Forty One Goes For Twenty Three

A chase ends with driver's 23rd DWI:

Stopped for drunken driving after a chase early Thursday in Eagan, Raymond Sherman knew the drill; he'd been arrested 22 other times for drunken driving.

Sherman, 41, who hasn't had a valid driver's license since 1984, was released from jail in March after serving time for a drunken-driving incident in 2002.

On Thursday, he was charged in Hennepin County District Court with impaired driving, refusing a blood-alcohol test and fleeing police.

Not to make light of a fellow who obviously has a serious problem, but take a moment and think about the numbers here. Sherman is forty one years old. In Minnesota you can get a drivers license at age sixteen, which means he has been driving for twenty five years. In that time he has managed to rack up TWENTY THREE DWIs, averaging nearly one per year of driving. In you throw out the eighteen months he served after his 2002 DWI conviction (#22), it is just about one DWI for every year he was able to drive.

Unless he was the most unlucky man on earth, he must have driven drunk dozens of times for each time he was caught. That adds up to hundreds, if not thousands, of occasions over the years when he was boozed up behind the wheel. That's a frightening, and rather sobering point to ponder as you hit the roads tonight.