Tying One On
I got my private pilot’s license in the mail from the FAA the other day. The license was printed on a card that I hard to cut around to get the piece that I slipped proudly into my wallet. It’s not that I minded cutting out the card, but I prefer it when it’s perforated and I can just fold it back and forth a coupla times and then pull, carefully, apart. Now you might be thinking that I’m one of those people who isn’t very good with scissors. Um well that’s right, especially straight lines, but that’s another story.
What got me was that accompanying my private pilot’s license — and we’re talking my first, ever — was not a nice note from the head of the FAA or Sky King saying, Nice work. Congratulations and be a safe pilot. That stuff just dribbles off the purple pens of public PR people. In fact, I don’t know if they know how to speak otherwise.
Anyway, I didn’t get an attaboy, but instead a letter from the Deputy Chief Counsel of the FAA, which started "Dear Pilot" and went on to tell me how to report a DUI moving violation to the FAA. As in drunk driving a car. Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to do that, um, and thank you.
Of course I can understand that the FAA wants to make sure that pilots have to notify them if they get arrested for driving under the influence, and frankly, I think that’s appropriate. Someone who is going to drive a car drunk probably would so an airplane — or a boat for that matter — and that’s not a good idea. Someone gets pinched for drinking and driving anything, should have his right to drive anything revoked until he’s very most likely not to do it again.
Have I driven when I shouldn’t have? Yes. Many years ago. Have I had accidents? I bumped the back of a truck and dented my fender. More than twenty years ago, and I still shudder to think that I thought I knew what I was doing at the time. More stupid youth than alcohol, but both regrettable conditions.
We’ve recently had a couple of high-profile cases of teenagers getting light sentences for driving drunk and killing a passenger. There are arguments supporting such punishment that say you don’t want to ruin a second young life. And on the other side, complaining that getting a year in the county jail is just a slap on the wrist. Both arguments are right.
What’s wrong is that we do all of this haggling after the funerals instead of figuring out a way to prevent the intoxication and murder in the first place. Maybe some day, people won’t boast about tying one on.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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