Thursday, February 25, 2010

You might be a redneck if...

Just a few I thought up:

...if you've ever shot a fish.
...if you've ever wrecked your truck trying to run over a squirrel.
...if you've ever totaled a golf cart.
...if you've ever run over a squirrel with a golf cart with your Momma riding along.
...if you've ever de-limbed a tree with a shotgun.
...if you've ever fired a gun from a moving vehicle.

You might be a redneck.

No, not all of these have happened to me. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess what's what.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Towns banning cellphone use while driving

So, currently there's no data to support the fact that accidents decrease in places that ban handheld cellphone use while driving. Yet towns like Chapel Hill want to make it illegal to use a handheld phone while driving. The best you can do is cite a AAA study that claims you're just as impaired while talking on a cellphone as if you had a blood acohol level of 0.08, which is the legal limit. So you're just impaired enough to be BORDERLINE too drunk to drive and thus we need to ban them? And the study is by the AAA, for goodnesssakes. Can we get some data from more than one source on this before we do it?

And honestly, I don't believe this is the kind of thing a town should be allowed to legislate anyway. The article states that the state legislature has to allow them to do this, which is good, unless the state actually does allow it. Then it's bad. Why? Because I can't think of a single reason why something that's bad enough we should ban it in Chapel Hill isn't something we should ban statewide. And if you think "oh, no, it's safer to talk on your handheld phone when traveling in rural areas", well, fine. That still means EVERY city should ban it, which is something the legislature could just do. I mean seriously, do you want to have to worry about what the law is in every city you go in and out of? Heck, they don't even mark the city borders on every road! How are we supposed to KNOW what the law is where we are?

It's rediculous, especially since many people (like myself) live outside Chapel Hill and would have little say in the creation of this law. I suppose I can lobby my state representatives if Chapel Hill chooses to ask for this, but really...I shouldn't have to. Note that nowhere am I claiming it's a safe thing to do. But we should be having this discussion at the state level only.