Street Vermin

Clunk!
What the hell was that?
Where are we?
Somewhere around Cedar Lake or is it Lake of the Isles?
The twisting streets roll from one to the other and the multistory Georgian revival and craftsman homes blur together. We are lost.
It is a late fall Saturday night in 1982, and we are drunken teenagers looking for a party.
Was it from frustration or thrill that Ryan was driving too fast?
The street curved left, his parents Honda didn't quite. We hit the curb.

We get out of the car.
"Shit!" Sam's laughing. "Check that out!"
The hub cap is crumpled and the wheel seems crooked.
Ryan thinks quickly.
"Let's find another Honda. We'll just switch the hubcaps."
Sam laughs. "Yeah, let's fuckin' do it!"
We find another Honda, and Ryan pops it off with a crowbar.
Somehow they wrestle it on to the broken wheel.
We take off.
SssskkkkaaSssskkkkaaSssskkkkaa...
It didn't do anything.
That car was wrecked...a broken axle.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving achieved their greatest lobbying success in 1984 when the National Minimum Drinking Age Act forced every state to change their drinking age to 21, but is it the liquor that kills or the car?

We have a cultural design problem. Alcohol is a central part of U.S. culture, and our cities do not permit us to go out drinking without also driving. Why don't groups that spend millions promoting "the designated driver" advocate better public transportation and urban design with the same fervor?

Drunk or sober at 16 we were all speed demons. We took any chance we had to make our tires screech. The likelihood of a teen driver bending metal must be near 100%. While local news obsesses about the dangers of ghetto youth, the violent urges of suburban kids are allowed to wreak havoc on the highways.

T.W. Adorno writes,"Which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists."

In other words, the callousness of the NRA's dogma "Gun's don't kill people, people kill people," is equally sick if applied to automobiles.

George Weller may have hit the gas, but his 1992 Buick Le Sabre killed 10 people.