Friday, May 22, 2009

Drinking and Driving, the American Way

Disclaimers in the body of the text don't excuse a stupid subject line. Like the subject of this dumbass post on SFist

"Remember to Buckle Up, Take Muni, Cab if Drinking This Weekend"

This is of course, because it is Memorial Day Weekend and you might get busted because there will be checkpoints. Nevermind that if you drive drunk anytime, you might kill several people including yourself. Just don't get a DUI ticket, that would really suck.

I don't get it - even my Mother is not immune to the contradictions, driving back from Healdsburg she saw two cyclists roll a stop sign and said "They're not following the rules". Of course their behavior is many orders of magnitude less dangerous than drinking and driving, yet there is still amazingly little societal backlash against it.

Reminds me of another blog topic I had on the back burner. I saw an story on the news about drivers getting information on their car GPS devices that tell them where the red light cameras are. So let me get this straight, there is all this backlash about a cyclist rolling a stop sign - because clearly that is a bad thing. If they are so high and mighty, why are they investing money into devices that warn them "Don't run the red light - ticket ahead!", after they just got done pontificating about how bad it is to break the traffic laws.

And without opening the "great helmet debate" up, you are supposed to buckle your seatbelt if "driving".

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