If you don't want to click the link, here's the deal. According to Men's Health magazine, San Antonio ranks 99 out of 100 cities in the US when ranked from soberest to most drunk. Usually I roll my eyes at these things since MH isn't known for its stellar methodology, but here's what they took into account, according to the linked article:
The magazine looked at number of cases with liver disease, number of binge drinking incidents, number of deaths in DUIs, DUI arrests and DUI laws.
The full list, by the way, can be seen here. We're only more sober than Bakersfield, which makes "Streets of Bakersfield" a suddenly dangerous song. We're drunker than, among other places, Austin (93), San Diego (89), Tampa (73), Cleveland (67), Washington, DC (59)--that's right, we're drunker than Congress--Los Angeles (41), not one but two cities in Hampton Roads (Norfolk & Chesapeake, 37 & 38 respectively), Oakland (29), New Orleans (15), and NYC (3).
I have encountered wrong way drivers so many times I have lost count; there have been at least three in the past month. None of these recent encounters were under what the city tells us are dangerous conditions--they were all on surface streets downtown, all before 7PM (one was around noon on a Saturday). Am I saying these folks were drunk? Of course not; I have no way of knowing that. They could have all been colossally stupid, which is usually a pretty safe bet in this town. But there's at least a chance they were already drunk.
So, what is the City Council concentrating on? The County Commissioners? Nothing so mundane as addressing the culture of a city that not only excuses but expects DUIs for a large portion of its residents. Nope, they're working on making downtown SA a more attractive place to live.
Or to, y'know, get hit by a drunk driver.
2 comments:
I'm shocked at how sober New Orleans is. 'Course, their intoxicant of choice may not come in a bottle.
And Atlanta has its act together, despite my efforts .... ;-)
New Orleans, my adopted hometown, only scores so high because most of the drunken antics are confined to tourists in the French Quarter, people who aren't driving and not from there, so their alcohol-related illnesses get tabulated where they really live.
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