Yes, you took the words right outta my mouth. I said this exact thing to Flicka today at about 1 pm.
Very sad story. I won’t sit here and judge these youngsters – I don’t know the full situation, or what was going through their minds. I just feel sorry for their families and friends, and I hope time brings them solace.
[quote][quote=“Lord Lucan”]
I have ridden around Taipei paralytic on several occasions and I’m sure had I ended up brown bread some people would have been very angry. They only get angry when you’re dead though. Some of you might be forgetting that we ALL used to ride around completely trolleyed at night at huge speeds with no lids on and most of use survived. Sad and all as it is, it’s human nature, especially when you’re young. Very, very, bad luck. I hope they both had a good innings while they were here.[/quote]
I disagree with you completely. It has very little to do with human nature and being young. It has everything to do with being selfish and uncaring about endangering the lives of others.
I have NEVER operated a car or scooter when drunk…not even a bicycle. I would never even think of it. It is simply so stupid to do so that I can’t get my head around people who do. Especially here where it costs virtually nothing to get taxis.
Stupidity. Full stop.[/quote]
Yes, Mum. Sorry. 
[quote=“Lord Lucan”][quote][quote=“Lord Lucan”]
I have ridden around Taipei paralytic on several occasions and I’m sure had I ended up brown bread some people would have been very angry. They only get angry when you’re dead though. Some of you might be forgetting that we ALL used to ride around completely trolleyed at night at huge speeds with no lids on and most of use survived. Sad and all as it is, it’s human nature, especially when you’re young. Very, very, bad luck. I hope they both had a good innings while they were here.[/quote]
I disagree with you completely. It has very little to do with human nature and being young. It has everything to do with being selfish and uncaring about endangering the lives of others.
I have NEVER operated a car or scooter when drunk…not even a bicycle. I would never even think of it. It is simply so stupid to do so that I can’t get my head around people who do. Especially here where it costs virtually nothing to get taxis.
Stupidity. Full stop.[/quote]
Yes, Mum. Sorry. [/quote]
Oh, give me a break. It’s common sense, I’m not giving you a lecture.
And I don’t know what this girl’s circumstances were, and am not judging her…just saying that in general, drinking and then jumping behind the wheel is an extremely stupid and selfish thing to do.
Indiana, it is clearly stupid. But drinking diminishes our ability to think clearly. Plus, people on scooters think they are invincible, don’t they? I used to, when I drove mine.
Anyway, a waste of life, a real waste.
[quote=“Lord Lucan”]
I have ridden around Taipei paralytic on several occasions and I’m sure had I ended up brown bread some people would have been very angry. They only get angry when you’re dead though. Some of you might be forgetting that we ALL used to ride around completely trolleyed at night at huge speeds with no lids on and most of use survived. Sad and all as it is, it’s human nature, especially when you’re young. Very, very, bad luck. I hope they both had a good innings while they were here.[/quote]
I think the problem here is that you said “all of us”, Lord Lucan, and that’s not the case.
[quote=“irishstu”][quote=“Lord Lucan”]
I have ridden around Taipei paralytic on several occasions and I’m sure had I ended up brown bread some people would have been very angry. They only get angry when you’re dead though. Some of you might be forgetting that we ALL used to ride around completely trolleyed at night at huge speeds with no lids on and most of use survived. Sad and all as it is, it’s human nature, especially when you’re young. Very, very, bad luck. I hope they both had a good innings while they were here.[/quote]
I think the problem here is that you said “all of us”, Lord Lucan, and that’s not the case.[/quote]
Yes. I just noticed. Just a tad presumptuous. Sorry, Indiana. What I should have said was “a very large number of us used to ride drunk” which was really what I meant. Some people very sensibly didn’t ride at all, and now, even though there are drink driving and helmet laws, I would rather not ride any more than is necessary, and certainly not when drunk. But I’m married now and a lot older. Still pretty stupid, mind you. That appears to have remained the same. Hooray.
Now that people are stating their real opinions without negative PC comments being thrown at them, I will add my two cents again:
Yes, a lot of people have had a few drinks(as in 1-3) and driven their cars. Some of us have even done stupider things.
However, with this current tragedy in Taiwan, a few questions come to mind. Why would anyone drink and drive in a foreign country? To me it is the same as asking people why they sell drugs in a foreign country. They are both illegal and can hurt the lives of many people on a crowded island. In my opinion, it is one thing to engage in this type of reckless behaviour in your home country and another to do it abroad. Especially if you make more money than the “average joe” in that country, could easily have afforded cab fare, had enough money to become plastered in the first place, and lost a loved one in a similar manner. Why didn’t her friends stop her? Real friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
All of us made mistakes when we were young and some of us probably continue to make them, but living overseas should make people grow up quickly. While some people might find the “Canadian spring break” student mindset in Taiwan to be funny, fresh, and entertaining, it does have consequences—sometimes serious ones.
[quote=“TomHill”]Indiana, it is clearly stupid. But drinking diminishes our ability to think clearly. Plus, people on scooters think they are invincible, don’t they? I used to, when I drove mine.
Anyway, a waste of life, a real waste.[/quote]
Exactly. Then, knowing that, why would anyone ride their scooter to a pub, knowing they will be drinking all night? They were sober and thinking clearly when they drove there, after all.
I have a lot of friends who drink and drive here. But I just don’t get it. I was raised in a country where the dangers of drunk driving were instilled in me at school, in TV ads, etc. and I’m sure most of you out there were, too. If anyone in my hometown were to drink at a pub all night long until they were completely plastered and then try to get in their car to drive home, others would have stepped in and taken their keys to prevent them from doing so. They would have been thought of as a nutcase for even thinking about it.
Here, a lot of foreigners seem to enjoy the lawlessness of Taiwanese society and use it to their advantage. It’s an “I can get away with it, so I will do it” mentality. But I still don’t understand. Are people that cheap where they don’t want to dish out a whopping nt150 for a taxi home?
I know two foreigners who have been killed on their scooters here while driving home drunk. My friends who knew the same people who died still drive drunk. Why? I see it as a huge problem here.
Christ, the driving here is dangerous enough as it is in broad daylight when you are sober!
[quote=“Chewycorns”] Why didn’t her friends stop her? Real friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
[/quote]
maybe because real,true friends are very seldom your average binge drinking buddy
This is VERY hard sometimes. Drunks become angry drunks quickly.
Some people try and try to argue that person A shouldn’t drive home.
A protests.
They try more. They try to take the keys away.
A protests vociferously.
They say, “Fuck it, we tried.”
If the person were a good friend of mine, I’d throw the keys down the sewer.
If it were someone I didn’t really know, well, who the hell I am to say anything to this guy, or gal?
bed
sleep in it
It’s a shitty conundrum.
[quote=“dablindfrog”][quote=“Chewycorns”] Why didn’t her friends stop her? Real friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
[/quote]
maybe because real,true friends are very seldom your average binge drinking buddy [/quote]
Amen.
I’ve seen best drinking buddies here letting their friends ride drunk…
Drunk person: I’m going home.
“Friend”: You’re not riding your scooter are you?
DP: Of course I am, I’m okay.
“F”: No, you can’t. You’re drunk.
DP: I’m okay, I promise. Here, I’ll ride down the alley and show you I’m okay.
(everyone watched the Drunk person get on her scooter with her helmet dangling precariously on her head unstrapped and ride in a straight line on an empty alley for about 15 feet)
“F”: Well, okay. Just be careful. The police are out tonight.
DP: They won’t stop me. I’m a foreigner. (laughs and takes off.)
What was I doing? Hoping her stupid ass got wrapped around a telephone pole as it seemed it could only take a 15-foot pole to finally pound the message into her head. Was I irresponsible? Not particularly. The girl didn’t even like me so trying to convince her would be like spitting in the wind - stupid and would make me feel disgusted. If I had said anything, I probably would have driven her to contradict me and then she really would have done something stupid while attempting to prove me wrong. So I had hoped that natural consequences would play themselves out. Unfortunately, as with most things in life, this girl was yet again lucky. It was the last time I ever went out with those people. Those people being the usual transient, revolving-door alcoholic English “teachers” who lack the sense of responsibility God gave a newborn monkey. Which is just about the right equipment you’d need to drive while seriously impaired.
I’m sorry that her family is having to suffer for her poor judgment and her irresponsibility for the preservation of life (her own and the lives of those who could have been her victims) and furthermore having to pay for it while also mourning the loss of their family member. I feel bad for them, but I do not feel sympathy for someone who could have just as easily taken someone else’s life instead with her selfish recklessness.
Food for thought, would you be willing to help raise $300,000 in bail if she had killed someone instead of herself while driving drunk?
Oh, so it’s umm, like a chick thing, yeah?
HG
No, not a chick thing, I don’t think.
The fact is that although everyone is sorry when someone dies, (no matter why the person died), drunk driving is a 100% preventable problem. It’s a choice. No one forces someone to drink in the first place, and I think it’s safe to say that there is sufficient education about it that no one is totally ignorant of the dangers of drinking and driving.
If someone chooses to stick their fingers into an electrical socket, it’s not much different. It might kill you, and it might not, but it’s not a good idea, and you know that going in. No one would sympathize with someone who did that and, say, took out the power supply to a hospital by doing so, thereby killing a few people on life support. But drunk driving seems to bring up mixed reactions for some reason.
As has been said – sorry she’s dead, sorry for the family for sure, sorry she didn’t display better judgement, but there are things you don’t do, and that’s one of them. Especially in Taiwan, with traffic what it is. Heck, you can hardly keep from becoming a statistic on a motorbike assuming you’re stone cold sober.
But all this finger wagging aside, don’t people seek out risk? Aren’t there degrees of risk? The fact that so many people have ridden their scooters drunk in the past and so few have died proves that the overall level of risk is quantifiable, and perhaps a lot less than it appears.
One of things a lot of people I know here like about Taiwan is the relative absence of people trying to tell you how to live your life.
Not condoning drink driving, especially people who do it in cars. Interesting to note the attitude to the new (1997?) drink driving law here: It exists as a revenue generator only. Half of Taiwan is driving around plastered and the oddity here is not the drunk driver, but the quizzical foreigner who can’t understand why people aren’t just a bit more sensible. I’m sorry, I really hate to say this, and I expect to be totally flamde, but riding a bike half-cut is a lot of fun. I don’t do it any more at all, but I still think the risk/fun balance is tipped strongly in favour of fun when you’re younger. This is why young people are less risk averse.
This “what a silly cow” line of thinking could equally be applied to soldiers and astronauts. I mean, what did you think was going to happen when you joined the army? (“Fuck me mum! There are men shooting at us!”) So seven people got blown up in a rocket? Surprised? So you strap yourself to hundreds of tons of fuel and get catapulted into space and the whole thing blows up and we’re all surprised? I didn’t see anyone accuse the crew of “poor judgement”.
Bungee jumping is pretty stupid too, as is parachuting. Going hunting in the woods with live ammunition has to be stopped too. Guns should just be banned. And alcohol. And motorbikes. Aaaargh! This thread reminds me why I can never go “home”.
[quote=“Lord Lucan”]
This “what a silly cow” line of thinking could equally be applied to soldiers and astronauts. I mean, what did you think was going to happen when you joined the army? (“Fuck me mum! There are men shooting at us!”) So seven people got blown up in a rocket? Surprised? So you strap yourself to hundreds of tons of fuel and get catapulted into space and the whole thing blows up and we’re all surprised? I didn’t see anyone accuse the crew of “poor judgement”.
Bungee jumping is pretty stupid too, as is parachuting. Going hunting in the woods with live ammunition has to be stopped too. Guns should just be banned. And alcohol. And motorbikes. Aaaargh! This thread reminds me why I can never go “home”.
[/quote]
Bad comparisons. While all are a matter of personal choice, the difference is that in the Army you are trained for combat. As an Astronaut you are trained to be one, as well as the people who are working with the program. If the Space shuttle blows up, even if everything was checked, no one can be blamed for that. If you are killed by a road side bomb, you can’t be blamed for ‘knowing’ about that either, unless you’re a pshyic(sp). But drunk driving is personal choice in which everyone by now knows that it dangerous. If you get on a scooter or drive a car drunk, can’t as for poor judgement when you already know the result of doing so.
This isn’t a matter of poor judgement as it is lack of realization of personal responsible and the impact that it will have on you and the world around you.
Not really.
An alcoholic has far less “choice” than you think. The loss of one’s moral compass leads one to do scary things.
I learned about drinving drunk on Green Island. I had been drinking, then it was time to go out somewhere. I say (like a well trained lad) “I have been drinking, I cannot drive.” Someone in the group says “Whatever, lets go” (or something like that in Chinese.) It was then that I found out that it is not only possible to drive while drunked, it’s not very hard.
What about the number of people that die in scooter accidents that are not drunk?
Not really.
An alcoholic has far less “choice” than you think. The loss of one’s moral compass leads one to do scary things.[/quote]
But a binge drinker does. As much as addictions are tragic, no one ever puts the bottle or glass into someone’s hands and forces them to drink. It is a choice. The lack of willpower and ability to delay gratification does not excuse the lack of responsibility.
If this person had killed someone she would have been seen as responsible for their death, yet it seems that because she only took her own life, we’re to feel sorry for her. Would we be expected to feel the same for her if she had committed vehicular homicide?
Yes. And lots of people play with loaded guns and put them to their heads, but only a few actually suffer fatal gunshot wounds. By the same logic, I suppose that makes it perfectly fine to do it then.
I’m disgusted that people are so laissez-faire about the risk they put not just themselves in, but the lives of others, just because they’re too lazy and selfish to put convenience aside and do the right thing. I can’t decide which is more appalling - the number of people condoning this behavior as normal or those who are using their own experiences doing such reckless behavior and still being alive as proof that it’s safe.
Not really.
An alcoholic has far less “choice” than you think. The loss of one’s moral compass leads one to do scary things.[/quote]
it should read
drinking (and resilting behaviour) is personal choice
one lose moral compass because they were mentally weak enough to drink themselves stupid.period