Andrew Brenner and The Fear of Driving
Andrew Brenner and The Fear of Driving
The dumbest state senator in Ohio strikes again!
Joshua Sharpe of The Atlantic published an article yesterday entitled, “We All Should Be More Scared of Driving.” It’s an article with a headline that tells you all you need to know about the article if you already know.
But, here is a window into one of the many horrors we allow within our insane system of transportation that relies on people making decisions behind the wheel of a 7,000-pound truck with rules enforced by paint on the road and signs:
It was after 1 a.m. one night in April 2016, and I was heading home from a friend’s house on the outskirts of Atlanta. From a distance, the dark spot looked like an oil stain. Then she turned her head and my headlights lit her face. A woman in dark clothing was standing in my lane on Interstate 75. I pounded the brake, but I was too late.
Her body crashed into my windshield and her head hit the top of my car before she landed, crumpled, in the middle of the highway. When my car finally stopped, I raced over to her. I felt sure she was dead. But when I reached down to pick her up off the road, she moved.
After the police arrived, an officer took me aside and told me how the investigation would go. The police would impound my car, and if, after 24 hours, it appeared the woman would live, they’d release the vehicle. If she died, or appeared likely to die, investigators would need to test the car’s computer system to make sure the data aligned with my statements.
The police later told Sharpe he did nothing wrong. The woman who splattered across his windshield was actually at fault, so he was free to go. As you might imagine, Sharpe, like any other decent person, carries a lot of trauma from taking an innocent life, even though he wasn’t at fault.
I relate to the anxiety he talks about every time he gets back on the highway. A little under a year ago, I woke up in Grant Hospital’s Trauma Bay with my arms tied to the bed to prevent me from pulling the ventilator out of my throat.
To this day, I don’t even know where the accident occurred outside of a 9-11 caller listing a white car on fire somewhere near the Sullivant Avenue/I-70 exit.
It took me two months to recover and cost me $60,000 that I’m still paying off. All the bills start with, “Thanks for choosing Grant Hospital” as if I wasn’t trafficked there while in a coma.
I’ll never forget hobbling in a walking boot through the graveyard that is the Franklin County Impound Lot. Thousands upon thousands of mangled cars connected to thousands and thousands of deaths and injuries. The best case scenario is they all carried insurance, which is a pipe dream in the No. 1 Country in the World for some reason.
It’s something I think about whenever I take the stunted on-ramp to 315 North out of The Bottoms and instantly become surrounded by people who text and drive on the highways.
One slip up from them — maybe they’re high out of their mind or drunk — could send me, at no fault of my own, back to the trauma bay and the brink of bankruptcy. I live one of the worst experiences of my life, over and over again, simply because a personal vehicle is the most convenient way to travel five-plus miles in this godforsaken city.
I don’t expect everybody to become an anxiety-riddled freak whenever they get behind a wheel, though it would probably save countless lives and lead to a more sane way of life. After all, even though I hated driving long before my crash, that anxiety didn’t come until after the crash. I was a Republican in that way.
What I do expect, however, is to be led by competent leaders that realize public transit, not autonomous cars, is the future of transportation. Unfortunately I live in Ohio, where even just asking for competent leaders is akin to asking for a free ride to the moon and six billion dollars.
Take State Senator Andrew Brenner (R-Powell, the Swingers’ Capital of Central Ohio), who is probably the dumbest state senator in our history. Because this is Ohio, Brenner also sits on the powerful Control Board, which handles necessary adjustments to the state budget when they arise.
These meetings are boring but meaningful affairs, and due to COVID, are now happening on Zoom. This is good for regular citizens who don’t have to travel to Columbus to witness this cabal of lizards operate. It’s bad news for lazy state senators who apparently have something more important going on in their lives than their well-paid job for which they spent years campaining.
From Laura Bischoff of dispatch.com:
On the same day a distracted driving bill was introduced, state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, participated in a government video meeting while driving.
"I wasn't distracted. I was paying attention to the driving and listening to it (the meeting,)" Brenner said. "I had two meetings that were back to back that were in separate locations. And I've actually been on other calls, numerous calls, while driving. Phone calls for the most part but on video calls, I'm not paying attention to the video. To me, it's like a phone call."
He added that he was parked during most of the video meeting of the Ohio Controlling Board. "I was wearing a seat belt and paying attention to the road."
House Bill 283, introduced Monday, calls for a ban on writing, sending or reading texts, viewing videos or taking photos, live streaming and using applications while driving.
Somehow it gets even better than a State Senator engaging in distracted driving during a government meeting on the day his colleagues introduced a bill cracking down on distracted driving.
Brenner’s Zoom background was his office, a hilarious attempted trick for a guy who hardly works to pretend he’s working hard. The most shocking thing about Brenner’s latest dipshittery is that he was wearing his seatbelt, which was no sure thing given his rants against COVID restrictions.
Brenner can’t have it both ways. Either he was paying attention to the road and neglecting his governmental duties or he was paying attention to the meeting and putting other people’s lives at risk through his own arrogance.
It’s one or the other, because it ain’t like this Control Board meeting got sprang on him on a whim. He knew where he had to be and he chose this stupid path because he’s not a smart man. I guarantee in his simple little mind he figured nobody would notice his Zoom background wasn’t actually his office.
Big thanks to the voters of Senate District 19 for sending a low-rent cartoon character to the halls of power. I think I’m content never stepping foot inside that cursed district or spending any money there. If this is what passes for their public representation, it’s a dark place indeed. No surprise it includes Powell, either.
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