Caro Smit: How many more deaths must we accept? Let's all work together with South Africans Against Drunk Driving to change the situation.

Let's insist our magistrates and judges accept that this is a crime and give very harsh sentences.

We cannot afford to sit back and hope it won't be our child who is killed next.

These drunk-driving crashes cost our country R56-billion a year - and this doesn't take into consideration the terrible pain the parents of those children feel.

The only thing that will stop people driving drunk on our roads is for sentences to be so strict that people are too afraid to not follow the law.

At present road crashes are the leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds.

By 2015, it will be the leading cause of death in the five- to 15-year-old group, too, causing more deaths even than HIV and malaria.

Alcohol misuse causes half of these deaths and injuries. Please don't sit back and just say, "Shame!"

Let's work together.

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