Ruggs, 22, is accused of causing the predawn crash by driving drunk at speeds up to 156 mph with his girlfriend in his Corvette sports car before it slammed into the rear of Tintor’s Toyota RAV4 on a residential street where the speed limit is 45 mph. November 3rd, 2021

The above accident happened at 3:30am, after he left a TopGolf in Las Vegas at 12:30am, and his BAC was .16, 2x the legal limit. From my limited research of Henry Ruggs, he didn’t have a checkered past. Former teammate Tua Tagovailoa said, “You’d never think this guy could hurt a soul, so when you see something like that – I mean, I’m still kind of in disbelief. But, obviously my heart goes out to the family that has been affected by it. But my heart also goes out to Henry as my teammate, ex-teammate.”

Whose to Blame?

The reason I write this post is because I watched a video that was criticizing the people around Henry that night for not taking the keys from him. It struck a nerve with me because it’s clear that you can view a story like this and have two very different opinions and we’ll just disagree. As someone who knows the risks of alcohol and driving, there is never a time where you don’t accept personal responsibility when you get behind the wheel after drinking. The people around you can try to influence that decision, and you can blame them for not taking a sterner approach, but it’s not their duty to take the keys from you. You accept the consequences of your decisions at all times, even when you’re incapable of making good choices. As someone who has blacked out plenty of times, it’s easy to say “I had no idea what I was doing, how can I be held responsible?” That’s not an excuse because you let yourself get to that point and you accept all ramifications from bad decisions. To put this on friends is unacceptable in my mind.

To take a macro view at this argument, there is no right or wrong answer. I think I’m right to say that the friends hold 0 responsibility to stop Henry from getting in that car. The friends who let that happen probably will never forgive themselves for that night and they will blame themselves. I’d guess Henry accepts all the responsibility and how that one night ruined his entire life. It goes to show why politics exist. I believe in personal responsibility is the highest achievement in life. You take full control for every action that happens to you. This is a watermark of a conservative approach to life. Another can say that the community did not do enough to stop this situation. They look at the system as where the failure occurs. This would be a democratic approach to the issue. Where I see all points of life stemming from the individual, others will make efforts to fix the system. If all individuals are highly motivated, the system will work. If the system (think Government) tries to control the outcome of the people, it fails. This Henry Ruggs scenario, for a guy who is most likely a tremendous human being who made one poor decision, sheds light on both sides of the coin.