Look I don't want to tell anybody how to raise their kids, but I would take that cellphone away for at least a week.

So it appears that Piper, who just recently turned fourteen, is learning to drive.

However I cannot imagine why anybody would allow this child to start her driving education with a cellphone balanced precariously on her lap.

In fact if this were my child that cellphone would be left at home until she successfully returned from practicing. And if they snuck it out with them, then I would do exactly what my headline says I would do.

But hey, that's just me. I care if my child lives of dies.

Drivers with guns in the car more likely to drive aggressively. Also more likely to have a violent response to road rage.

Courtesy of CNN:  

According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, 66% of traffic fatalities are caused by aggressive driving. Over one-third (37%) of aggressive driving incidents involve a firearm, according to research for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Research also indicates that aggressive or risky drivers are more likely than safer drivers to: be young and male, have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, have received driving citations (for moving and non-moving violations), score higher on measures of aggression and psychiatric morbidity, use illicit drugs, drive more miles per day, drive in denser traffic more often, abuse alcohol, have higher levels of stress, and be more likely to attribute blame to other drivers. 

They are also more likely to carry firearms in their car. 

Of course, not all gun owners are alike, just as not all drivers are. But if the gun owners who drive with a gun are more likely to drive aggressively than those without a gun in the car (gun owners or not), the risk rises not only that a road rage incident will occur, but that it will become lethal. Many studies have found that where there are more guns, there are more deaths -- not fewer.

I think for many of us this falls into the "no shit Sherlock" category.

However I found this next part a little surprising.  

Ample research also documents that the mere presence of a weapon can intensify aggression. 

One study compared responses to a pickup driver stalled at a light for 12 seconds. When the truck sported a military rifle in the rear window, other drivers honked more quickly and more often at the driver than they did if no firearm was visible. This so-called weapons effect counters the "polite society" argument, showing that weapons provoke visceral responses that increase aggression.

That seems a little counter intuitive. One would think that the presence of a weapon clearly on display might make people a little hesitant to anger the driver. But instead it seems that merely seeing a gun makes even unarmed drivers respond more aggressively.

One of the pieces of advice that I give to young people that I work with that are just starting out as drivers is to always be a polite driver and to not overreact to poor drivers they may come across on the road.

I sometimes add that since this is Alaska it is quite reasonable to assume that the driver of the car that just cut you off in traffic is packing heat and will shoot you during an angry confrontation.

Now I am wondering if that might not have made some of these youngsters even more likely to pull up to them at a stoplight and flip them the bird.

South Dakota ends its "don't Jerk and Drive campaign. Wait, what?

Courtesy of My Fox Chicago:

Officials for the state of South Dakota have removed a “Don't Jerk and Drive” safety campaign after complaints about the sexual overtones of the message. 

The campaign, created by the state's Department of Public Safety, was meant to ask drivers not to overcorrect, or jerk, steering wheels while driving on icy and snowy roads. 

But officials opted to kill the campaign after multiple complaints that the phrase wasn't appropriate.

So to be clear, it IS okay to masturbate while driving in South Dakota?

I'm asking for a friend. 

Just for fun. A little video of driving from Anchorage to Fairbanks for your morning's entertainment.

I don't think there is ANYBODY living in Anchorage, Eagle River, Wasilla, or Palmer who has not driven that first portion more time than they can remember. (For some who commute it is a daily occurrence.)

Around the 30 second mark, though you don't really see it, is Peter's Creek whihc is where I lived for about half a year when I was learning how muhc I DIDN'T want to grow up to be my Dad.

At the 45 second mark is when you take the off ramp and get to drive through scenic Wasilla. (Hah!)

The whole drive takes between seven to eight hours depending on the conditions.

Sadly this video was taken on a very gray day so you do not really get a sense of just how beautiful it can be.

Now for something completely different. Perhaps the most chilling safety advertisement I have ever seen.

It is not often that a movie, commercial or short film, gets to me very often. But this one certainly did.

To learn more about this film and why it was made click the Facebook page here.

Hypocrisy alert, Mormon Senator who claims he "abstains from alcohol" arrested for DUI. What? No!

Senator Mike Crapo mugshot.

Courtesy of Politico:

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) issued a public apology after being arrested for drunken driving in Alexandria, Va., early Sunday morning. 

Jody Donaldson, a spokesperson for the Alexandria Police Department, said in an e-mail that Crapo was arrested at 12:45 a.m. Sunday. An Alexandria police officer noticed Crapo’s vehicle run through a red traffic light, and after the vehicle was stopped, the officer conducted field sobriety tests, which Crapo failed, Donaldson said. Crapo was arrested for driving under the influence, and taken into custody without incident, Donaldson said. 

But hey at least Capo takes responsibility for his poor failings. (Unlike a fellow Mormon of his that I could mention.) 

In a statement, Crapo apologized for his actions. 

“I am deeply sorry for the actions that resulted in this circumstance,” Crapo said. “I made a mistake for which I apologize to my family, my Idaho constituents and any others who have put their trust in me. I accept total responsibility and will deal with whatever penalty comes my way in this matter."

“I will also undertake measures to ensure that this circumstance is never repeated.” 

Police said the senator’s blood-alcohol level was .110. In Virginia, drivers at .08 or higher are considered intoxicated. 

Now this is an unfortunate circumstance and it would not be worthy of discussion if it were not for this last part.

The 61-year-old Republican is serving his third term in the U.S. Senate. Crapo is Mormon, and has said publicly that he abstains from alcohol. 

If you are going to publicly claim that you are holier than thou, than by Thor you better indeed BE holier than thou. That's all that I am saying.

Participant in local Fox News story about the impact of marijuana use on driving ability reveals hidden agenda and manipulative editing.

Here is the description from the YouTube site:

Fox News created a news story with a test they designed to measure the accuracy of stoned drivers. One of the participants knew they would skew the truth of the test, so this video shows the undercover footage Max provides, to show how Fox News created this test to fail and reported false news to the state of Colorado on Medicated drivers.

What? Fox News manipulating data to present a false case in support of their conservative agenda? Say it ain't so!

You know THIS is how we do it. We constantly publicize the erroneous reporting and  blatant propagandizing until Fox News has lost ever single bit of its credibility.  THAT is how we eventually make them irrelevant.

To that end what Max has done is amazing job, and if more people who are involved with these Fox "news" reports start telling the truth about what they are editing in or editing out, that will go a long toward discrediting them completely.

Proud Parent Time.

This last post of the day will be a little self indulgent, so pardon me if it is not what you usually expect here at IM.

This morning my daughter left the house at around 8:30 to get to her job downtown. We were kind of goofing around as she left and I was giving her a hard time for leaving her laundry blocking the laundry room door and then acting surprised that I did it for her. (She KNOWS I cannot stand to see dirty laundry cluttering up my house.)

About ten or twelve minutes after she left my phone rings. I see by the caller ID that it is her and I answer.

"Hello, did you forget something?

There is a pause. "Hi Dad." Her voice sounds a little shaky to me.

"Hi?" Another pause. This starts to worry me so I decide to speak first.

"Honey? Something wrong?"

"I just saw a car flip over on the highway."

"What?" And then I go straight into parent mode. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I am just standing on the side of the road with two pregnant women and I think one of them is going into labor."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah there were two pregnant women in the truck that flipped over and I am standing with them until the ambulance gets here."

"On the highway?" The word "ambulance" kick-starts my pre-programmed parental responses again and so I ask "Are you sure YOU are alright?"

"Oh yeah everybody's fine."

"Okay can you tell me EXACTLY what happened?"

"Well, I was driving down the New Seward highway and somebody in the lane to my left suddenly slammed on their brakes, and the truck behind them could not stop in time and careened off onto a snow berm and flipped over on its roof."

"Is anybody hurt?"

"No, no everybody's fine. I pulled the two women out of the truck window, and the driver, a guy, got out on his own."

"Wait, what? YOU pulled the women out of the truck?" In my mind I am envisioning my five foot four daughter dashing across lanes of oncoming traffic to pry two pregnant women out of an upside down truck, and my stress level starts to rise.

"Yeah, don't worry it wasn't on fire or anything." (Well great, THAT possibility had not even occurred to me yet!)

"What the hell. Didn't anybody else stop to help?"

"Just one other person stopped. What is wrong with people that they can drive off and leave a truck upside down in the snow? I wasn't sure if anybody else called so I called 911. Only the lady on the other end kept telling me to calm down. I thought I was calm, so I asked her 'don't I sound calm?' Apparently I didn't."

"Well honey, the 911 operator would probably be an expert on whether you were calm or not, so I would take her word for it. Are you feeling better now? Or is your heart racing a mile a minute?"

"Yep, it's still racing, but I don't feel upset.  Just pissed off that nobody else stopped to help."

"So the only people to stop were you and one other person?"

"Yes, this other woman stopped too. There were dozens of cars that saw this happen but they just drove away."

"But not you."

"No, not me. And I know you wouldn't have driven away either, would you?"

"No, of course I wouldn't."

"Well there you go then. You did not raise me to drive away from people in need either."

"No I didn't."

"Okay Dad, I have to go now. The ambulance is pulling up and I need to talk to them, and then I need to get to work. Bye, I love you."

"I love you t....." Right about then the line went dead.

As I write this she is still at work, and will be until late tonight, so I have not had the chance to find out anymore details, or to see how the rest of her day went. But I will later.

You know when you are looking at that mischievous little girl, and she is looking back at you with those big beautiful eyes, you cannot help but wonder what kind of a person she will grow up to be.

Today I got that answer. And I could not have hoped for a better one.

Daddy's proud of you sweetheart.

But of course you already know that. Don't you?

Palin-bots come up with the lamest, and possibly most dangerous, protest ever!

Apparently these paint chip eaters have decided that the best way to support their retarded leader, and really stick it to that Muslim in the White House,  is to take their cars out onto our nation's highways and suddenly pretend to run out of gas. Then they are planning to pull over to the side of the road and sit in their cars honking their horns like imbeciles for up to an hour.  Brilliant isn't it?

I know, you think I MUST have made this one up.  However such is not the case, here you can see for yourself by visiting this  crappy little pro-Palin blog that has not yet recognized that their idol is a laughingstock:

Here is what is planned:

• Sunday, March 13th, 2011 – 4 PM Eastern, 3 PM Central, 2 PM Mountain, and 1 PM Pacific time;

• We want everyone to get into their cars, trucks, motorcycles, RVs, Semis, box trucks, and any other vehicle, and drive to your nearest highway or main route;

• Don’t go far, just enough to get in a safe position to pull over to the shoulder, and park, engine running, headlights and flashers on;

• Why? To take a cell call, or make one or several. After all, law enforcement recommends that you pull over to the side to take your call or text.

• Once pulled over to the side, place calls or texts to your friends, take pictures, send tweets, flood Facebook with messages and photos, along with several million others on other highways across the land.

• Stay one hour if you can, get your friends to do the same, line up all your vehicles in a safe manner as far off the side as you can, and hit your horns.

• One hour gives the media a chance to react, a chance to get footage. Imagine the traffic reports!

Yes just imagine the traffic reports. "Uh this is chopper 91 reporting on some ruckus occurring on I-5.  It looks like a bunch of cars have pulled over to the side of the road all at the same time and started honking their horns.  It is so idiotic that my guess is they are Sarah Palin supporters. I suggest that the police call the tow trucks and send the bill to Alaska."

But don't worry the simpleton who thought up this little gem does not want the low hanging fruit to do anything unsafe (You now like suddenly pull over and park on the shoulder for no good reason.), so he has offered a few guidelines.

• Be respectful, and patriotic to a fault; (What?  There is a limit to how patriotic they can be? That is not very wingnutty of them.)

• Be courteous to your fellow “Stoppers”; (Catchy name, "Palin stoppers." Hey that sounds like MY job!)

• Do not do anything illegal, and do not get out and walk, Observe and obey all laws; (You mean like the law that says "never stop on the shoulder of the highway unless it is an emergency?")

• Be the PATRIOTIC icon of virtue that you are! (Because NOTHING says "patriot" like putting yourself and your fellow Americans in danger don'tcha know.)

You know the really funny part of this is that only about a few dozen or so people are ignorant enough to actually do this, which essentially means that nobody will even notice.

But if, on March 13th, you happen to see a car stopped by the side of the road waving and honking like a crazy person, don't bother stopping and trying to help. They are most likely a Palin-bot and there is simply NO help for those people.  Believe me, I have tried.

(You can also read Wonkette's very funny take on this story.)

Could you pass a drivers test now?

Well, if a test administered by GMAC Insurance is any indication, one in six people cruising our highways and byways -- roughly 36 million licensed drivers -- would flunk their driver's test if they had to take it today.

The following state rankings were released for the 2007 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test:
1. Idaho.
2. Alaska
3. Minnesota
4. Wisconsin
5. Kansas
6. Washington
7. South Dakota
8. Montana
9. Oregon
10. Iowa
11. Nebraska
12. Wyoming
13. Oklahoma
13. Indiana
13. North Carolina
16. New Mexico
17. North Dakota
18. Missouri
19. Delaware
19. Nevada
21.Vermont
22. California
23. Hawaii
24. Texas
25. Maryland
25.Alabama
27. Arkansas
28. Michigan
29. Kentucky
30. Utah
31. Ohio
31.Colorado
33. South Carolina
33.Arizona
33. Florida
36. Maine
37. New Hampshire
37. Mississippi
37. Tennessee
40. Connecticut
41. Virginia
41. Louisiana
43. West Virginia
44. Georgia
45. Illinois
46. Pennsylvania
47. Rhode Island
48. Massachusetts
48. District of Columbia
48. New Jersey
51. New York

Now this may seem a little off topic for this particular website but the main reason that I posted it is so that i can brag about how knowledgable the drivers from my state appear to be.

As you can see we came in second (I call foul since we should have been first), and I think the reason we are so aware of the rules of the road is that every single winter we all have to learn to drive again. We drive all summer long without a care in the world and then the snow comes.

This year we had 147 traffic accidents on the first day of heavy snow. You heard me right, 147!

And I can tell you from personal experience that when it is snowing we are mentally going over all of the driving rules and making sure we are following, not only the ones in the driving manual, but the additional ones that ALL Alaskans have to learn the hard way. Such as:

• Start testing your brakes several car lengths before he stoplight to make sure you have traction. (The ice is often thick and polished right before an intersection.)
• Put your car or truck into all wheel drive as soon as you leave the main roads. (Neighborhoods are notoriously poorly maintained.)
• Use the ice to help you make the turns and don't hit the brakes too hard, or it is ditch time for you!
• There is no such thing as driving too slow in icy conditions.
• Remember to always tap your brakes early to let the driver behind you know you are about to stop. (Just because you have brand new studded snow tires does not mean the moron behind you can stop as quickly.)
• Always allow your car to warm up and defrost before driving. Many accidents are caused by windows fogging up unexpectedly. (One of my friends slowly pulled off the road to allow his iced up windows to defrost and bumped into a child waiting for the bus. The child was unhurt but my friend was devastated.)

See? I told you we should be number one!