How cars drove us to sobriety

   Cars have done us noble transportation service  but they've also transformed the way we live in an another significant way: they have made us a highly-sober population. 

   Alcoholics Anonymous, sobriety lectures, morality are all very wonderful, but the reason our population doesn't consume more alcohol is because of the strict ban on driving and drinking.

   The fear of being busted is taken seriously by just about everybody and as a result of our dependence on the car, great swathes of the population remain sober when they might otherwise be feeling no pain. 

   The statistical correlation appears to be pretty irrefutable, we drink a lot less than we once did; taverns have been disappearing for decades, as the driving population continues to grow. 

   A new law orders young drivers to not have even a sip of booze in their systems. 

   We know that booze still leads to all sorts of barroom scuffles and one or two people get knifed every weekend in and around Montreal but prior to about 1910 when cars came on the scene, newspapers reported daily on the massive problem of public intoxication. 

   People were constantly jailed for public drunkenness, barroom brawls were common, often leading to death, even when the city was tiny. 

   But now not only do people not drink as their forefathers did, they don't even drink at home because they might have to drive to the corner store in their suburb to fetch something, so they don't even want to risk that.  

   Drunk drivers have left a very ugly stain on the city's past, but something must be said about the untold and uneventful stories of people who have remained sober due to their driving responsibilities. 

   The car did what all temperance societies failed to do: they got us living sober lives and the upside to that- the reduced number of spousal batteries, the decrease in recklessness and dangerous behaviours -- has all resulted in an incalculable gain. 

  I am not saying that we could cure alcoholism by handing out car keys to guys at the Old Brewery Mission though. 

  This could all change, however. In our lifetimes ("our lifetimes?" how long do you know how long people reading this will  live? - Chimples) drinking and driving will likely once again be legal, because people will no longer actually drive their cars.  

   Within 20 or 30 years, or even less, cars will be driving themselves without an input from the driver, who can then read, sleep or do whatever silly thing he wants to while the car moves along automatically. 

   That could bring us back to an era where people were getting blasted as soon as they got off work. 

   The party will begin anew but the social effects of the new future normal could be costly. 

   Drunk driving has long been a problem and has cost a lot of lives. We should collectively mourn those tragic deaths. 

   However, cars might well have prevented more alcohol-related death and misery than all of the suffering caused by drunk driving combined.