Driving Under the Influence in Las Vegas
Monday, 15 October 2007

Meet Frank. Frank is an investment banker for a large firm in New York City. He works on Wall Street. Every morning Frank gets up and goes to work. He works for twelve to fourteen hours a day and doesn’t get home until well after dark. He has no friends. He has no life. He has no family. Every other weekend Frank goes to see his parents on Long Island, where he and his Dad sit and talk about work.

This weekend Frank decided he was going to do something a little bit different. Frank has never been to Nevada. He’s never been off of the East Coast. As a matter of fact, Frank has never been outside of New York State. He’s going to leave New York this weekend though. This weekend he’s going to go to Vegas. He figures he has it covered. He’s an investment banker. He knows all about taking calculated risks. He figures he should be able to hit the Vegas casinos, triple his investment and add a nice chunk on to his retirement fund. Frank boards the plane leaving the New York Airport and settles back in his seat with a book on IRAs, looking forward to his relaxing vacation in Las Vegas.

Frank steps off of the plane and looks around. He can’t believe his eyes! Everywhere he looks he sees slot machines. There are red slot machines and green slot machines, purple slot machines and orange ones. There are ones that light up and ones that don’t. There are some in neon and some without. Anxious to get started tripling his investment Frank picks up his luggage, then proceeds to cash in one of his traveler’s cheques for quarters so he can play the slots. While Frank is playing the slot machines a man comes up to him with a martini on the tray. Compliments of the house, he says. Frank happily takes the martini. It’s perfect. Not being much of a drinking man, he begins to stress slip away from his body almost immediately. As this is precisely what he was looking for on this vacation he decides to have another. Then another.

By the time he is ready to go to his hotel he has lost seventy five dollars at the slot machines and consumed four martinis. He feels a buzzing in his head, and life suddenly looks a lot better. He picks up the keys to his rental car from the woman at the desk, who is looking at him funny. She apparently decides there is nothing wrong with him, however, and allows him to go out to the parking lot and get his rental car. Frank drives his car off the lot and starts down the road that the map says will take him to his hotel. The car is swaying from side to side in time with the music, and Frank decides to sway along with it.

From out of nowhere comes a car full of kids heading straight toward Frank and his dancing car. Frank jerks the wheel to bring the car to his side of the road, but it is too late. Frank hits the car full of teens and knocks himself unconscious. He wakes up in a hospital bed to find himself looking into the eyes of a fierce looking police officer. The officer informs him that his rental car has been totaled, two of the kids in the oncoming car were killed and Frank now faces a jail sentence of up to twenty years in one of the state prisons because driving under the influence and causing injury or death to another person in a felony in Nevada.
 Was his trip to Las Vegas worth the consequences? Frank certainly doesn’t think so.