Austin Mayor: Drunk driving angers him; Is killing while sober okay?

From the Austin American Statesman on the allegedly drunk driver who drove at high speed through a crowd of people attending a South by Southwest event in downtown Austin, Texas:

“The Austin Police department is investigating this matter as allegedly involving drunk driving. If this is true, this fact angers me. Drunk driving is never acceptable, and can lead to deadly consequences,” [said Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell in a prepared statement.]

This seems to imply that Mayor Leffingwell believes killing two people and injuring two dozen more is not worthy of outrage if you’re sober.

Does the Travis County Attorney routinely prosecute drivers who kill pedestrians if the driver is not drunk or otherwise impaired? Or are these incidents seen as “just a tragic accident”?

2 Comments

  1. The drunkenness is irrelevant here. The issue was driving recklessly while evading the police, plus hit and run.

    Given that the mayor made his statement at 3am, I’m hoping that he was either half-asleep or only had half the story at that point. He can’t be that clueless.

  2. I wrote an article about this incident. Here’s the beginning:

    I usually cringe at fluff writings following a tragedy. Like I’m a bad person for over-dramatizing what I think the people affected are thinking or feeling. The death is their loss, not mine. Any drop of anger or sadness on my part is not empathy, but a selfish way to make my own reaction take away the significance of the profound intimacy of their loss.

    When I was 16, my parents were in a terrible car accident, hit by a driver under the influence. They survived, but my mom was thrown through a window and her head injury caused a long term impact on her life. I have lost friends to drunk drivers, and I know the sting on many sides of this cultural problem. I know too many who got into a car with someone they shouldn’t have, or drove when they shouldn’t have and made it out alive thinking, “not me, not this time.”

    For five years I have worked to help women and men have more of what they want in life. I teach about desire, sexuality, and intimacy. Most of us don’t have the depth of connection that we are all craving.

    Read more here…

    http://www.meetup.com/OneTaste-Austin/

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