More Deaths
 

I know there have been a bunch of threads of people passing lately. Here's another one to add to the mix.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/ ... l-news-hed

My two friends were killed in a car accident (both juniors in higschool). There are rumors that alcohol was behind the party.

In short, a kid was going to drive Amanda home from a party at 6am. Amanda didn't feel comfortable driving with a stranger kid, so Mike Cummings went along with her for the ride. They somehow were going WAY too fast on a street with a bunch of stop signs and hit a tree. The car was torn in half and Amanda and Mike were killed. The driver was in serious condition, but has just put down as stable. I couldn't imagine living for the rest of my life knowing I killed two other people...godsh.

Amanda was a soccer player.
Mike was the quaterback for the football team.

Shame.

that sucks dude. seems like everyone is dying these days. PS the link doesnt work for me.

I feel for you

If the link doens't work, just go to the main page (http://www.mcall.com/) and it's the front story about Cummings Funeral. Click that for the page.

i still don't understand how alcohol remains legal... sad news indeed. annoy:

notice all people involved weren't allowed to have it legally anyway.

exactly. RIP though, but they shouldn't have been drinking in the first place.

Not only legal.. but largely accepted. Kid's going out and getting drunk is just what kids do. But kids doing drug's makes them the dregs of society, immoral pigs. Yet innocent kid's die at the hands of irresponsible drinking everyday.

Even though many kids drink underage, most parents just turn the other cheek when it comes to it, its accepted behaviour these days.

Sorry to hear abotu that Coleman.

Just like with everything else inthe world if you are responsible drinking you most likely wont have anything bad happen. however if you are not responsible then bad things happen. Happens with every single thing in the world not just alcohol or drugs.

Sorry to hear about your friends. It's sad that some young people have enough sense not to get behind the wheel after a few drinks, but don't think much of riding with someone who's been drinking.

I guess its the cliche that young people feel invincible or just don't stop to think. Maybe its a peer pressure thing. Either way its unfortunate. May they RIP.

that is terrible, a very similiar event happened here about 2-3 years ago. kids ran straight into a wall at 70mph everyone but the driver was killed i think. RIP.

Uh... sucks.

For some reason all of my friends are better at driving while intoxicated. I don't understand it. eek:

[quote="Jin-Roh":9341a]Uh... sucks.

For some reason all of my friends are better at driving while intoxicated. I don't understand it. eek:[/quote:9341a]
And you would willingly get in their cars to find to this out...

[quote=strvs]And you would willingly get in their cars to find to this out...[/quote:25911]

No. It's just what they told me. biggrin:

[quote="Jin-Roh":1b703][quote=strvs]And you would willingly get in their cars to find to this out...[/quote:1b703]

No. It's just what they told me. biggrin:[/quote:1b703]
No offense but your friends are retards. stupid:

[quote=strvs][quote="Jin-Roh":e9d8f]No. It's just what they told me. biggrin:[/quote:e9d8f]
No offense but your friends are retards. stupid:[/quote:e9d8f]

I agree. I hate them, yet I have no one else to go to if I get bored.

Alcohol.

Sadly lots of people up here drive while drunk, thankfully though there have been no accidents with kids from my school. I have yet to drive drunk on the road and dont plan on it. But I have hopped into random cars after parties where sometimes the driver has been drinking. You forget and it just happens after you've been drinking heavily for 6 hours.

That sucks...Drunken drivers are a fucking scourge....

I agree with strvs...It's fucked up that alcohol causes all this death and destruction, and heartache - and yet it is LEGAL...! Marijuana, while probably half as common, still doesn't have ANY fatalities to answer for - You can't die from poisoning yourself with it, and you can't get an addiction to it like you can with alcohol...and yet it's illegal in most western countries.

Sad state of affairs...

RIP

You can't blame this on alcahol soley. I mean the kid knew better then to drink and drive and so did the passengers. And as for pot, I personally remember about 3 or 4 accidents in HS that were caused by kids being too stoned, not to mention the people that have OD'd on other "recreational" drugs.

i dont know where you get your stats from, but i have heard of plenty stories of car wrecks due to a DUI while stoned

[quote="Airborne Butters":03adb]You can't blame this on alcahol soley. I mean the kid knew better then to drink and drive and so did the passengers. And as for pot, I personally remember about 3 or 4 accidents in HS that were caused by kids being too stoned, not to mention the people that have OD'd on other "recreational" drugs.[/quote:03adb]

Driving too stoned has never caused an accident for me and 7 of my closest friends who have been smoking and driving for a good 5 years, and on open roads at 100kms/h....Those people would have been being stupid and not paying attention to the road, because that's really the only way to have an accident on the road when you're stoned...Unless it's your first session or something, and you're too busy reacting to the new feeling of being high to focus on the road....

...Otherwise as a guy who has been smoking for about 7 years, I say that it's total bullshit - Infact, I appeal that it makes me and most people I know that do it, a BETTER driver. I've never even come close to having an accident, and I'm a very cautious driver....It's probably the only time I drive exactly on the speed limit....

Funny how it's never the people who smoke who claim that it happens....

Also, how can they test if the person was actually stoned when it happened?? For all they know, the guy smoked the night before.

you can usually tell when someone is high. I know people that smoke and drive all the time. Its the safest way to get high without getting caught and there has not once been an accident caused by the weed, just deer.

but then again trip, you have to remember that tons of people drive drunk and get away with it everyday. There are alout more people driving while drunk than driving while stoned and because of that, you're going to read about an exponentially larger number of alcohol related crashes than marijuana related crashes.

when have i said i've never smoked? i smoke weed alot..just dont brag about it. and i dont smoke when i have to drive cuz i know i wont be able to react good, and i have had a friend who totalled his car cuz we was stoned.

Nah, because there are laws against driving drunk, and they can pull you over, test you and also arrest you for it - It's so much more well-known as a bad thing to do that alot of people don't do it because they know it's wrong both legally and morally...As they feel they're not putting people at risk.
It's not like that with being stoned - All the people that smoke, that I know and hang out with smoke or have smoked weed, and most of them drive while stoned - It's not a big deal at all to people who smoke alot - unless of course they've had a bad experience.

There's no big socially declared problem, and no real way of testing for it, so alot of people do it without fear of being caught and most people don't feel as though they're even doing anything wrong, which there always is with driving drunk....So actually, you'd probably get a fair even amount of drunk drivers and stoned drivers.

RIP

I dont know how anyone can even think of drinking and driving.
It might sound like I am hopping on the bandwagon but I really couldn't live with myself knowing I was even slightly responsible for killing 2 ppl.

Trip, i'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one. I say you and your friends actually have been lucky as opposed to being better drivers whilst high. Nothing can make you more intellectually brighter or more alert than being in a well rested normal state of mind.

Alcohol doesn't mix well with driving and thats a fact EVERYONE knows yet many disregard it. I've seen many sucessful people flush their life down the toilet because they killed someone while driving under the influence. Remember this.......the accident doesn't even have to be your fault. A guy runs a red light and slams into your car killing himself but you were the one under the influence? Doesn't matter, you're gonna pay dearly.

Simple fix: Just don't get behind the wheel or get in anyones car who is under the influence. On too many occasions to count, i was the one guy who drove the drunks home. I remember going to a party once with a girl and my buddy was drunk. he was going to get in my other friends car (who was drinking) and i stopped him. i forced him into my car (i can't babysit all my friends) and drove him home. well, the other knuckleheads got into an accident but only hit a street sign. My buddy thanked me the following morning.

I'm sure drunk drivers think they are good drivers while drunk too. And no, there are not as many stoned drivers as drunk drivers, there are thousands and thousands of drunk drivers on any given night. Marijuana is used much, much less than alcohol. And I wouldn't say that all drunk drivers know they are doing something wrong and doing it anyway. I think most drunk drivers think they can handle themselves and are therefore ok to drive, so they don't think they are doing anything wrong either, but then again, they have impaired judgement at that time.

Now I'm gonna go Machette on this thread and post a link with research. happy:

http://www.ukcia.org/research/DoseRelat ... rashes.pdf

I cant stand people that drink and drive. I wont even drink 1 pint. Its not that its too risky. I just will never get into the habbit of having a drink before driving.

Sorry to hear that, Derek.

Man, it's been a bad few weeks, huh? annoy:

Not necessarily....There are drugs out there that give you a steadier arm, that make you run faster, that help you handle more things at once, and focus with stronger concentration - Marijuana definitely gets you more directly intouch with certain things when you focus on them - That's where the extra comes creativity from - And there is absolutely no denying that...
While I admit that marijuana provokes a different reaction depending on the person, I'd say that the minority of regular smokers are worse drivers because of it - I sure think it makes me focus solely on what I'm doing - Enabling me to keep a constant focus on the road and whats around me, I double check everything to be sure, and I feel more of a motivation to check my mirrors, and my speedometer. Stuff I tend to just take for granted when I'm sober...

Here are some interesting quotes from an article regarding the issue:

[quote:a6b69]
Dr. Alison Smiley is one of the few people on the planet who've actually looked into pot use and driving habits. She's a University of Toronto professor studying how humans interact with machines, cars included.

She published a paper in 1999 that concluded, on the basis of medical research and vehicle accident stats from the U.S. and Australia, that marijuana may actually make you a more careful driver.

"The overall conclusion is that marijuana impairs driving performance, but not in the way that alcohol does," she said. "Marijuana use, on its own, tends to result in more cautious driving behaviour.

"The crash statistics showed no increase in accidents where marijuana was involved."

The reason, Smiley suggests, is that marijuana impairs in a fashion quite unlike booze. Drunk drivers tend to take stupid risks: speeding, tailgating, dangerous passing, failing to signal or to wear a seat belt.

"Alcohol tends to make people more confident," she said. "The effect of marijuana is a kind of information overload, too much stimulation. The normal human reaction to that is to slow down, be extra careful. With marijuana, the driving behaviour tends to be more compatible with the impairment than with alcohol." [/quote:a6b69]

It would have to be a pretty darn amazing coincidence that I and all my buddies who smoke, all feel as though they take more care on the road when stoned - Not to mention the fact that never have any of us really come close enough to an accident, except probably once when my mate was trying to eat, change a CD and drive at the same time - but there were a few of us in the car, and we were all high and it was still obvious to us that he was making a big mistake trying to handle that many things at once.
I've had uncountable experiences on the road while stoned - Enough that I'm absolutely sure of my own abilites while under the influence, and to know that it isn't just luck - I'm not just pulling this shit out of my ass...


You don't get what I'm saying - There are probably SOME drunk drivers that think they are capable drivers while drunk - But for the most part, it's well known around the western world, and probably the rest of the world, too, that it doesn't matter who you are, liquor effects you physically and mentally enough in the wrong ways that it makes you worse of a driver. This is not the case with marijuana. Despite what you guys think, it's not a well known fact that marijuana makes you a worse driver, infact there are plenty of people like me that agree it makes them a BETTER driver - Something that I don't think ANY drunk drivers would try and claim...Therefore, there is less of a reason for people who are high to not be on the road - Add that with the fact that there is no real way for the police to test and convict you for driving high...and you have a ratio of stoned drivers to stoned people higher then that of drunk drivers to drunk people.

...and I wouldn't say that there are "MUCH, MUCH MORE" people drunk than there are stoned...For one, because marijuana is illegal, it's not openly talked about and is frowned down upon by society in general - and also because people can get away with more stuff while high, than they can when they're pissed...If you have to, you can act not stoned when you're stoned. It's relatively impossible to do the same when drunk. Infact, I think you'd be VERY suprised to find out how many people you know that smoke weed. I was fucking amazed, and still am...People will only talk about it with other people who smoke for fear of being socially outcasted...So you never find out about teh true number of people who smoke, cause they never tell you....and I'm not just bullshitting you to make a point - That's the truth.

As for the statistics - I couldn't view the link right now as I'm at uni and for some reason the server won't allow me to view the PDF - But I bet if you googled it, you could find studies that reveal the exact opposite...I'll look when I get home....I remember reading about it on the CNN website about some canadian researchers who found that in the people they tested, marijuana had no bearing on their driving ability....

that sucks man...but if alcohal was illegal too...that would suck.

RIP.

I just found out there was a 4th person in the car. Somehow, the person got out of the car and called his parents to come pick him up at 6 in the morning. He must have felt uncomfortable driving with a lunatic drunk. ed: Imagine being that kid...knowing that one decision saved your life.


Also, there were quotes in the paper of the Amanda's (the girl who died) best friend saying she wondered how that all happened. Well, it figures out that girl hosted the party at her house. Stupid lying bitch. Kid's thought they were real cool and posted pictures of people at the party on their webshots...it had pictures of the dead kids drinking and the driver drinking. They got a search warrant for the girl's house and they found empty alcohol cans and bottles. The girl's parents weren't home for the whole thing...they came back later Sunday evening and came home to all of this. It should be interesting to see what happens to the parents for having a party in their home, but without their knowledge of it taking place.

Exactly what I do. If I know I need to, or even might need to drive, not one drop of alcohol. IF I do get drunk I usually wont drive for at least 12 hours after Im sober(part hangover, part I just dont want to risk an accident smelling of booze)