Drunk Driving Up, Spending on Making

Well, here's a sobering story from AP.org and USAToday.com, it turns out that in 22 states drunk driving is up. Sorry, should I not joke about something as serious as drunk driving? Well, enough people seem to not take it seriously, so I figure, why not joke about something that kills more Americans every year than Osama bin Laden killed on 911. Check out the stats for yourself if you don't believe me.

YEP, it's true--a drunk driver is more likely to kill you than a terrorist. In 2006 alone, over 13,000 Americans died in alcohol-related car crashes. And, as I stated above, the odds of you dying in this kind of crash are going up. Here's a cutting from an August 20, 2007 article that will tell you more about it:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data showing there were 13,470 deaths in 2006 involving drivers and motorcycle operators with blood alcohol levels of .08 or higher, which is the legal limit for adults throughout the country. The number was down slightly from 2005, when 13,582 people died in crashes involving legally drunk drivers.

The overall number of deaths involving drivers and motorcycle operators with any amount of alcohol in their blood was 17,602 last year. That was up from 17,590 in 2005, according to spokeswoman Heather Ann Hopkins.

"The number of people who died on the nation's roads actually fell last year," U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference in this Washington suburb. "However the trend did not extend to alcohol-related crashes."

Transportation officials announced the new figures as they unveiled a $11 million nationwide advertising campaign as part of a Labor Day weekend campaign "Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest."

AH YES! What a BRILLIANT campaign, sirs! Surely the threat of arrest is the worst possible thing connected with drunk driving!!

Killing other people? Robbing parents of their children and children of their parents? PAH!

CLEARLY, spending time in jail is WAY worse than anything else that could happen while driving drunk!!

/sarcasm

My best friend from college had a father who was on the wagon--quit drinking and just shortly after was killed by a drunk driver.

Needless to say, my then-best-friend's life was changed for ever.

As for these numbers going up? My guess is people are getting drunk more often because life is sucking more for all of us. In short, expect to see these numbers go up for 2007.

---

Orignal From: Drunk Driving Up, Spending on Making