Hi, folks! Jack Daniels here, spokesperson for CPRDD, the Committee to Promote Responsible Drunk Driving.
I’m sure you’ve seen newspaper accounts of horrific crashes that happened after someone drove drunk, but I’m here to tell you that just because a person died or killed someone else while driving drunk, does NOT mean that drunk driving led to those deaths.
Surprised? I’ll bet you are. But that’s because you’ve been subjected to the blandishments of Big Medicine working tirelessly to marginalize the role of alcohol in treating medical ailments. For hundreds of years surgery, from amputations to tumor removals, was performed with alcohol as the only anesthetic. Then along came doctors who could not tolerate the economic competition and marginalized medicinal use of alcohol just to protect their own incomes.
How do we know that drunk driving is a safe and responsible choice? There are many reasons, but before I list them, I want to give thanks to my colleague Ima Frawde, CPM (certified professional midwife), the grandmother of American homebirth. Ima and her colleagues have come up with these fabulous arguments and I’ve simply adapted them for drunk driving.
1. Sober drivers die, too.
If you listen to those shills from Big Medicine, you’d think that no one sober ever dies in a car accident. Sure some drunk drivers are killed or kill others, but that hardly means that driving sober can guarantee that you will live. Ice is a major cause of car accidents; fog is another, but no one tries to demonize ice or fog the way that they demonize drunk driving.
2. Over 99% of drunk drivers will make it home without killing themselves or others.
Sure, you see reports of spectacular drunk driving accidents blaring from newspapers and TV, but those are the rare cases. As the many, many people who have successfully driven drunk can tell you, most drunk drivers will arrive home safely.
3. You are safest when you feel safest!
Just like homebirth is safe if you feel that it is safe, drunk driving is safe if you feel that it is safe. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that drunk drivers who do die or kill others simply weren’t trusting drunk driving enough.
4. Drunk drivers bring exactly the same skills and equipment to driving drunk as they do to driving sober.
Drunk drivers have access to the SAME brakes, gas pedal and wheel that sober drivers do. While drunk, they can perform EXACTLY the same maneuvers that they perform while driving sober.
5. Drunk drivers are responsible for their own health.
Who is the government or Big Medicine to tell me that I can’t care for myself in the way that I think is best? Making drunk driving illegal is the first step toward world domination by jack booted thugs who will implant us all with data chips to control our minds.
6. Drunk driving is empowering.
Those who have done it will tell you that driving drunk only increases the pleasure that you get from driving.
7. God is my co-pilot
Nothing happens that God does not intend should happen. If He wants a drunk driver to arrive home safely, it will happen. If the drunk driver dies or killed someone that surely means that God intended those deaths.
8. Some drivers aren’t meant to live.
Obviously!
There you have it, folks. These are just 8 of many reasons why drunk driving is safe. The next time you’re thinking about drinking and driving, remember, if those arguments are good enough to promote homebirth, they’re good enough to promote anything.
I hope that the purpose of this article is to provide sarcasm to the phenomenon. If you are honestly allowing this article to encourage you to drive drunk, than you are an idiot. Don’t let the ignorant author that wrote this mislead you into an impression that suggests driving drunk is safe. The Author states “If you listen to those shills from Big Medicine, you’d think that no one sober ever dies in a car accident…” Not true!! There is so much attention placed on the dangers of texting and driving, speeding, reckless driving, following traffic signals, stoplights, stop signs etc. because they kill drivers! “Over 99% of drunk drivers will make it home without killing themselves or others” WHERE ARE YOU SOURCES TO SUPPORT THAT?! “You are safest when you feel safest” Accidents are not predicted. They do not happen at your convenience! They can happen anywhere anytime. “Drunk drivers are responsible for their own health”… When you are sharing the road with other drivers, you become responsible for their safety too. “Drunk driving is empowering” Driving isn’t meant to make you feel powerful, its meant for transportation. “God is my co-pilot”. Ask anyone who has accidentally killed another person because they were driving drunk. You think they’ll say “God intended for them to die”? No they will probably never live the same way again. “Some drivers aren’t meant to live” Holy shit did you really just make it seem okay to kill someone. If you drive drunk and cause someone to die, and you say “they weren’t meant to live” It probably because you are a psychopath. Please don’t drink and drive. Do everything you can to avoid it. assign a designated driver, make sleeping arrangements so you don’t have to drive home, call your friend/ parents to pick you up, call a cab, walk home if its not too far. But please don’t be an idiot, be responsible
This particular post is satire, she substituted driving related things for all the things the extreme homebirth movement says about birth in order to show how absurd it is.
Okay I was really hoping this was meant to mock something
Rarely have I seen a point so thoroughly fly over a person’s head.
Brings new meaning to the phrase “Jesus, take the wheel!”.
It makes me mad that the police slap pejorative labels like”high risk” and “drunk” on any blood alcohol level 0.8 or higher. It’s a bunch of semantics to try to scare people from drinking and driving. Before about the 1980s people could drink and drive and the cops hardly stopped anyone. Then they started calling it “intoxicated” with a BAL of 0.12, and then 0.1 and now 0.08! Soon they’ll be calling it “drunk” even with a BAL of almost zero. Soon the rate of taking a cab will be 100% which is their goal I’m sure!!
I mean how could they have said I was “high risk” for driving? Yes, my BAL was 0.15, but I’m more than just a number! They didn’t take into account how well I hold my liquor. Granted I also failed the field sobriety test, but that test is so artificial anyway–when does a person have to walk on a straight line as part of driving a car?–exactly never, that’s when! (this is the part where I leave out that I also kissed the officer on the lips and that I also had snorted just a little cocaine at the bar).
Anyway, all this negative labeling of drinking and driving has got to go! The vast vast majority of these “high risk” drivers make it home completely ok, just as I’m SURE I would have if I hadn’t just happened to crash a little bit into a tree, which had NOTHING to do with my drunkenness!!
Paging Dr. Keirns. 🙂
Omg, I see it now. It’s all a vast conspiracy by taxi companies.
“Soon they’ll be calling it “drunk” even with a BAL of almost zero. ”
They already do in Hungary. And they are that conservative in their hospital birth policies, too.
There is indeed a direct connection here, mmmm.
Believe it or not, I read an article about legalizing drinking and driving! I get their concept- too many people are busted with minimal BAC- but this is just a stupid idea. You could have lesser penalties for low alcohol use without making it legal.
I cannot believe this is a thing, but so is HB, as well as people that push pit bulls into homes with kids (even ones with attack histories!). Telling everyone “pit bulls are no more dangerous than marshmallows!” ought to be illegal, and touting HB as safer than the hospital should be too. (yes, the marshmallow comment was an actual statement.)
Ah, idiots.
HB and pit bulls ought to be obvious dangers to anyone with a brain, but the propaganda is everywhere (HuffPo anyone?) Its amazing to me that people are still out there trying to block /create laws to protect these monsters (HBMW *and* pits). Death, brain damage, amputations, disabilities, and degloving be damned. That stuff can happen in hospitals, and any dog can bite!
Don’t you know that its all the owners/moms fault! They must have done something wrong because HB is SO SAFE, and so are those sweet wiggle butts (puke).
Drunk drivers make more sense that those sociopaths.
Dangerous dogs and dangerous lay midwives both need only cross state lines to avoid consequences from the government.
Not that I’m advocating putting down lay midwives, mind you. Keeping them from presiding over a birth is enough.
As I’ve pointed out before, the problem with drunk driving is not really the risk in itself, it’s the prevalence.
According to USDOT estimates, there are 27 000 miles of drunk driving in the US for every DUI. There are about 1 million DUIs in the US each year, so do the math and you realize that drunk driving is a HUGE problem. If you run it out, you discover it’s something like 100 miles of drunk driving PER PERSON in the US each year on average. Not just drivers, but that includes non-drivers.
It’s incredible how common it is.
Over the recent christmas break the police here ran random breath test stations around the state, and had an average pickup prevalence of 1%. My son the cop sits at the Maccas drivethrough on the morning of new years day and breath tests everyone coming through-calls it community service-and books more than 1%.
In the absence of community responsibility, the big stick is sometimes the option, shame it is necessary.
I was really happy when we were pulled over for an RBT recently – the young cop that tested my husband also checked that the kids were in the correct seats/seatbelts. I’m sure some people get annoyed, but it meant a lot to me that he cared enough to ask.
The boy hates going to car accidents so he figures prevention is a good thing if only for himself. He tells me he hits parents smoking in cars with kids – apparently a criminal offence here – whenever he gets the chance.
I really can’t blame him, they’re bad enough as it is, kid being in them makes it so much worse. I’m glad he enforces that law, I hope it makes a difference. (I really can’t stand people smoking around kids)
When I said ‘hits’ I of course meant ‘fines’. Not sure anything makes a difference to the attitudes but if it modifies behaviour in a positive way then that will do for the win. He has a zero tolerance attitude to anything to do with kids, apparently there is some foul stuff going on out there and whatever little he can do to try to mitigate it, he does.
Oh, I thought as much, don’t worry. I’m glad he does because kids deserve to be happy, healthy, and safe. I thought there was a demerit component too, but on looking at the smoking laws again, there isn’t.
There are some terrible things happening and I’m glad he’s making an effort to curb it.
pit bulls ought to be obvious dangers to anyone with a brain
That’s actually not true–that “locking jaw” thing is a myth and they’re not any more potentially dangerous than other breeds. Pit bulls are “the dangerous dog of the decade” right now, but in the 1970s it was Dobermans, in the 80s it was German
Shepherds, and in the 90s it was Rottweilers. Now it’s pit bulls.
I’ve had a German Shepard, and if I ever get another dog, I’m leaning towards a pit bull. Just like us, dogs aren’t born “bad”–how they were raised is what matters most.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Pit bulls aren’t necessarily aggressive but when they are the results can be catastrophic because they’re so strong (no locking jaws needed). I’ve met many sweet and non-aggressive pits but there are so many dumbasses out there using pit bulls as penis extensions that I would never feel comfortable owning a rescue pit. And in general, I think families need to do a better job of supervising dogs around children. Kids are at eye level so when they’re bitten it’s often in the face and can cause bad scars, impaired vision, etc. Remember, ALL dogs can bite under the right circumstances. And if the dog is large and strong the bite can kill.
Even my childhood collie bit twice. Once as a youngster, when he got a new longer lead for the yard and the kid who beat him with a stick came up to hit him again (kid never came back) and once in his older years when my toddler self pounced on him in a sound sleep. (He barely scratched me, just enough to frighten me.) Jamie was the gentlest of creatures, especially with his furless lambs. ‘Course, *I* might bite if pushed far enough!
My family had BIG dogs when I was little.
We had a Pyrenean (Great Pyrenees) that had NO understanding of windows and on more than one occasion jumped THROUGH a closed window at a perceived intruder (coal man, post man, milk man). Never bit or attacked anyone, but did have a habit of putting her front paws on people’s shoulder’s and licking them…which is not great when she weighed close to 120lbs and was well over 5′ tall when standing on her back legs.
A lot depends on the dog’s temperament. That breed is described as being stubborn, independent, and, while gentle, is very hard to train. Ours had clearly decided to go with the breed standards.
Then we got a German Shepherd/Labrador cross, which was a) much easier to train b) slightly less predictable.
No jumping through windows, but more likely to back a perceived intruder into a corner and hold them at bay, certainly no face licking.
Yeah, I don’t think dogs and little kids mix-both are unreliable, can struggle to remember basic etiquette-no matter how well you think you have drummed it into them-and the consequences for both can be dire in a moment if things don’t go according to plan or adult supervision isn’t optimally quick or effective.
My little dog is great but I watch him like a hawk with toddlers around, despite which he was badly injured last year (stick to the eye, requiring surgery) by an unruly 4 year old. I was supervising closely in case he somehow hurt the child-not that he has ever been aggressive to any person of any size, including that child or others who have been through the house. Not closely enough though for a child with serious behavioural issues, who isn’t susceptible to my child-whispering ways. Things can go seriously wrong really quickly, and not always in the way you think.
The most dangerous dogs tend to be
a) popular
b) poorly bred (part of being popular)
c) owned by people who don’t take proper precautions
A huge percent of attacks and fatal attacks are in the owner’s home or property.
As for nature versus nurture? It’s both. There are dogs that are born with temperament flaws that cause them to be hyper aggressive and only confinement can protect others. There are dogs that are abused and neglected to the point where they see anything as a threat.
And everyone knows that nature is kind and gentle and fair. That’s why 9 times out of 10 the drunk driver gets up and walks away, and it’s the sober driver who gets killed.
As someone who lost three family members to a drunk driver who decided to get behind the wheel of a welding truck (who walked away from the accident and got a minimal amount of jail time), I wish there was an entirely seperate transportation network for these fools to use so that the rest of would not be subject to their stupidity.
Taxis? Buses? Subways?
Sadly these are the type of arguments gun nuts actually make….
It’s even more empowering to drive drunk without a seatbelt, at night, in an unfamiliar neighborhood where they don’t label the streets well, when its pouring out. People who do that are drunk driving Gods/Goddesses and should be given medals and adulation. Anyone who dares suggest that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea is Bashing And Not Being Supportive and also Fearmongering.
It’s a good idea to do it while Facetiming and texting, too.
Seriously! Getting home in one piece without committing vehicular manslaughter is NOT the most important thing!
its about the driving EXPERIENCE
Like the BMW slogan.. “the ultimate driving experience”….
Wwwaaaaaahhhhhh- my police department won’t support my decision to drive drunk. They’re trying to dissuade me with “facts” and “logic.” They just want all that cash from the massive pile-up I’m gonna cause.
And is anyone else tired of MADD constantly playing the “Dead Child Card”?
Yes, drunk driving would be a lot safer if police weren’t against it. Police should form a respectful relationship with drunk drivers rather than the antagonistic relationship they have now that makes drunk drivers feel like they have to sneak around. Drunk drivers are so afraid of getting caught that they do things like turn off their headlights so nobody can see them or take crazy back roads and cut across cornfields if they see a cop car. THIS is what makes drunk driving dangerous, not the drunk driving itself. The police should host a bridge-building session with drunk drivers where they just LISTEN and stop criticizing. Police could form a TEAM with drunk drivers and SUPPORT drunk drivers. If Police saw a weaving car, instead of getting all unsupportive, they should drive alongside the weaving car to help guide it home. Almost ANY driver, no matter how intoxicated, would then make it home safely (and in the rare cases where the drunk driver was heading off a cliff or something, the police could save them at the last moment, I’m sure.)
And if they don’t, the drunk can always sue..
Because that’s their job, isn’t it? Keeping the roads safe.
*slow clap*
Oh, also – there’s a myth I’ve heard that you’re less likely to be injured in a crash if you’re drunk because you’re relaxed and floppy. Sounds a lot like all of the ‘Labor doesn’t hurt and progresses best if you feel relaxed and calm’ business.
“I drive better when I’m drunk because I am paying more attention”
My ex husband used to say exactly that to justify his drinking!
I believe that was the conclusion of the Drinkplace study.
Oh, you mean the one that was performed only on people with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.12, and only on roads with speed limits below 30 mph? The one that people use to justify driving on the freeway when they can barely walk?
Hey if you have only SEEN one drunk person drive without getting in an accident then you will believe. Driving instructors teach people to drive defensively, so they believe they need to be sober driving and Big Auto pushes interventions like seatbelts and airbags which do MORE damage and KILL people. ((Snark))
I thought there was some mixed evidence for that? That a few studies have found that drunks are slightly less likely to die than you’d expect?This is the best I could find from Dr. Google: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2879/do-drivers-have-a-better-chance-of-surviving-car-wrecks-if-theyre-drunk
Sober people get in accidents too! (The old argument that babies die in hospitals too rephrased)
If I crash while driving drunk, I’m sure my Certified Drunk Driving Doula can drop me off at the hospital before I die from my injuries. It’s only ten minutes away after all! Of course, once there I will probably object to most treatment (in case I’m conscious) and will also refuse life-saving interventions for my children (who happened to be driving the car, and of course I didn’t buckle them up, don’t you know that causes autism?). We all know interventions is what causes deaths – not driving drunk. Millions of people drive drunk every year, and we are still here!
Alcohol is natural!
Brilliant!
And millions of people have been driving drunk for years and most of them lived, right? And anyway, the hospital is there for MY convenience and back-up, even if I do refuse to let them treat me.. and thank GOD for lawyers because I’ll be on the phone while I’m in the ER looking for a good malpractice lawyer in case they screw up!
Ima Frawde forgot the passenger in the vehicle, but that’s understandable. The passenger’s welfare is not important to the act of driving drunk.
…drunk chauffeurs provide a rare, yet thrilling experience that sober chauffeurs simply can’t provide!
But if there is a crash, don’t count on that chauffeur to stick around and help… she’ll be out of there!
She may ask you to tell everyone she was just a friend or someone hitching a ride if she does stick around. Having a drunk in the car with you isn’t illegal
I’m a certified break liquid smoothies maker, after the natural high of your drunk driving wears off you can drink them daily to improve your immunity to naysayers. They also work wonders on speeding up recovery after experiencing complications during drunk driving accidents (which are only caused by people being afraid of police btw, people who trust drunk driving enough never have them, that is not natural at all).
Brakes? How could you?! Everyone knows that coolant works far better. You can even use it as a beauty treatment. Simply apply it to tender skin straight from the radiator (the hotter, the better) and watch as the years just peel away. Your skin will be lovely and wrinkle-free after just a few weeks.