Brilliant stuff.. FIAT is getting super creative lately with their messaging.. (Correction: The title wrongly noted the origin as Portugal but actually it is from Brazil, where they speak Portuguese).
Image Courtesy: via Reddit
(Source: Think Progress)
As Montana’s legislators are debating this week on a series of bills related to Driving Under the Influence (DUI) laws, including one that wants to count older DUI offenses against a defendant in sentencing, this gem of an argument was made by a legislator arguing against the bills. How responsible!
Earlier this week, Republican Rep. Alan Hale took to the floor of the Montana legislature to slam these bills. The legislator — who actually runs a bar in Basin, Montana — declared that the new DUI laws are harming small businesses and destroying a way of life:
HALE: These DUI laws are not doing our small businesses in our state any good at all. They are destroying them. They are destroying a way of life that has been in Montana for years and years.
Editor’s note: Was he really thinking before uttering these words? I suspect a DUI (Delivering Under Influence) here. Come on, Rep. Hale. You can’t be advocating for your community’s well being only from an economic perspective.
(Source: Greenwire – New York Times; AutoBlogGreen)
Chuck Hurley - Image Courtesy: Dickinson College
Hurley has served as CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving since 2005 and has spent more than three decades working on a host of driving safety initiatives. He previously held senior leadership posts at both the National Safety Council and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research group funded by auto insurers.
The insurance institute has been critical of past CAFE proposals and has backed an auto industry argument that a disproportionate focus on increasing fuel mileage would lead to smaller and less safe cars (See a related article on TransportGooru that discussed the latest IIHS crash test results correlating vehicle safety during crashes to the size and fuel effieicency factors of small cars). The group helped lead a successful industry push for CAFE standards that use an attribute-based system that requires cars and trucks to achieve different standards depending on each vehicle’s footprint.
Hurley’s work with the institute during the 1990s was enough to worry Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, which has advocated for fuel economy increases. “It would be awkward to have an administrator of NHTSA who’s spent much of his career attacking fuel economy standards that NHTSA administers,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
With exception of the fuel economy concern, Hurley’s nomination drew near-universal praise from highway safety advocates. In addition to his extensive work on drunk-driving issues, Hurley has also worked with law enforcement agencies on air bag and seat belt issues, child passenger safety and teen driving initiatives. “Chuck is a passionate safety advocate whose career has been dedicated to reducing motor vehicle deaths and injuries on the highways,” said Vernon Betkey Jr., chairman of the Governors Highway Safety Association.
