Sunday, February 21, 2010

No Excuses

Check out this newspaper account ---
Not since I posted (link) about txting and driving last November, have I seen anything that matches this "no excuses" campaign going on in the South of Britain. I had thought it was going to get worse for drivers, because we are being slowing going over to the dark side of talking, txting, makeup, and other nefarious things, like Mike Arrington (thanks Technorama for the link). Personally, I have no sympathy, just fess up, pay the fine, try to do better. This stuff really does have to stop.
Special pleadings are not acceptable in the “No Excuse” initiative being run here in Dorset, a largely rural county on Britain’s south coast. The yearlong, $1.25 million project — a combination of advertising, education and increased police patrols — is an effort to reduce the number of accidents caused by driver inattention, a common problem across the car-driving world. 

My favorite from the newspaper account (I found this in the NYTimes, but the story was originally in the Weymouth Journal) is:
“I was out about a year ago and we stopped a lady who had three children in the back of the car,” he related. “The officer said, ‘Why aren’t these children belted in?’ and she said, ‘They’re not my children.’ ”
#tech101