1/2/2009 9:00:00 AM Editorial: Maybe Arizona drivers do need role models
Charles Barkley has famously never wanted to be a role model. "You be a role model for your kid," he has said, and it's hard to argue with that. But now he has joined the growing list of celebrities who seem to come to Arizona to be role models for bad driving decisions.
Glen Campbell and Diana Ross were already poster children for drunk driving in the Grand Canyon State, and Danica Patrick just picked up another speeding ticket. Early in the morning of Dec. 31, Barkley apparently ignored a stop sign in Old Town Scottsdale with a cop observing, would not take a breath test and was subsequently arrested. This all proves his point about not using celebrities as role models, but it is also a reminder of stupid drivers, many of them intoxicated, in the state.
In 2006, there were 502 alcohol-related fatalities on Arizona roads, and 409 of those involved someone over the legal intoxication level. That is climbing back toward the peak death toll of 582 in 1986.
People don't just drink and drive in Arizona; they get drunk and drive, and they don't know the difference.
Make a bad-driving decision, and you'll be lucky just to get a ticket. After you kill someone is too late to rethink your driving habits.
It is nothing new - it's been a problem since the automobile was invented. There have always been people trying to draw attention to the drunk driving issue - an alcohol-related fatality plays a role in Dashiell Hammett's "The Glass Key" in 1931, and a framed James Cagney is given a stern lecture and imprisoned after another drunk-driving death in Each Dawn I Die in 1939.
The lectures and statistics have increased over the years, but facts don't seem to change behavior permanently, and our attention level to the problem seems to fluctuate.
Maybe Arizona drivers do need real role models to show them the error of their ways. It's been a while since Barkley, who is 45, has been held up as a role model for anything. Now he can certainly be a role model for "Don't do what I do."
