Posted on 04/11/2005 6:17:15 PM PDT by TapTheSource
Cold one on open road could end in Montana
Associated Press April 10, 2005
HELENA, Mont. -- The joke goes that some Montana motorists measure distances driven by how many beers they can down along the way. That's changing. Lawmakers passed an open-container ban Friday, making Montana one of the last states to outlaw drinking while driving. The House approved the bill 76-21 and sent it to Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who has said he will sign it. It would take effect Oct. 1. The delay is designed to let Montanans get used to the prohibition, which until now had been found only in cities and towns, not on the open highway. If the bill is signed, only Mississippi would allow open containers, though many cities and counties there also prohibit open containers locally. While Montana had stood to lose $5 million a year in federal highway funds if it didn't pass the law, the debate focused on balancing safety and personal freedom. Montana has the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says. University of Montana sociologist Jim Burfeind said the state's holdout status was understandable, given the long, lonely drives often required when only 927,000 people live in a state the size of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio combined. "We think we are a very different place than other places and that we don't have to run by the rules that other people have to in more congested areas," Burfeind said. To muster support for the bill, supporters accepted what some consider weak penalties: a $100 fine, and the offense does not show up on a driver's record.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
ping!
West Texas comes to mind
And of course, we simply couldn't let personal freedom win - that would hurt the children!!
In Alabama - we measured the size of the yard we had to mow, by how many six-packs it took while on a riding mower..
My yard was a one and a half six-pack yard....
On a really hot day -- a two six-pack yard...
Semper Fi
After my buddy was made a cripple by a drunken fool getting tanked on the Interstate, I have no problem with this anymore.
Funny how personal experience changes ones attitude.
And what happens when these laws are initiated? It will have no effect on having open containers FULL/Half full/almost empty of beer in the car. It will however entirely remove ALL empties from the vehicle, so instead of them ending up in the bed of the truck, they're going to be on the side of the road.
Law of unintended consequences.
Along with Eastern New Mexico.
That stretch of road between Artesia and Hobbs, NM has got to be the dreariest 70 miles on the continent: ugly red dirt capable of growing nothing more than creosote bushes and muleheads.
Panhandle of Oklahoma comes to mind also
Please note that there is a diffrence in... drinking while driving,... and driving drunk.
Montana is one of the last two states to ban the totally sober and innocent practice of drinking a beer as you come home from fishing or hunting. I'm SO glad that there are no drunk drivers in those other 48 states. Funny how personal experience blinds you to common sense.
Year ago last March, I was tooling down U.S. 287 north of Eads, in eastern Colorado. All of a sudden, I realized I was seeing something I'd never been aware of before. It was simply bizarre.
I pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car and looked around. Across the full 360 degrees, the horizon was a perfectly flat straight line -- beyond the borrow ditches on the highway, there was not a foot of variation in the elevation anywhere in my field of view.
What's more, it was around noon on a perfectly cloudless day. And, aside from the asphalt, there were only two colors visible in my field of view -- a bright blue sky...and a pale beige shortgrass landscape.
I felt like I was squarely in the middle of the largest abstract painting imaginable.
We sure know all the spots for sightseeing, don't we?
Pabst Blue Ribbon.....
Semper Fi
Maybe not in Montana, tho'.
==Funny how personal experience blinds you to common sense.
Preach it brother!
==Law of unintended consequences.
Never thought of it that way, but what you say makes perfect sense.
==Yeah, park your vehicle and drink all you want.
You can't drink all you want in state where open containers are legal any more than you can drive as fast as you want on the autobahn in Germany. As someone said previously, there is a difference between having a beer while driving and driving drunk. Just remember the bigger the nanny state, the weaker its population.
We need a new tour guide, no, wait, we want to drink while driving. Never mind.
Estimating the Effect of Alcohol on Driver Risk Using Only Fatal Accident Statistics
Imposing a limited set of assumptions (e.g. independence across crashes, equal mixing on the roads), we are able to estimate both the likelihood of causing a fatal crash and the fraction of drivers of each type on the road.
Our estimates suggest that drivers with alcohol in their blood are at least eight times more likely to cause a fatal crash; legally drunk drivers pose a risk at least 15 times greater than sober drivers. Males, young drivers, and drivers with bad past driving records are all more dangerous, but the impact of these other factors is far less than that of alcohol.
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