Reading the nation's news stories over my morning coffee just now, I noticed that [unnamed dusty college town] has been ranked among the state's safest driving towns in Allstate's second annual safedriving report. [You can check this out in the media releases section at Allstate.] Now, I am not completely adverse to scientific practice or resistant to statistical evidence, but-- This is a town in which it's not uncommon to hear on the local news, "And another city driver has collided with a building." Another? Sadly, folks crashing their cars into homes, office buildings, storefronts--these are not anomalous occurrences here. As well--and I know that this is merely anecdotal evidence and thus subject to all sorts of scientific suspicion--I swear to you that during the past six months, I have seen reports of drunk-driving-related car wrecks at least three of five mornings each week, in those little local news headline breaks when Katie Couric goes to refill her coffee on The Today Show. (And frustratingly, the city police must be among the most inept in the country at nabbing drunk drivers. I saw a news story one day reporting on the local PD's new strategy: to hang out at bars and test people's levels of impairment by plying them with alcohol until they couldn't walk. "Yes, this 1-Adam-12, we've figured out that you can't drive after eleven mojitos. Ten-Four." Um, guys. I know I don't have much police experience, but maybe you want to redirect your constabulatory energies a little. While you were buying college kids shots of Jagermeister, yet another shitfaced driver or two was getting behind the wheel of his Land Rover and hitting the road for some Burt Reynolds-in-a-70s-movie-esque hijinx on our city streets.)
And speaking of Land Rovers and anecdotal evidence-- Last fall, my partner and I were in a minor accident here on our city streets. We were procdeeding straight through a downtown intersection when all of the sudden a military-issue Land Rover (the kind with one of those small-fuel-efficient-car-crushing grills on the front) made an unexpected left turn from the other direction and smushed our beloved vehicle pretty soundly. When the police arrived to suss out the mayhem, the other driver--who was, sadly, for me, who tries not to believe in cliches, an uber-spoiled all-American princess type who kept blubbering, "You guys! I'm so sorry" throughout the ordeal--told the cop who was interviewing her that she failed to yield to our car because she thought that it was parked. Parked. God save us.
So, sorry if I refuse to believe this city is better than the national average in terms of driver safety.
Statistics lie. I swear it.
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