Big accident. Two dead. Three seriously hurt. Two cars head on head. One of the drivers was drunk. The bastard!
Since personal responsibility doesn’t exist anymore in the USA today, we all seem to agree that not the driver but something or someone else must be blamed for the accident (the barman, the party-host ...). The common practice today is to blame alcohol for everything that goes wrong.

If we blame a ‘thing’ instead of the person, it is my believe that we should blame the car. The car is at fault. The car shouldn’t drive with a drunken driver behind the wheel. Period.
Today’s technology makes it perfectly possible that a car doesn’t start, or stops driving the moment it detects a drunken driver behind the wheel. The detector technology costs about $ 200 and exists today. If the car manufacturers incorporate this technology when they build the car, the extra cost for the car would be less than $ 100. Since, we all agree that the number of car accidents would drop with more than 20 percent, we understand that the extra $ 100 can easily be paid by the insurance companies through the lowering of our insurance premium. A simple, radical and effective solution.
Car manufacturers have constantly adapted their cars to changing environmental hazards, and are always looking to make their cars safer. It is now their responsibility to protect the car and other cars from drunken drivers. This is a big oversight from their part. Next time you want to sue over a DUI-accident: sue the car manufacturer. They have certainly more money than the family of the drunken driver. In the time of horse and cart, a drunken driver was not a problem, even a sleeping driver was not a problem. The horse was not that stupid that it would run against another oncoming horse. The horse could even find its way home without the driver doing anything. The transport medium (horse and cart) protected the drunken driver.

It’s time for the governments of the world to oblige the car manufacturers to equip their cars with technology that prevents the car from driving with a drunken driver behind the wheel. Then, we can drink what and how much we want, we will not be able to harm ourselves and innocent others with our car when we had a glass to many. Cheers.

After all, alcohol is around for maybe 30,000 years or more. Cars have only been here since 100 years. A newcomer should respect the needs of the existing. Cars may have saved many lives, but alcohol has saved a million times more lives. In fact, when we consider its power in prevention of diseases and infection, it has saved the whole of human kind over and over again.
Newsletter December 1998