Even that is not enough

There are still loads of complete morons who get into their car when drunk, partly because it's apparently still culturally OK to get yourself half paralytic before climbing behind the wheel..

Personally I think someone who has been found drunk behind the wheel should have his/her license removed as unfit to be on the road at all, and those who cause an accident with injury should be charged with attempted murder. Where there are deaths it *is* murder, premeditated as you had the chance to avoid it by taking alternative transport (or let someone else dribve) and didn't - the consequences of that make distressing statistics until it's someone near. Can you live with the idea of having killed your friend?

When you get into a car you should be 100% competent to drive - not half asleep, not drugged, not drunk. If not you MUST be held accountable for your actions - I personally don't care at all if you park yourself permanently against a lump of concrete (a fine application of the Darwin principle) but the risk is that you destroy other lives in the process.

Car driving and drugs/alcohol use are mutually exclusive.

Well... It passes ASA standards criteria

The advert has been screened on TV and has not been withdrawn due to complaints so I guess tastes differ. They could have used more gruesome footage at the end to properly drive the point through though.

Lancashire

It pops up in the "related" box for quite a lot of Lancashire-themed videos (try "Burnley redemption" for starters).

Government meaning of the word voluntary.

"'Approximately 10,000 young people from Lancashire voluntarily watched the clip."

10,000 young people voluntarily tried to watch a completely different clip (ie porn), but got this advert instead. There is a subtle difference.

Although, anyone who has to rely on youtube to find porn on the net, really isn't trying hard enough

The crime is not . .

So time for the fill-in-blanks exercise :

The crime is not ...., it's .... in the first place.

Here's my version : the crime is not gunning someone down, it's having a gun in the first place.

Your turn.

Pascal Monett

"The crime is not gunning someone down, it's having a gun in the first place."

Is not the same. In the car instance the above would be:

The crime is not killing someone whilst driving drunk, it's having a car in the first place.

I could quite legally own a firearm, or a car, and never commit a crime with them.

However, being under the influence with either one would leave me rather more prone to an accident, be it crashing, or a negligent discharge.

Addy material

This scenario plays out every parent's worst nightmare. Way too many kids are getting killed in car crashes, and if it takes uber shock value to wake them up, let it be.

Someone hand that filmmaker an Addy!

Huge penalties for victimless crimes?

It might sound like a good idea to punish drunk-drivers severely even when nobody was hurt, but I'm generally very wary of treating victimless crimes too seriously. For example, it's open to abuse when the police can not be trusted. What would you do if you know you weren't drinking but the police say "Our computer says your blood sample contained such-and-such a level of alcohol so you're going to prison for ten years"?