Re: Does anyone care?

We care! The Century Council has been fighting Hard Core Drunk Driving for nearly a decade.

Check out our holiday e-card / slideshow that serves as a reminder to not drive drunk.

You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndvem-H4EMw

or here: http://www.centurycouncil.org/ecards/holiday/index.cfm?user=friend

On the money issue. I agree with Chris. It’s ridiculous that the US has spent a trillion now, that’s $1,000,000,000,000, on a War on Terror protecting us against a real but overstated threat – only a few thousand people have died in terrorism since 2001 -, while a meager $7,000,000 is thrown at traffic DUIs that a rough 250,000-300,000 people have died since in traffic.

Yes, I know the score is not really one trillion vs a couple of million, but I dare anybody to show a justification of the numbers here. It makes no sense that so little money is spent to reduce the roughly 46,000 people every year dying in traffic, vs the huge amount of money that is spent to ‘protect’ us against a rather vague threat.

Also, we shouldn’t just focus on the DUis here. Every traffic death (and injury) is one too much. The cause of death is irrelevant. And quite frankly, I believe a lot can be done with a relative little amount of money. Simple road safety does not need to be expensive. Better road signs can help a lot for instance.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but DUI is nearly non-existent in Europe. This is because people know they will suffer much more severe penalties than DUI offenders in the U.S.

I’m all for the tack taken by some law enforcement agencies where deadbeat dads are concerned. Put their pictures on TV and in the newspaper with DUI in big letters underneath. Shame works. It isn’t pleasant, but neither is getting a 3 a.m. phone call telling you that your child/spouse/loved one has just been seriously injured or killed by a drunk who wouldn’t call a cab.

Last week in a nearby city, an individual involved in a wreck was DUI and when the police officer went to speak with the driver, the man pulled out a gun and shot him between the eyes. The officer died the next morning, leaving behind a wife and five children, 2 weeks before Christmas.

I’m not sure what all the answers are, but it’s clear something must be done. More enforcement and much stiffer penalties are a start, not just more TV commercials.

If a drunk driving awareness campaign would stop all DUIs, MADD would’ve stomped out the whole matter years ago. The immediate question I have is how much drunk driving will the campaign actually stop. My guess would be relatively little.

If you want me to be outraged, I suggest finding legitimate studies that examine the efficacy of various deterrence tactics. From that you should be able to provide strong evidence that the tactics will work, and that they are the most efficient way of achieving the goal.

As it stands, there’s nothing to be outraged about.