.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking observation comes wrapped in black humor. People think it’ll never happen to me, Bobby notes. Until it does. Then you’re left deciphering police reports instead of graduation photos. That sentence alone should be printed on every license renewal form.

So here’s my holiday plea, delivered without ribbons. When you leave gatherings this season, pause beside your car. Really look at it. Not as transportation, but as two tons of metal capable of revolutionizing lives for the worse. Then decide who you want to be: Someone who adds to Bobby Bradley’s grief mosaic, or someone who lets strangers return safely to their own imperfect, precious families.

Loss taught Bobby that you never imagine how families feel until tragedy knocks. Let’s imagine it. Let’s imagine it so vividly that keys stay pocketed. Let’s make next year’s police briefing describe empty holding cells. Let’s gift each other the luxury of unbroken hearts. What’s more festive than that?