James Hancox. Photo / Supplied
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It's about personal responsibility. James Hancox learned that the hard way.
Time, and time, again.
Through his late teens and early 20s, Hancox lost four friends to drink-drive crashes.
Now 34, the technical analyst and photographer behind Photographers for Charity says he, personally, won't touch any alcohol before driving.
But
Two Drinks Max is, he acknowledges, "a nice compromise".
"I've lost friends to selfish drink-drive idiots," he says.
The Aucklander says one of the hardest deaths to cope with was that of a rowing mentor, Mike Tafua, who died when they were young. He was in a car with three others when they were hit by a drink-driver.
Tafua's father, a police officer, quit his job in protest at the driver getting a meagre sentence of community service.
Hancox said he could not bring himself to drink for about a decade after this death as the thought of alcohol sickened him.
"I was quite angry," he says. "I stopped drinking for 10 or so years after that. I had been a typical teen up till then."
He still will not touch a drop if he's driving.
And, for him, personal responsibility means looking after his mates as well - he admits to "taking keys off a few people over the years".
rachel.grunwell@hos.co.nz
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