Drunk Driving

    Dare I attempt to find humor in such an intrinsically humorless topic? Of course not. Drunk driving, and particularly people getting killed by drunk drivers, is a serious matter and should not be spoken of lightly. Therefore, this post will be little more than a rant and me showing off my ability to use a calculator.
    According to the statistics fed to us every fifteen minutes from 7:45 until 10:00 this morning, an average of one person dies every fifteen minutes due to drunk driving. To exemplify this, they chose to pull a single student from class every fifteen minutes. This was to show us the impact losing a student every fifteen minutes has, and I'm assuming they were following the methods of Every 15 Minutes, because, seriously, they did exactly what the first two parts of their method are, excepting, maybe, the 'obituaries.'
    Now, I can understand the idea behind this - they show us what it's like when one of our peers 'dies' every fifteen minutes.  What I don't understand is why the math doesn't work out at all according to any statistics involving alcohol related car accidents of the deadly variety that aren't blatantly shoving propaganda for the program in our face. Their own website says, "The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration recently reported that 12,998 people were killed in drunk driving crashes in 2007." Okay, let's take their numbers to work with - we'll round up to 13,000 for easier maths. Divide 13,000 by 365 to get alcohol-related car fatalities per day: 35 dead people per day, approximately. Divide the dividend by 24; you get about 1.5 dead people an hour. If it isn't obvious by now, that's less than four people an hour, meaning when you divide by four again to get the number of victims every you'll get about 0.4 dead people. That is a lot less than one, guys. Seriously, learn your maths, Every 15 Minutes. 
    However, I did manage to find a statistic that does agree with their 1:15 dead people to minutes ratio.  According to an MSNBC article, "...40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use." The math for that one does, in fact, come down to about one person every fifteen minutes, and I can assume that MSNBC is reputable enough for the average American - it's not for me, but that's just because I know everything they said is riddled with lies. So, if you add all those other alcohol related deaths, you wind up with eight dead people after two hours! Amazing. 
    So, really, using bad maths was the first mistake - though, I will admit, it was not my school's mistake. The second mistake they made was in their choice of the eight dead people. I can understand wanting to make sure everybody knows the victims, but, really, wouldn't it have had a better impact if they'd chosen students at random? It was really predictable once we started to see the pattern - "Oh, look, they chose one of the popular kids, again." 
    At this point, seriousness was thrown out the window. None of us took any of it seriously, because we figured out that we weren't going to be hauled out of class screaming, "They're taking me to the furnace! Run while you still can! You'll be next!" Instead, we listened and tended to be amused when someone we didn't like was 'killed.' It was horrible of us, but we did it anyway.
    Of course, I have a great way to make the entire thing more effective - instead of raising awareness for car wrecks, let's teach our students about the Holocaust by pulling them out at random - "The Lottery" - and having them go through a line where they're relieved of their jackets and shoes and given clothes to wear in lieu of the clothes they will soon be liberated of. Then we'll march them into a single small room until they're packed in tighter than Sardines and close the door. Two hours later, we'll let them out and have an informational assembly about this most tragic of tragedies. 
    Or, you know, we can stop wasting my time and do something constructive, like box up food for Japan or the poor people around town or whatever.  Yeah, I know, it's a horrible idea. I mean, really, who boxes up food for the less fortunate? Fucking jerks, that's who.