If anyone needed another reminder of how the casual decision to drive drunk can terribly alter the course of lives, they could have taken it from the sentencing of Steven Shaw last week. Shaw, 50, was sent to prison for getting drunk and then driving his SUV at high speed into a car full of teenage girls returning home to Tooele from a soccer match last January.

Since that night, none of the five girls in the car have been the same. One of the girls, Jenna Morgan, has undergone multiple, life-saving surgeries. Another, Lauren Howsden, has also undergone hours of physical therapy to enable her to play goalkeeper -- albeit with a pronounced limp --for the THS girls soccer team. All five girls have suffered severe emotional trauma.

The Shaw case has put the spotlight once again on one of Tooele County's worst demons: drunk driving. In 2006, drunk-driving offenses made up 22.3 percent all criminal cases prosecuted in the county. In fact, at any given time there are around 40 open DUI cases, according to Tooele County Attorney Doug Hogan. And despite years of don't-drink-and-drive media campaigns, the problem has not abated over the last seven years, according to a 2006 report by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

On Sunday, three more people -- all family members -- were killed on I-80 in Tooele County in an accident that again appeared to be caused by drunk driving. It's time to say enough is enough.

We can't rely on law enforcement to keep drunk drivers off our roads. As a community, we must simply make driving drunk morally and socially unacceptable -- as vile a crime as pedophilia or spousal abuse. We can't afford to ever cross our fingers and hope that friend or family member who has had too much to drink will make it home safely.

Shaw, breathing with the help of an oxygen tank, appeared shaken and remorseful during his sentencing last week. But most people in the county will not remember him that way. Instead, they will remember a 50-year-old man who should have known better -- a drunk driver who caused tremendous pain and suffering for five teenage girls. It was another lesson, if anyone needed it, that the choice to drink and drive can have terrible, lasting consequences.