“Everyone driving to work in the morning is either drowsy or drunk,” claims my brother, Gus.
He recently moved to New Jersey, where there is a huge public service campaign against drowsy driving. It’s now a punishable crime there if you kill someone in a car accident and you were tired at the time. Drowsy driving might be tough to prove, though. I don’t know about you, but I would certainly be wide awake by the time the police questioned me. And I probably wouldn’t mention that I was previously a little sleepy.
Distracted driving is also a big worry in New Jersey. A few months ago, a bill was introduced in the New Jersey legislature that, if passed, would allow people to be ticketed for not paying attention while they were driving. Everyone was up in arms that they wouldn’t be able to drink coffee while they drove. It hasn’t come up for a vote yet, and the assemblyman who introduced the bill said that he had introduced it before and, back then, everyone was worried that they wouldn’t be able to eat a sandwich while driving. It was called the “ham sandwich bill.” This time around, it’s called the “coffee bill.”
Now here’s the conundrum: If you take away drivers’ coffee, there will be more drowsy drivers. If you don’t, you’ll have drivers who glance at their coffee cups, or their joints, occasionally. What’s a state to do?
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