"Out of the car, Mutha!" bellowed the man who was wearing
the urine-stained pea coat and wildly waving a bottle of Night Train. Fearfully
the young woman in the blue Volvo searched each face at the road block.
There was no pity in the weathered, red-nosed faces of the derelicts surrounding
the Volvo:
nor was there the slightest trace of sympathy in the stony countenances
of the state patrolmen who stood behind the barricades. Tears filled her
eyes and another mother was taken off the road.
This March 17th marks the third anniversary of the founding of DAM or Drunks Against Mothers by Charles 'Prestone' Johnson. It was on this date In 1985 that Johnson's best friend Dave 'Mad Dog' Boscwinkle was senselessly slain in a traffic accident.
'Prestone' Johnson elaborates on how this incident forever changed his
life:
''Mad Dog Boscwinkle an' me wuz try'n to pick up some spare change for a
drink by washin' win' shields. We were on the corner of 6th and Main an'
we wuz only about 50 cents shy of havin' enuff for a bottle of Wild Rose.
I remember how excited Mad Dog got bein's that we wuz so close to our goal.
He stepped off the curb when the light started to change and wuz struck
from behind by a car trying to beat the light. He wuz dead before he hit
the pavement. It turned out that the person who killed him was a young mother
try'n to get her kid to his kindergarten creative finance seminar. She wuz
one of those Yuppie mothers who had to make a reservation two weeks in advance
just to take a shit."
"This got me thinkin'. Whenever you're out on the road or standin' on the corner watchin' traffic, who do you see weaving all over the road, cutting across lanes an' running the light? Drunks?... Fuck no! We don't got no cars. Christ, we barely got enuff for a bottle. No, it's these mothers with a station wagon full of brats who do that. Jeez, Just think about it. When ya got a mother who's tryin' to belt one kid. give another first-aid, and breast feed the third, it's no wonder she's all over the road."
"It was then that I realized that the driving mother Is the most dangerous thing on the road. Now can I have the 75 cents for the drink you promised me?'"
 Scientists for years have searched for a cure for maternal driving |
'Prestone' Johnson did not keep this startling revelation to himself. He approached Police Lieutenant James S. Wine of the Bozo Police Department. Lieutenant Wine recounts: At first I was very skeptical of Johnson's theory. After all Johnson was the guy who had DT's so bad that once he thought he was Mister GreenJeans and stole six kiwis from the zoo. However the more I thought about It, the more Prestone's idea made sense. I mean about half of the people who cause auto accidents are women. And a large percentage of these women are mothers at one time or another. So this means that a large number of the persons responsible for auto accidents are mothers. Pretty damning evidence in my book. Lieutenant Wine was Instrumental In bring 'Prestone' Johnson's theory to the attention of his superiors. They were intrigued by Johnson's notion of the mother as an unsafe driver: and, that coupled with their desire to protect the public from highway menaces caused Bozo Police Commissioner Vaughen Killem to have a series of test conducted to examine the validity of Johnson's theory, The results were startling. The average mother when driving alone or with other adults operated at near 100% efficiency. However when children were added to the vehicle. their driving scores plunged drastically. The introduction of one child to the auto caused the mother's driving efficiency to drop to 85%. Two children caused the score to drop even lower-- In some cases as low as 60%. Introduction of three or more children caused even the best maternal drivers to operate at only 40% of their normal capacity. |
Clearly, these tests proved that driving mothers were indeed a threat to
the motoring public. Commissioner Killem and other member's of Bozo's progressive
community were so impressed by these findings that they began to actively
lobby the state legislature to enact a tough new Anti Maternal Driving law.
During the following legislative session several bills were introduced in
the Idaho House of Representatives which would make maternal driving a felony.
Of these bills, the toughest, HR1 B1 72R, was ratified unanimously by
both the House and the Senate. As of Jan. 1, 1986, any mother found operating
a vehicle with one or more children aboard would be guilty of a felony punishable
by 5 years Imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Having the toughest anti-mother
driving law in the nation is one thing... enforcing it is another. 
Police
Commissioner Killem elaborates: 'The scope of the maternal driving menace
was so great that It threatened to overwhelm our available resources. Most
of our officers were assigned to high priority duties such as parking control
and enforcing curfew among the minors and could not be reassigned without
seriously Jeopardizing the welfare of the community. What we needed was
a citizen's police auxiliary which would help the department mount the large
number of roadblocks and checkpoints necessary. The logical place to start
was to ask Mr. Johnson if he and other members of Bozo's Chemically Dependent
Community would be Interested in forming such a group. The response was
overwhelming. Within 10 days of our proposal, Mr. Johnson had recruited
over 200 volunteers. That coupled with the 50 officers we were able to reassign
from the homicide department 
gave us enough manpower to staff the 25
roadblocks we had planned to set up in South Western Idaho. The first two
weeks of maternal driver roadblocks was highly successful. Over 400 mothers
were arrested and almost 1,200 children were impounded as evidence.
By the end of the fourth week; however, the numbers of driving mothers apprehended
began to drop alarmingly. It became apparent that many mothers were avoiding
the roadblocks or in some cases upon learning that there was a roadblock
ahead, the mother would drop the children off, have them sneak past the
roadblock. and then stop and pick them up once they were past thecheckpoint.
In order to combat this subterfuge officers and members of the citizen auxiliaries
received advanced training in the detection of maternal drivers.
"We're trained to look for the little things that'll give away a
maternal driver" says state Police Detective Stan Back. "Little
things like sticky finger prints on the chrome or Oreo crumbs on the back
seat are a pretty good indication that you've got a mother. We can also
make a person walk a straight line that's surrounded by a clutter of discarded
kid's toys. If they stop and start to pick up the toys, then they're a mother."
This change in tactics along with the fierce dedication of the officers
and private citizens involved in this effort has helped to make the Idaho
AntiMaternal Driving Unit the most effective law enforcement unit of its
sort in the nation. In a little over 18 months it has been responsible
for over 5,000 arrests and for generating upwards of 20 million dollars
in revenue from fines.
| 'Prestone' Johnson had no idea when he first consented to form a citizens' auxiliary to help law enforcement personnel fight this threat how wildly successful DAM would become. There are now over 600 chapters of Drunks Against Mothers across the U.S. DAM has instituted a massive publicity campaign to educate the public of the perils of maternal drivers with such innovations as Barney the Safety Stool Pigeon-- an animated television character who encourages youngsters to call a special 1-800 number and inform on their mother's driving habits; and, the Maternal Driver Information Clearinghouse-a collection center for information concerning suspected driving mother which is periodically released to law enforcement groups around the nation. The activities of DAM have not escaped the public eye. On Jan. 26, 1988, President Reagan awarded the Presidential Medal of Virtuous Conduct to 'Prestone' Johnson at a special White House luncheon honoring Drunks Against Mothers. During his address at the luncheon President Reagan praised the fundamental philosophy behind Drunks Against Mothers: "Drunks Against Mothers is a lot like the movie 'Old Yeller' because in the movie Old Yeller gets rabies and turns mean and dangerous just like these driving mothers and the kid has to get rid of Old Yeller even though the boy cries because Old Yeller was a good old dog and didn't want to get rabies and turn mean and that's the way these driving mothers are, so we'll have to shoot them in the head even though we don't want to just like Old Yeller and that's the American way." |  Another Sad Reminder That Motherhood and Driving Don't Mix |
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