No Matter How Simple You Make the Lesson

... some people never learn.

A six year old boy, Bangoang Tut has been killed yesterday thanks to the actions of a moronic low-life scumbag.

A driver, coming home from a Christmas party, allegedly over twice the legal limit, and doing burnouts in a residential street, has claimed the ultimate victim of innocence: a six year old child playing in his front yard.  Superintendent Neville Taylor said of the accident, that it should never had happened.  And isn't he right on that score?

Alcohol is a sedative.  It slows down the reflex actions of the body.  This is what it is "designed" to do.  If you happen to be driving a motor vehicle at the time of being influenced by alcohol, you are just plain dumb.  If there is one thing you do NOT want to happen whilst in charge of a tonne or more of metal moving at a lethal speed it's to have your reaction times slowed.

Hey, most of the time you'll make it okay: you won't be required to react quickly.  But just occasionally something unexpected will occur - maybe a cat will dash out in front of you, or a driver in front will brake sharply because he's missed his turnoff, (note that neither of these examples is of your own doing) and you are then called to quickly respond.  It helps if you CAN quickly respond, and your action is appropriate and timely.  If you're drunk, this ability is substantially impaired.

To make yesterday's situation worse, the driver in question was not only well above the legal limit (no questions of slight miscounting of drinks, etc) he was actually doing burnouts in a relatively quiet residential street - whilst drunk.  Okay, he's twice the legal limit and attempting to drive home.  Dumb and stupid.  But now he's also doing burnouts in the street.  My thesaurus isn't sufficient to deal with this one...  Can you actually get any more stupid, I wonder?

Now a completely innocent six year old is dead.  Will people learn from this incident?  I doubt it.  It has happened before and will happen again.  What does it take for people to realise that there are other forms of transport than driving themselves in their own vehicles?  There ARE buses, taxis, hire cars, walking, lifts, and probably a few more ways of getting home when you are drunk.  Please consider...