"All the millions of innocent victims!"
How often do we hear this line from MADD and the MADDers? ALL the time. How
do they get this number? They take an already blown up "alcohol-related"
number like 18,000 and then say that at least 500 people per person were affected
and therefore each person is an innocent "victim" of a drunk driver.
We say HOGWASH!! The only true innocent victim is the person killed. How many
of you can honestly say that you know 500 people who would be "victimized"
by your death. I'd like to say I'm very popular, but come on! Oh sure, I probably
regularly interface with at least 500 people or more over the course of a week
or month. But I'm sure the lady at the grocery store that I always converse
with briefly would be saddened to hear of my death, but I hardly think she would
consider herself a victim.
When a person categorizes themself as a victim, they are asking the world to feel sorry for them. And when one experiences a tragic death, sympathy is most certainly deserved. But life DOES go on as long as we let it. But labelling oneself as a victim for years upon years allows a person to divorce themself from responsibility and reality. That person wants to feel as though the world OWES them something. In particular, the person they lost.
There are many books written about the stages of grief. One must go through several stages of grief in order to heal. Anger is one of these stages. It is necessary and important, but like the other stages, it too must pass in order to heal. MADD does a disservice to it's members by encouraging them to remain in the anger stage. By labelling themselves as victims instead of survivors, the MADDers are encouraged to remain in the anger stage which causes feelings of revenge to develop. These feelings of revenge are then foisted upon unsuspecting Responsible Drinkers who find themselves subjected to draconian drunk driving laws.
Many also get into the "bargaining" phase. This is the phase that allows them to mistakenly think that passing more and stricter laws is somehow going to solve the problem. They think to themselves, "Oh, if only that law had been in place two (or however long) years ago my mother/father/sister/brother/son/daughter would be alive today."
This is clearly delusional wishful thinking in particular when it comes to lowering legal BAC levels. It does not occur to them that even though the BAC limit was already .10 that the person with .28 BAC would have drank and drove anyway regardless of what the law said. In most cases the driver involved in a drunk driving fatality is at a BAC level of .15 or higher. Yes, there are a few at lower levels, but the great majority of them have high BAC levels and continue to have high BAC levels regardless of the already lowered BAC levels.
However, this "if only" thinking allows these MADDers to fantasize about what might have been and feel that they are preventing other deaths. While this might make them feel better emotionally, all it accomplishes is to set up an environment of "social revenge" upon people who drink. Fortunately, the great majority of people who do drink only have two or maybe three drinks over the course of many hours and are far from being too dangerous to drive home. Yet, because of the ridiculous low BAC levels now in force, it is THOSE individuals who wind up suffering the most and paying the price for the crimes of the true drunks with the higher BAC levels.
As such, we now have some new reports that we will be making available on the web this week. These are Innocent Victim Fatality reports. They will list the number of innocent victims of drivers at various BAC levels. In particular .08-.09. In our reports, we look at the true innocent victims of drivers with those BAC levels. In this case the victims are people who were not the driver with that BAC level. If they themselves were also driving another vehicle, they must not have had any alcohol either to be considered an innocent victim. This definition was given to me by MADDers so I expect no argument from them (though I'm sure they'll try anyway). So besides other drivers with no BAC level, innocent victims are also passengers in the same car (drinking or not), passengers in other cars (drinking or not), pedestrians and bicyclists. You will be surprised how low the numbers are. In the future, trend report 1994-2001 will also be made available.
Unfortunately, the full report for the entire USA is so long, I cannot post it to the web, so I'll be listing the reports, as I have the others state by state. But I will include the trending data in a summary report for the USA of 1994-2001.
Look forward to these reports sometime this week.
Jeanne