Idiot Drivers

Seen in Insurance Journal:

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Vermont House says he’d like lawmakers to consider lowering the threshold at which a driver is drunk behind the wheel from a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent to a lowest-in-the-nation .05.

Considering the volume of complaints when the threshold was dropped to 0.08% from the traditional mark of 0.10%, I’ve got to believe that there will be some pretty vocal opposition to any such move.

I have to admit that I have a certain bias on the subject, seeing as how the guy who hit my wife in her car accident six years ago had had a couple of drinks, but wasn’t legally over the limit.

Personally I’d like to see a multi-tiered approach taken to DUI laws, something like this:

• Let BAC at/above 0.08% be considered sufficient to deem a driver too impaired to drive safely.
   
• Let BAC of at least 0.05%, but less than 0.08% be considered evidence, but not proof, of being too impaired to drive safely. A citation for DUI would require other evidence of impairment, such as being at fault in a crash, or erratic driving behavior.
   
• For drivers of commercial vehicles, drivers under the legal drinking age, or drivers under restriction for prior offenses, adopt a no-tolerance limit of 0.02%, for hopefully obvious reasons.

It looks like the Governor and some state legiscritters might be taking on one of my pet peeves of winter driving. From the Journal Inquirer:

“Each winter our government receives dozens of complaints and reports of accidents resulting from people creating dangerous conditions on the roads by failing to remove snow and ice from their vehicles,” the Republican governor wrote. “We have all seen snow and ice fly off from car and truck roofs while on the highway. These ice missiles are hazards.”[...]

“It’s a very real problem,” Cafero told the JI last month after hearing about an East Hartford woman whose windshield was shattered by ice that flew from a tractor-trailer truck.[...]

Besides requiring motorists to remove snow and ice, the bill pending before the Transportation Committee would impose fines ranging from $200 to $1,000 if uncleared debris then dislodges and harms people or property.

The JI notes that it is actually already illegal to not clear snow and ice off your vehicle, via the “failure to secure a load” citation which carries a $117 fine.

Sadly, it’s not enforced.

I suspect that I’m not the only person in Connecticut who has noticed an increased presence of state troopers on Nutmegger highways over the past couple of years.  Where some stretches of highway were once seemingly autobahns (albeit very congested autobahns), now it’s common to see bears working the road, pulling people over.

Why, it was a couple of weeks ago that I noticed that Connecticut troopers had acquired some new toys — unmarked cars that look “normal”, without extra antennas, without distinctive license plates, and with low profile emergency light bars that are nearly impossible to notice until they’re lit.

So, it was with some bemusement that I encountered this article in the Courant over the weekend:

When Gov. M. Jodi Rell unveils her new budget Wednesday, she will call for cutting business taxes and hiring 100 new state troopers over the next five years for increased traffic enforcement.

Declaring war on dangerous drivers, Rell will ask for funding for a pilot program of speed detection cameras along a treacherous stretch of I-95 — enabling the state to capture images of speeders and then mail them tickets. [...]

Rell envisions a traffic enforcement effort that will rely on a system of cameras. A controversial traffic-camera radar system would initially be set up in the Lyme-Old Lyme stretch of the Connecticut Turnpike, close to where three motorists died in November when a tanker-trailer barreled through metal dividers in East Lyme at Exit 75 and crashed head-on into traffic at high speed. Three other drivers were seriously injured in the crash that veteran troopers said was one of the most horrific they had ever seen.

The article, however, makes no reference to Governor Rell’s prior pledge to get speed-enforcement cameras on Avon Mountain as a pilot project.

I realize that judicial practices and litigation customs are different in other countries…but sometimes you see something that, regardless of nationality, causes you to say, “Dude, that ain’t right!” From a wire service story:

Enaitz Iriondo, 17, died instantly in August 2004 when businessman Tomas Delgado’s Audi A8 crashed into him at 100 mph near Haro in northern Spain, an Interior Ministry traffic report said. The speed limit was 55 mph.

Iriondo was not wearing reflective clothing or a helmet, the ministry report said. As the sun had set when he crossed the path of Delgado’s car from a side road, a regional court found both parties at fault and closed the case, the report said.

Delgado, whose insurance company paid Iriondo’s parents $48,500 in compensation for their son’s life, filed a suit in late 2006 to recover $29,400 in damages to his car and car rental costs, the ministry traffic report said.

Again, realizing that such things are viewed differently outside the U.S., this is the sort of situation where, even if the person who lost his life was partially at fault, the survivor should be thanking his lucky stars that he wasn’t hurt, and that he’s not being sued for an amount far in excess of his liability insurance limits.

I’m beginning to think that GPS navigation systems in cars and trucks might actually be a menace to society. First, we have trucks dominating a residential street just because the GPS told them to.

However, this AP article takes GPS-influenced idiocy to a whole new level:

A Global Positioning System can tell a driver a lot of things - but apparently not when a train is coming. A computer consultant driving a rental car drove onto train tracks Wednesday using the instructions his GPS unit gave him. A train was barreling toward him, but he escaped in time and no one was injured.

The driver had turned right, as the system advised, and the car somehow got stuck on the tracks at the crossing. He jumped out and tried to warn the engineer by waving. He got out of the way just before the train slammed into the car at 60 mph, Metro-North railroad spokesman Dan Brucker said Thursday.

Local morning newscasts in Connecticut are leading off with this story (as seen at WFSB):

In the wake of several complaints and accidents, including one incident on Interstate 91 Tuesday, Gov. Jodi Rell is reminding motorists that it is a state law to remove ice and snow from their vehicles.[...]

Rell said as snow and ice fly off cars and trucks they become dangerous missiles that can break windshields and cause other serious damage. The governor says state police will be enforcing the law and citing drivers who fail to comply.

My wife and I had our regular 60 mile trek to see the doctor who implanted her occipital nerve stimulator.  Riding I-91 down was “entertaining” because of the amount of snow spray and chunks of snow and ice that were flying from the tops of semi trailers and a few SUV’s, leftover from the weekend’s nor’easter.

I realize that cleaning off the tops of vehicles can be a pain (especially if one is short and/or has a particularly tall vehicle), but it is at a minimum common courtesy given the hazard leftover snow and ice can pose to others.  (The WFSB article mentions one truck that had its air brakes disabled by flying ice slicing the wrong hose.)

It’s a shame that state troopers are having to enforce common courtesy, but maybe if some folks start getting tickets, the message will come across.

Then again, considering how many drivers still talk on their cell phones, without headsets, despite laws barring such behavior…perhaps I underestimate the egocentricness of Nutmegger drivers.