Only Two Escalators in the State of Wyoming

[Teddy B 17,252]

Naked?

Sure, just make sure she has nice tits. I like it when pretend wives have nice tits.

Anything you guys want. There are no limits in the world of make believe.

[mota bhai 2,675]

In that case, give her a third #######.

[Karee 4,190]

In WY you can drink beer while driving. Ahh, the smell of freedom.

Not since 2007.

No more for the road

New law prohibits booze in vehicles, ends culture of drinking and driving.

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By Noah Brenner

March 7, 2007

In a state where people measure distance by beers or whole six-packs, the days of road sodas are gone – even if you aren’t driving.

In one of its final acts of the session, the Wyoming Legislature banned all open containers of alcohol in moving vehicles, becoming one of the last states in the nation to do so. Senate File 33, sponsored by Sen. Tony Ross, had failed repeatedly in the Senate before finally passing this year with only three votes against it.

While it is not the final strand of barbwire across the open range, lawmakers and law enforcement alike agreed the passage of the law marks a cultural change in Wyoming’s attitudes toward driving and drinking.

In the “old days,” distances really were measured in beers, drivers could get a mixed drink at a drive-through window, and recycling was throwing the bottle out the window at a high enough speed so that is shattered into small pieces that were ground into the road surface.

“When I came to Wyoming 17 years ago, a person could be drinking a beer and have a loaded gun and wave to a cop at a stoplight and it was legal,” said Capt. Jim Whalen of the Teton County Sheriff’s Office. “I just thought I lived in a state that was resistant to change and it was sort of worn as a badge of honor that we were one of the last states to comply” with federal DUI regulations.

Other valley residents offered other stories about the old days.

A local attorney, after winning a case in front of the Wyoming Supreme Court, was awarded costs incurred in the case as part of the decision. He submitted a single receipt to the opposition for $4.18.

“This money was spent on a 6-pack of Bud, utilized on the long road trip to and from the oral argument hearing in Cheyenne,” the request stated. “Given our sparse population and vast geographic distances, Wyoming courts have long recognized the legitimacy of road beer in moderate amounts (one beer for each 160 miles in this case) as a taxable ‘cost.’”

He was reimbursed promptly with a six-pack.

A prominent legislator, in the days before drinking and driving was taboo, once claimed to have been the best drunken driver in Wyoming.

Before driving with an open container was banned in 2002, Wyoming residents used to boast that they could have an officer hold their drink while they signed a speeding ticket. After a weak open-container law passed, the statute became known as the “here, hold my beer while I talk to this officer” law because the driver simply had to hand his drink to a passenger before an officer stepped beside the car.

“That is what Wyoming has been about for a long time, but those days are over,” Sen. Grant Larson said.

Many of those carefree attitudes toward alcohol in vehicles changed after Sept. 16, 2001, when eight runners on the University of Wyoming cross-country team died when their sport utility vehicle was hit by a drunken driver.

The tragedy of the cross-country runners drew attention to Wyoming laissez-faire drunken driving laws like no driver’s education video ever could. In the previous session, the Legislature barely passed a bill banning drivers from having open containers of alcohol. In 2002, legislators passed a measure lowering the legal limit for a driver’s blood-alcohol content from 0.1 to 0.08, bringing it in line with a federal standard they had resisted, even though it had cost millions of dollars in lost federal funding for highways. They also passed a bill requiring a blood test to determine a driver’s blood-alcohol concentration in all fatal crashes.

Since 2001, at least one legislator has introduced a bill banning passengers from carrying open containers each year, and each year it failed until the 2007 session.

While the crash victims put a personal and tragic face on the issue of drunken driving, a change in attitudes in the Legislature was already taking place.

“It appeared to me that it was a vote that the federal government couldn’t tell us what to do,” said Rep. Keith Gingery of legislators’ resistance to change. “I think the libertarian agenda is decreasing as you see more and more young legislators getting in.”

Larson said the change is not just about turnover in the legislative ranks.

“Even older people know [drinking and driving] is not the right thing to do,” he said. “It was acceptable before; it isn’t now. It isn’t that much different than smoking. It used to be, ‘That’s my right,’ and now it’s no longer acceptable.”

To some, the changes are a sign of a greater willingness to legislate social behavior.

“It signifies the end of an era and we need to hold our lawmakers responsible for putting more restrictions on people’s lives,” said Jackson attorney Jerry Bosch, who handles DUI cases.

But change also needed to occur with the people enforcing the laws passed by the Legislature. Law enforcement officers are part of the culture they are policing and it took just as long for some officers to take drunken driving seriously as it did for the rest of the community.

“There has been a changing of the guard – not just in the Legislature but in police officers,” Whalen said. “The academy and law enforcement across the county has IDed DUI as one of the crimes we must enforce and, as a community in Wyoming, that has been an education process just like it was with law enforcement.”

While legislators and the governor heralded the new law as a tool to combat drunken driving, reviews from law enforcement and prosecutors have not been as uniformly positive.

Local law enforcement applauded the bill.

“There were certainly lots of times I stopped people who had been drinking and had an open container in the vehicle and I wasn’t able to prove they were impaired beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Jackson Police Chief Dan Zivkovich. “I had to make arrangements for them to get home or I just had to let them go.”

Whalen said the law sets a standard.

“What I like about it is it’s a consistent message to the motoring public that nobody should be drinking and operating a motor vehicle,” he said. “I am not sure if it gives us an extra tool to combat DUI cases, but it is an extra educational tool.”

Teton County Attorney Steve Weichman said he appreciated the bill but blasted legislators for failing to tighten Wyoming’s Implied Consent law, which governs testing for blood-alcohol levels, or the DUI statute itself, both of which he said have huge loopholes in them.

“Our efforts to fix these problems fail and sober drivers with an open container are nowhere near the menace to society that the DUI statute and the Implied Consent law are,” he said. “It’s not a crime to drink, it’s a crime to drive when you are too impaired to do so and there are problems enforcing that law which the Legislature has refused to fix.”

Weichman said that while the cross-country runners’ tragedy may have drawn attention to drunken driving, little has come from that attention.

“What sprung from that was rhetoric and hyperbole, not action,” he said. “We tried to use that tragedy to educate legislators on how dysfunctional laws ensure that that tragedy is going to play itself out over and over and all we got was lip service, not law.”

Regardless of whether the law is lip service or a long time coming, beginning July 1, if passengers crack a cold one, it better be a Coke.

Perhaps the only remaining refuge for rebellious Wyoming drivers is not to wear their seat belt. State law mandates everyone in a moving vehicle wear a seat belt, but officers can enforce the law only if they are pulling a vehicle over for a separate offense.

But even that could change.

A bill allowing officers to stop cars for seat-belt violations failed 25-34 on third reading in the House, but Gingery said he expects it to pass within the next three years. Not everybody would agree that would be right.

“It seems we are willing to give up a lot of freedoms based on fears,” attorney Bosch said. “Drinking and driving is a legitimate fear but how far do we go?”

Source:

http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=1518

[Teddy B 17,252]

In that case, give her a third #######.

In the front or the back? One in the back would be really cool when slow dancing.

[mota bhai 2,675]

Put a ####### where her mouth is. That would truly revolutionize the #######.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Not since 2007.

No more for the road

New law prohibits booze in vehicles, ends culture of drinking and driving.

Nooooooo!! I didn't get enough beers in! My precious freedom!

[Teddy B 17,252]

Put a ####### where her mouth is. That would truly revolutionize the #######.

Yes, and chicks shaving their face would be all the rage.

[Penny Lane 8,159]

I was wondering how a thread about escalators got so many responses so quickly. I get it now.

[Karee 4,190]

Put a ####### where her mouth is. That would truly revolutionize the #######.

That kinda defeats the purpose.

[GandD 5,966]

Escalators serve no purpose other than to make fat people more fat.

They sure were handy in Hong Kong. Tons of escalators. No fatties.

[mota bhai 2,675]

Hmm. Can the upper ####### have a tongue?

[Penny Lane 8,159]

It can have teeth.

[mota bhai 2,675]

no teeth!

[Karee 4,190]

It can have teeth.

Thanks for ruining my day.

[mota bhai 2,675]

This is what happens when you let women learn to read and write.