Too often, our community is faced with the tragic loss of a life when people don’t think twice about the severity of a situation or the consequences that could come with it.

Last week, at Fayetteville Manlius High School, the senior class was shown a mock DWI crash, a scene that crews from local police and fire departments see all too often. At this event, students from the junior and senior class played out a very realistic and gruesome scene of an accident caused by a student who had been celebrating during the end of his senior year, became intoxicated and drove.

In this mock crash, the drunk driver of the vehicle lived, but he had killed two of the passengers of the other car, paralyzed one and seriously injured two others. Members of the junior and senior classes at F-M watched as their classmates reenacted this scene as part of the Every 15 Minutes program, which has been shown to the students every two years since 2010.

As Manlius Fire Department Lieutenant Chris Halliday said at the event, young adults should take extra time to think about the consequences of their actions when they are faced with decisions involving alcohol because the can be very serious and change the lives of many people for the worst.

This thought process should be something that not only high school students take into consideration, but also adults, in many of their everyday decisions.

Being a victim or being the cause of a drunk driving accident can have a lifetime effect. If you are convicted of vehicular manslaughter, you will not only have to deal with time in prison, but also deal with a lifetime of knowing with your irresponsible decision, you took away the life of a person who had so much more to live. And if you are a victim of a drunk driving accident, you may have to live with the horrific memory, irreversible affects of injuries or the loss of a friend or family member.

Think twice before you make a decision that could have bad consequences.