I have. I know about 20 little towns and some counties in NY, KY and TN that are dry. Dallas may be the exception, but not the norm. Larger population centers have infrastructure in place to handle the homeless population. I just think there are way too many other factors being ignored to make the correlation between dry counties/towns and homelessness.
??? Not as far as I know, living in N. Dallas.
Well, not to change directions here, but tougher laws on distracted driving would do more to save lives than lowering the DUI limit to .05% BAC.
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Yup. Personally I’d like to see Texting while driving the be the same as a DUI.
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The near misses that I see daily as a result of drivers being involved with cell phones is outrageous while the instances of drivers seeming to be under the influence of drugs or booze are very rare. It’s been over a year in fact since I saw what appeared to be a drunk driver.
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BlockquoteI doubt you’d do prison time. Maybe 30 days in the county lockup but I’m not a Mississippi lawyer.
Might depend a whole lot on who you are, definitely in Mississippi, but in most places as well.
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Oh yes, Minnesota is again trying to pass legislation to make hands on cell phone use illegal and I’m sure a lot of folks see this as a good move. I have my doubts. I don’t text and if I use my phone in the car, it is done when road and traffic conditions allow it. The thing is though, somehow people need to understand that simply passing laws with more and more penalties is really not going to solve the identified problem. Stop hiding behind legislation to fix a cultural problem.
We have laws against murder with pretty steep penalties but that doesn’t seem to stop people. Do you really think there would be more murders if there was only a fine? I don’t think so. It’s cultural. Guess I’m saying don’t pat yourself on the back thinking about how much you’ve done for distracted driving by supporting more legislation.
I’m sure it does depend on who you are. I imagine they’d lock scrapyard john’s a— up! So I drink at home. Reminds me of the George Thorgood song. “I drink alone”. But I always liked his rendition of “it wasn’t me” better.
Bing, if it was only a fine for murder, I know at least two more people that might be dead right now.
As for the cell phone legislation, it’s just too hard to enforce. And possibly a little unfair. I can answer my phone driving down the interstate just as well or better than I can change the radio station and not be distracted.
I agree, people shouldn’t text and drive for sure. But I’m not sure how they’ll determine and enforce that at 80 mph on the highway.
If they really wanted to end texting and driving, they’d block cell signals from cars rather than selling them with WiFi hotspots. Calls can only be completed outside the vehicle - and there’d be an onstar type system for emergencies. But no one wants that.
One perhaps can answer a phone call in transit but it is the conversation that is the killer. Most people in a car will moderate their conversation dependent on the driving situation/ environment someone on the other end of a phone call has no real idea of the situation in the moment. That is the danger:no feed back. Maybe vr is the answer (sic). Personally I am one of the ‘best’ drivers I know (of course from my own pov) because I PAY ATTENTION when driving. I do not like having to adjust the heating and I certainly do not want to have to make any settings via a touch screen. They along with cell phone access are going to cause more deaths than DWI and be less visible to law enforcement. Rant over for now…
The big problem with enforcing cell phone restrictions is that police are not allowed to electronically check to see if the phone was in use. It is considered a violation of privacy. They can only enforce the law if they see the driver using the phone while driving or the driver admits to it. When my truck was totaled, they were not allowed to check her phone records but we all knew she was texting at the time.
But now if you can believe it, there is the “Birdbox challenge” where a teen in Utah had an accident while driving blindfolded.
Yeah, you just use your head. I don’t need a highway patrol telling me. I stayed about an hour too late one night on Friday the 13th and it started to snow hard. So we got about 6 inches of that heavy stuff that was hard to drive in even at 20 mph. I made it to the freeway and the wife called to tell me it was snowing. Yeah no kidding. I just gave her the location where I was at and said it’s bad and I can’t talk and hung up the phone. No problem. I suppose you could design a car like a faraday cage or something but then what if you were sitting in the car on the side of the road or a parking lot in the rain or blizzard and couldn’t call from inside? It’s just better to make people decide and back off a little.
Somehow I just do not think that is correct.
I really prefer not to even talk on the phone in traffic. Interstate highway with not a ton of traffic, I don’t think it’s an issue. It’s a common sense thing really. Can’t legislate that.
It’s coming.
George never drank alone. He always invited his two best friends, Johnnie and Jim.
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‘Toward improved evaluations of laws against drink-driving’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)33166-0/fulltext
This is the editorial on the issue. They admit that Scotland’s programme didn’t lower traffic accidents, call for a better test: they don’t give up.