Recently I opined how it seems every time you check social media in Stanislaus County that you see someone wrecking their cars somewhere. The way it looks to me, there are a lot of drivers who just fail to keep their eyes on the road.
Well, there are some new statistics out from LendingTree saying that California has the third worst drivers in the nation.
To determine the best and worst drivers by state, researchers calculated the number of driving incidents per 1,000 drivers in every state. The rankings include; accidents, DUIs, speeding-related incidents and citations.
• California has the third worst drivers in the U.S. California drivers had 55.0 incidents per 1,000 drivers.
• California also has the second-highest accident rate, tied with Rhode Island, at 39.7 accidents per 1,000 drivers.
• California was second overall for the DUI rate. At 3.5 DUIs per 1,000 drivers, California was second among all 50 states.
• As for speeding-related incidents, though, California has just 1.2 incidents per 1,000 drivers — the fourth-best by state.
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I think it’s extremely sad that there is at least two young men who were both 24 did not survive the Thanksgiving holiday in Central California. One because in 2024, he got behind the wheel while intoxicated. The man was killed early Thanksgiving Day at 1:38 a.m. Perhaps he was headed home for turkey dinner. The California Highway Patrol said he was driving a Subaru northbound on Highway 49 in the Oakhurst area and just south of Harmony Lane when he veered off the road and hit a tree and the car burst into flames, with him trapped inside. The CHP suspects he had been drinking.
The CHP reported that after midnight on Monday another man died on I-5 north of Shields Avenue in Merced County. At 12:05 a.m. The victim was riding in a Subaru Outback and stopped in the fast lane due to another crash blocking lanes of traffic. Along came a commercial tractor/trailer rig northbound on I-5 at approximately 60 mph which plowed into the back of the Subaru. The impact forced the Subaru forward while rotating in a counterclockwise manner before the right rear of the Subaru crashed with the rear of another truck. The driver was not wearing a seatbelt and might have survived had he been because the driver and other passengers did survive with minor to moderate injuries.
My point is that both men would be alive if just for a little common sense. Now there are grieving families who will forever have future Thanksgivings with some painful reminders.
If anyone who has read this has made a decision to quit riding around unrestrained, I will have considered my job here to be of immense importance.
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California Democrats’ assault on free speech has warranted them a new lawsuit which I hope delivers a judicial rebuke for the likes of Gavin Newsom.
To defend the constitutionally protected right to freely post political content online, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Rumble and Rumble Canada, a subsidiary of Rumble that operates Rumble.com, a large video-sharing platform that hosts a variety of content, including political commentary.
You may remember that in July, Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to a parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris by declaring that the video “should be illegal,” and the California Legislature responded by fast-tracking the bills, which Newsom signed into law on Sept. 17. AB 2839 censors speech by using vague standards to punish people for posting certain content about elections, including political memes and parodies of politicians, and AB 2655 requires large online platforms to censor much of that speech.
California recently passed two laws that target and punish speakers for posting certain political commentary online. One of those laws, AB 2655, also requires large online platforms like Rumble to act as the government’s censorship police and remove such content from their sites. California is forcing Rumble to alter its speech and censor its users’ speech, while also compelling the platform’s speech, in violation of the First Amendment.
I agree with the statement released by ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler who stated: “California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates. Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans. Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are —a threat to their existence.”
Political parody and satire must be defended as free speech.
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The Biden family corruption is being highlighted once again with the president’s announcement that he is pardoning son Hunter Biden.
Remember that the White House repeatedly said the president would never pardon his son and that Biden said his son never did anything wrong. That was when a pardon would have damaged his chances of re-election. He was, of course, forced out of the race to a loser candidate in Kamala Harris. Now that he still has presidential powers, here comes the pardon.
In pardoning his son, Biden said: “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong.” And we all thought it was because Hunter Biden broke the law, silly us.
The pardon was not necessarily about his gun charge or cheating the IRS. The pardon extends back to Jan. 1, 2014 for any wrongdoing when Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Thus, he is shielded from the corrupt funneling of millions to the Biden family.
Joe Biden must go down in history as one sleazy politician who feathered his own nest during his decades in Washington politics, a serial flip-flopper and one of the most failed presidents. He isn’t really worthy of a presidential library.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
