Sunday, August 16, 2009


Moms Driving Drunk?

There was an article in the NY Times today "A Heroine of Cocktail Moms Sobers Up" about a blogger/writer who'd made her name as a drinking mommy - she encouraged playdates as cocktail hours and reveled in the fun. Hey, I like fun too. I enjoy a drink. Or two. I'm not casting stones. She also talked about how she recently shocked her readers by telling them her drinking frightened her, she had a problem and had stopped drinking altogether. Wow.

There's been a spate of drunk driving accidents involving drunken Moms - many with their kids in the car. Diane Shuler is the most known right now. She killed her self, her kids and three strangers driving the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway in NY.

Check out THIS about Joey Marino, a 15 year old boy who was killed this weekend by a Critical Care Nurse who was driving with her 6 year old and a cup of vodka in her hand, bottle in the car. That's Joey in the photo. He was 15. His organs have been harvested for others. And his parents will bury him. Because Caroline Goss needed a drink. And to answer her phone. While driving.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

horrifying

Josh Day said...

Driving while talking on your cell phone should slap you with a DWC -- driving while celling. Instant jerking of license/ same consequences as a DWI. Twice I have been nearly killed by an idiot blabbing away on a cell phone: once with my wife as we legally were about to turn into a light-protected left turning lane and were almost crumpled by an idiot in an SUV tank going about 55 to make the light and going to town on her cell, and the other by myself on the Interstate, again by an idiot in a one-man aircraft carrier on a cell. I'm not making light of drunk driving at all but I feel strongly about national legislation that will get these killers-to-be off the roads. Especially when the cell phone talker is behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling, gotta-have-my-status-symbol steamroller that would crush my little Nissan Versa like tinfoil.

The only reason such practical and common sense laws have not been passed is, surprise surprise, due to the influence of the cell phone industry whose lobbyists do everything in their power to keep such laws ever from being enacted.

When someone calls me on a cell first thing I usually ask is if they're driving. My brother knows if he calls me DWC he'll get hung up on and I won't answer his phone calls for a while (love caller ID). And I don't care if you have a headset cause a. you're probably lying or not using it and b. I've seen so many people on headsets still fucking around with the damn phone texting/looking at pictures/tweeting/whatever.

Kim said...

Thank you for this valuable post (all of your posts are valuable!). From someone who was driving with my 3 year old girl on the Tappanzee Bridge at the same time as the hammered Diane Schuler--right before she called her brother but didn't pull over as he asked, an hour before the accident--I have been obsessed with this tragedy. She actually killed herself, her 2-1/2 yr old daughter, all three of her nieces (her brother's 3 daughters), and 3 strangers in another car. Her 5 yr old son was the only survivor.

I love a glass of wine or two and confess to have driven home after cocktails with friends--carefully, locally, but still. Never again.

Laura said...

So sad.

And, I agree about the cell thing -- we have a hands-free device only law here, but I still see people on their cell phones every day, usually the ones not paying attention when they pull out in front of me.

Kim Rossi Stagliano said...

I have a headset - I wear it all the time. But I still have to look at my phone to dial - or read a text. And in one second, BAM! That large distance between you and another car is in your face. We've probably all talked on the phone while driving, maybe texted or checked email - maybe some of us have even driven home after half an extra cocktail, or more. But this brazen drinking IN the car says there's such a problem going on. It's an old story, drunk driving. I'm sure someone in Greece got run over by a Chariot with a drunk driver. It does pierce your heart when you read of someone just doing his thing and then... dead.