"Mum,
I need you to pick me up. The police just banned me from driving, which
is totally unfair, since I thought it was perfectly legal to drive
after only having 9 points...
...or 'pints' as the police pronounce it."
"What?! 9 pints? Why were you driving at all?"
"Well I had drunk so much, I could barely walk-"
"WHAT?! You could barely walk and you still drove??"
"So? What does walking have to do with driving?"
I
have to confess, I love driving, but I find it gets in the way of my
drinking most of the time. The ban on texting while driving only makes
things worse. Now I have to worry about drink driving, drunk texting AND
not getting caught texting.
It also doesn't help
that that due to my acetaldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, I suffer from
'Asian Flush' syndrome whenever I consume alcoholic beverages.
Medically termed as 'EtoHriental Erythema' (Chau, 2010), it takes less
than one standard drink to get my face (and legs) glowing as red as the
traffic lights I would speed through if I was smashed. Forget
breathalysers, a colour-chart or spectrometer is all that it would take
to grade my BAC levels. This is why I hate photos when I'm on a night out. Cameras
& photoediting programs already have a red-eye reduction feature
built-in, so why not a red-face reduction feature for asian flush?
Thus, one of the primary
reasons why I don't drink and drive is the fact that the chances of my
rosy-face not getting stopped by police whilst driving is equivalent to
catching a flight with a turban on and not having one's luggage
'randomly' checked.
On the other hand, one could
state that all asians technically don't drink & drive. Because they
can't drink, nor can they drive.
Stereotypes aside,
driving under the influence of alcohol is a major contributor to motor
vehicle accidents amongst young adults and represents a major throbbing
headache to the police, health system and community every early Saturday
and Sunday morning. Impairing both reaction and judgment, it's an
established fact that with enough alcohol, even Lewis Hamilton would
have the driving skills equivalent to an asian woman driving a Toyota
Prius.
So what is it like?
From an observer's
perspective, drink-driving seems akin to being in a bumper car. All
confrontation, no destination, no steering and no brakes. Every single
thing on the road is on-coming traffic and it's like playing dodgeball,
except that the balls are of course 2 tonnes of metal zooming along at
least sixty kilometers an hour. Of course, the ethanol-saturated cortex
can't assess this danger and is having too much semi-conscious fun
presumably saying ridiculous things like:
"I hate tailgaters. There's one behind me now and it's so annoying, especially with those stupid flashing lights on the top. "
or shouting out:
"Lumos Green!"
every single time the traffic-lights change colour and pissing yourself laughing.
or drunkenly texting to a BFF:
"Just
tried to flash my headlights at an oncoming driver to warn him of a cop
but I think it was too dark for him to see my boobs."
or singing along to the radio to Bon Jovi.
"OHHHhh Living on a prayer!!"
In
my opinion, with the aid of alcohol, there's a perfect time and place
to listen to any song, including Nickelback. But you don't find yourself
driving off a cliff very often.
And if you do get randomly breath-tested, please don't say:
"Honestly Officer, I wouldn't have pulled over had I known you were just going to berate and criticize me."
So how should this issue be handled?
Despite
the heavy television and billboard advertisements, it has become clear
that fines, demerit points and random breath tests aren't enough to
deter the invincible-feeling, goonhead from taking a stab at driving
home whilst smashed. Discouraging risky behaviours like speeding and
drink-driving requires new, innovative measures that neither pure
legislation nor education have been able to do.
That's
why I propose that speed bumps emit a 'scream' when we go over them.
The roads would be safer, since we'd all immediately drive slower.
I know at least one paraplegic hobo that's with me on this.
Interesting
fact: Here's a solitary tree in the Sahara Desert that
kept itself alive by a 33-plus metres deep root system, until a
drunk driver managed to ram his truck into it.
One, just one tree, all alone by itself in a 400km radius.
And yet this moron manages to hit it.
But to be fair, it's the last place he'd have expected a tree.
Moral: When you're drunk, your chances to hit a tree are still decent, even in the middle of a forsaken desert.
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