On Monday, (Jan 22 – 2018), the Examiner quoted a recent AA Car Insurance survey of over 6,000 motorists.
Under the heading, “One in 12 drivers in crash or near miss due to alcohol,” they report that, “7.39% of those surveyed had been involved in a near miss or collision where they or another road user were driving under the influence of alcohol. Just under 2% of those surveyed reported being involved in one such incident within the past year, while 4.31% stated that they had been involved in at least one such incident over a year ago.”
Well, I don’t believe a word of it!
I am an AA member and I regularly fill out their various questionnaires, though I wasn’t invited to complete this one. Think about it a second. You are being asked if you were involved in a crash in the past year and if so, were you or the other guy pissed at the time. I could see the goody-goody self-righteous types instantly pointing the finger at the other guy but who is going to self-report being under the influence behind the wheel to anybody, especially not the AA? This survey is asking you to believe that 120 did just that.
But whatever about the questionable veracity of the claims around actual collisions, what’s this bullshit about near misses? In an average month a typical driver might have one near miss, some nearer than others of course. But the operative word here is “miss.” No crash took place and life goes on. Apart from an exchange of the finger or shaking fist, I know of no reason to hang around the vicinity of any near miss. So how are supposed to know whether the other guy in a near miss had drink taken? You don’t, and if you’d had a pint and had to swerve on the way home, you are not going to admit that to the damned AA, are you? Why would you in fact?
Reliable road statistics are important to know and so learning that the number of road deaths last year was at its lowest in years was welcome news. But I suggest that this type of forced fabrication is not news at all. Instead, it is a self-serving agenda by the AA, aimed at keeping the insufferable langer Shane Ross on side and keeping the Government subsidies rolling in as a result of kissing the Ministerial Arse.
Ross is struggling to inject some importance into his insignificant political career and tarnished media image, so he has chosen zero alcohol tolerance as his saving platform. But if his extreme measures are not passed into law he risks being seen as a loser so who better than the AA, (with their sponsored AA Road watch), to champion the Minister’s platform. In this regard, what better way is there for the AA to do this than to fabricate a storm-in-a-teacup style news item in support of the man where no real news exists.
So let me remind my readers that not everything you read in the papers is a fact.