New Mexico Man Raises The Bar For Drunk Driving Sky High - By Hitting A Helicopter

Remember the good old days? When men were men, women were grateful for that, and drunk drivers weren’t running into aircraft? Well, it’s CURRENT YEAR, as noted pint-sized pansy ass John Oliver reminds America’s idle rich every Sunday night, and those innocent times of yore are long gone, replaced by a world in which even fire ants need a safe space.

But there’s no space in Gallup, New Mexico that is safe from drunk drivers, as 26-year-old Glenn Livingston recently proved.

Sheriff’s deputies were at the scene of a rollover near Gallup, NM. The scene was barricaded with emergency vehicles so the people in the car could be flown out via helicopter. Having heard some tales of the “checkerboard land” near Gallup, I think it’s reasonable to guess that the rollover was alcohol-related, although the KOB4 news story only hints at that.

But why have one drunk-driving incident when you can have two?

Frank Hernandez was at the scene and witnessed the crash. Hernandez works for Speedway Towing in Gallup. He was at the site of a crash to tow away a vehicle that had rolled over — the wreck that the medical helicopter was responding to.

“Then I noticed after we got the vehicle picked up, this black Jeep flew past us,” said Hernandez. “I was thinking, ‘What the heck is this guy doing?’ Because they had people out there trying to stop traffic, already he almost hit two ladies.”

Hernandez says the Jeep plowed through the barrier around the medical helicopter before hitting the fire truck and then the helicopter…

Hernandez says the accident wasn’t even a surprise.

“You’ve got to be pretty drunk. I’ve seen them where they’ve taken vehicles off the road and they don’t know they did that, or not,” said Hernandez.

Everybody survived the incident, thankfully, although one wonders how Mr. Livingston is going to pay for that helicopter. Perhaps more important is the fact that this sort of thing doesn’t exactly fit the current narrative on traffic safety, which paints drunk driving as a long-vanquished foe to be profitably overlooked in the future so that enforcement efforts can focus on the mostly imaginary “distracted-driving crisis”.

The problem with that narrative is that not even the most feverishly twisted statistics can effectively equate the occasional texting-related fender-bender with the absolute murderous carnage that is the natural product of intoxicated vehicle operation. Drunk driving is still a real problem.

In fact, it is the problem facing motorists in many parts of the country. Places like Gallup, where the long roads to nowhere are prowled by the drunk and disorderly. You can say what you like about people on their iPhones but I betcha that most of them would notice a helicopter before they hit it. But where’s the profit in going after people like Mr. Livingston? He doesn’t have anything left to take. Follow the money. But be careful; doing so will make you want to have a drink or two.

[Image: Ted Velas/ Facebook]