Our town remains in mourning this week.

Four promising young lives cut short. Another wrong-way driver accused of crashing into a car, apparently after a night of at least some drinking. Unimaginable sorrow for the families and friends of the children who died last Sunday morning.

Same old, lousy New Mexico story.

This crash won't stop drunks from driving, either.

It's not for lack of laws or lack of trying. It's not even lack of enforcement or punishment, weak as that can be sometimes.

We have laws. We have punishment.

What we don't have in New Mexico is the realization that deciding to drink and drive is making a conscious choice to harm a fellow human being — even when we make it home safely.

The situation is improving, but incremental improvements are no consolation to the families of the four teens who died — Rose Simmons, 15, and Kate Klein, Alyssa Trouw and Julian Martínez, all 16.

Don't believe that progress is taking place? Then look at the numbers. Sheriff Greg Solano points out in his blog that in 2008, New Mexico suffered 143 DWI-related fatalities, down 34 from 2007 and a reduction of 221 from 2002. Since 2003, our state has seen a 35 percent decline in drunken-driving related deaths.

Our collective will is changing — just not fast enough to save the four teens who died early Sunday morning.

Individually, about the only drunk most of us can stop driving is ourselves. And that's where the situation disintegrates.

Too often, we take that drink, think we're fine to drive and go off into the night, shaking our heads the next morning as we read about the latest crash involving alcohol.

Because, of course, we are not the problem. Only the scumbags, those other people — the ones who drink and drive and kill — are to blame. Those guys are evil; we're good to go.

What struck me hard last week was the juxtaposition of this horrible tragedy with an unrelated DWI in the news: the arrest of a Santa Fe police lieutenant, accused of driving drunk in Rio Rancho. I'm sure Stephen Ryan thought he was fine to drive. I'm sure he's a wonderful man when he is sober and not behind the wheel of his pickup. Yet he now stands accused of drinking and driving when surely he knew better.

Scott Owens, the 27-year-old man accused of crashing into the carful of teenagers last week, also is accused of choosing to drink and drive. Whatever the details of the crash — the investigation is continuing — four teens are dead.

Much of the conversation about the crash has strayed from how to mitigate the evils of drinking and driving into the wisdom and legality of such young teens being out after midnight in a caravan of cars on their way to a party.

Driver Avree Koffman, 16, had only a provisional license and should not have been on that road with so many passengers under both New Mexico law and common sense. But as Barry Klein put it so poignantly about his daughter, Kate: "She wasn't supposed to be in that car. She made a mistake. But she shouldn't have been killed for making a mistake."

Like all parents, I am talking to my soon-to-be-teen about this crash and about why so much danger lurks after dark for him and other adolescents. Most of all, I have hugged him a lot lately, so conscious that four sets of parents can no longer hug their babies.

In a few years, should my son make a mistake — and don't we all — I can only pray that no drunken driver will be lurking. Because in New Mexico, drinking and driving are just facts of life. To turn the slogan around: They drink, they drive, we lose.

Reach Inez Russell at inezrussell@msn.com.