There so much perceived outrage with regard to American deaths in Iraq.
Why is there no national outcry and outrage with regard to the much larger number of alcohol related traffic deaths, year after year?
Are/Is the media playing favorites for political purpose?
Is the alcohol industry blocking action by congress?
What can or WILL you do?
Apples and oranges. The one is the result of government policy, the other the result of individual stupidity.
We already have strict, some might even say draconian, laws against drunk driving. Law enforcement works hard against it. But you’re always going to have drunk drivers, just like you’re always going to have murderers and litterers.
What WILL I do? Not drive drunk, I guess.
Why stop at alcohol related traffic accident deaths ? Why not consider that the American love affair with the automobile , reliant on a mid east oil supply, has resulted in way more American deaths and injuries in America than what is reported in Iraq. By several order of magnitude I’m sure.
News is about the unusual, not the ordinary. It’s not dog bites man, but man bites dog.
Disproportional risk and public (mis)perceptions about it is commonplace. Perhaps more people in the US died from walking across the street than were hit by lightning last year, but how many of us consider the former with equal frequency to the latter?
I for one am outraged, outraged, at the deaths caused by drunk and otherwise impaired drivers on our roads and highways. I have nothing but contempt and loathing for those killers. I fully support law enforcements efforts to keep them off of the roads.
Previously, I had thought that such feelings were so well nigh universal that they need not be constantly repeated. Sorry, my bad.
oh come off it. Children are indoctrinated against drunk driving from a very early age in federally funded schools! Society as a whole condemns drunk drivers, and untold amounts of money have been spent fighting it.
And trying to relate it to the Iraq war seems to be an exercise in idiocy.
I’m just making this up but…
say 1,100 American soldier deaths out of 150,000 soldiers (~ 0.73%)
vs
45,000 alcohol/driving deaths out of say, 270,000,000 people in the US (~0.0167%)
So I guess you could say the rate of soldiers dying is about 40 times greater than US citizens. Isn’t the (mis)use of numbers and statistics fun?
BTW, nobody is in favor of drunk driving, and there is a constant public outcry against it.
Sure. And it’s the same group of people that have resisted efforts to make Americans less dependent on autos (by increasing public transit options, increasing CAFE standards, increasing funding for the development of alternative energy sources) that have sent these young Americans to their deaths.
So, it’s a double negative for conservatives. We can blame them for the war in Iraq AND we can blame them for automobile deaths! Wheeeeeeee!
I’m so glad you pointed that out, grienspace. Thanks!
How much bigger has the national deficit gotten because of drunk driving, anyway?
People who are distraught over the deaths in Iraq aren’t upset over the mere numbers – they’re upset at all those servicemen (and -women) dying for no good reason.
And “Helping Haliburton secure billions in contract work” isn’t a good reason.
I’ve actually met with the policymakers whose job it is to make public roadways safer.
Drunk driving absolutely drives them crazy. It’s a source of constant, maddening frustration for people in departments and ministries of transportation. Drives them absolutely batshit. The last time I looked at the numbers, alcohol was a factor in something like 40% of all traffic fatalities; those whose job it is to stop that crap would do almost anything to get rid of it, because it is by far the single most important factor.
And they almost have done everything. They’re spending pretty much every available penny in their budgets, within the bounds of their mandates, to fight drunk driving. Trust me, they do the best they can, and they’re assisted by one very forecful lobby group (MADD) and a lot of other satellite groups.
They’ve simply reached the level of the SIQ, the Static Idiot Quotient. Public education will work on most people, but after awhile you’re left with those who are just too stupid to get the message.
So truth is, there’s not only a lot of outrage over drunk driving deaths; there has been an ENORMOUS amount of effort put into stopping them. And still is.
By comparison, in the case of the war in Iraq, the government is expending its effort to GET people killed, and has succeeded, tens of thousands of times over.
I also heard that they made the baby Jesus cry. bastards.
Your welcome ! 
But considering the outcome of the last election, I’m certain that for every conservative with an automobile there’s a liberal with an automobile as well. In America at least.
Drunk driving is the result of selfish overconfident individuals abusing a useful transport device.
It is illegal here and vigorously prosecuted. The Government has got it right.
Following the US into Iraq to ‘capture WMD’s’ has cost lives of civilians and soldiers, led to a serious loss of confidence and made the world less safe.
The Governments involved were wrong.
You want to diss the whole idea!
Oh! Then why are teens sneaking booze at home or anywhere they can get. Colleges rife with not only drinking but binge drinking?
Society as a whole gives lip service in public and condones drinking by their own children and even furnish it to them.
Likewise the courts, judges, lawyers let the DUI driver off to the point of making the arrest a joke.
An example of stats. Both are deplorable but the DUI problem can be solved if the public would DEMAND it.
Single most important factor? Seems to me, if 40% of fatalities are due to drunks, then 60% of fatalities are due to people who are just too bat-shit stupid to drive their cars even when they’re sober. Why not more outrage at that? According to these percentages, I’m 20% more likely to get killed by a stupid person than a drunk.
Why not ban cars altogether? Those things are dangerous, and obviously people are too stupid to be trusted with them. Better yet, let’s just have computer controlled cars, which would cut down on traffic fatalities by what, 100%?
This is exactly the type of comparison we needed BEFORE we went to war. 3,000 dead in the attacks and we spend 200 Billion? Are we spending 15 times that combating car accidents?
But then, I am a heretic, as I maintain that 9/11 did NOT change everything.
Actually, one could argue that state officials could do much more. Very little sunstantively is done in many US states against repeat offenders. I read an article early this week about a chap who just got his 34th DUI. Problem is, many states erase driving records after a few years and states poorly track DUIs in other states. It’s not unusual to find drivers with 4, 6, 8, 10 DUIs–and the government hands them back their keys all too soon. Because they’re chronic alcoholics, they exercise no control over themselves and often drive with sky-high DUIs, believing they have superhuman control. Take away their licenses and they will keep driving anyway. Install an ignition-interlock device, and they will try to defeat it. MADD has recently focused on these hardcore drunk drivers, but they find opposition to tightened standards in some states.
Seems like you’re confusing drinking with drunk driving. Children are bombarded with anti-drunk-driving messages from media outlets and authority figures; they are not bombarded with anti-alcohol messages nearly as often, which is exactly how it should be.
You bring up an interesting point, though - teens sneak booze at home or anywhere they can get it. If a teen can only drink at his friend’s house across town, so he drives there and gets drunk, how is he going to get back? I believe this is best addressed by lowering the drinking age and improving public transportation, but I’m funny that way.
What the hell are you talking about?
If 40% of traffic fatalities are caused by drunk driving, that makes it easily the #1 factor. There’s more than two other factors accounting for that other 60%.
Brit Hume, is that you?