Over the past weekend a Budweiser commercial featuring an adorable yellow lab, its owner and a sappy love song caught my attention.

This commercial, titled “Friends Are Waiting,” has become the poster child for drunk driving advertisements and has caught the eyes of viewers all over the country thanks to its play time on national television.

Drunk driving is more relevant and needs to be brought up more in college towns such as Eau Claire because of the amount of young people consuming alcohol and making rash decisions.

However, in a college town like Eau Claire, many options are available for safe transportation. Campus Resident escort shuttle services are free to any student with a Blugold ID and run untill 2 a.m. on weekends. Along with this, the Right Way Shuttle runs off campus and to upper campus and is $2 a trip. Unfortunately, some students don’t want to wait the extra ten minutes and will get behind the wheel.

This extra ten minutes, though, should be one of the easiest decisions you ever make. Finding a designated driver for the night or even taking the extra time to walk to your destination in the end far outweighs the risks you take when you operate a vehicle while intoxicated.

Last month the topic of drunk driving caught the eyes of not only NFL fans, but also hit home with average everyday human beings after former NFL kicker Rob Bironas was killed in a single car alcohol-related accident.

After the accident, the autopsy report showed the 36 year old died of blunt force trauma after his vehicle veered into a line of trees Sept. 20. Bironas was severely intoxicated and his bloodwork revealed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.218, nearly three times the legal limit.

Calls to 911 prior to the accident portrayed Bironas as chasing people at high rates of speed and trying to run them off the road, all before losing control of his 2009 Yukon Denali near his home.

Incidents like this point to one of the major risks of alcohol, which is operating a vehicle while impaired.

Operating a vehicle after consuming alcohol is not worth the risk you take of wrecking your car, being pulled over, taking an innocent civilians life or even taking your own life like Bironas did.

According to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving website in 2012, 10,322 people were killed in drunk driving incidents nationally. In Wisconsin, 200 people were killed. Drunk driving is the cause of over 30 percent of traffic deaths every year, which tells us better decisions need to be made.

Budweiser has become one of the most proactive companies in the industry after creating their drink responsibly advertisement with this phrase at the forefront, “Next time you go out, be sure to make a plan to get home safely.”

The sad thing is it doesn’t end there. People need to adhere to these advertisements and the law to make our roads a safer place, and it doesn’t look like we will be getting there anytime soon.