IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY

Beyond the crisis, life in America goes on - though it never makes
the news bulletins any more. After five columns on the war, this is a
story about the great state of Maryland. However, even this one turns
out to have a terrorist connection, of which more later.

First, I have to tell you that anyone resident in Maryland for 30
days requires a state driving licence. I discovered this by working
backwards.

I am currently resident in Maryland. I hoped to buy a car. To do this
I needed insurance.

To get insurance I had to get a Maryland licence; possession of a UK
licence for the past three decades cutting no ice here at all.
(Britain is more remote than the moon in this context, since at least
the relevant officials might have some idea where the moon is.)

To get a Maryland licence, it is necessary to stand in nine separate
queues in an office in a place called Gaithersburg (Romford, without
the charm), and to take both a theoretical and a practical test,
during which I understood not a single sentence the instructor said
to me. But even to do all of that, it is first necessary to attend a
three-hour drugs and alcohol awareness seminar.

I am not making this up.

It is possible that, in the present crisis, the Guardian could have
found me a more productive use of a Wednesday afternoon.

It is possible I could have found a more productive use of a
Wednesday afternoon, bashing my head repeatedly against a brick wall,
for instance. However, Maryland insisted that I present myself in a
small meeting room with seven other prospective drivers, listening to
a shambling southern gentleman called Ray, who had a nice little
number running these exercises on a contracted-out basis, and said
that if we wanted to pay-arse the draaaving test, we were going to
have to pay-arse the drugs and alcohol awareness test at the end of
the seminar.

Actually, Ray seemed a decent bloke, and his body language suggested
that he thought this exercise was farcical too, but that business was
business.

The logic appears to be that Maryland, having failed by every other
approach to discourage its teenagers from excess, has chosen to hit
them as a captive audience when they want something from the state
ie, a driving licence. However, no one in our group was a teenager.

The youngest was, maybe, 25. We were all foreign.

Indeed, most of us appeared to speak no English at all, and thus had
no idea what on earth Ray might be talking about. The fact that we
all passed his test, which was not especially easy, confirms my view
about Ray's decency.

It need not be a wholly useless experience. In fact, this seminar
could be very useful to any 16-year-old interested in a career in the
thriving business of retailing recreational drugs and in need of
intermediate-level tuition.

Even the Maryland Drivers' Handbook is quite helpful in this regard.

Page 24 includes the sentence: "Mescaline is derived from dried heads
of peyote cactus." A mescaline high, the handbook goes on, may
involve "euphoria, a dream-like state, or heightened perceptions".
Why is Britain's Highway Code shamefully silent on this subject?

Ray fleshed this out for us, combined with some quite advanced stuff
about roach-clips, the niceties of cocaine use and the technical
distinction between freebase and crack, which had previously eluded
me. The connection with motoring was obscure.

The rationale of explaining this to teenagers simply beggars belief.
We then came to drinking and driving.

Sensible advice on this subject should comprise one word. But Ray has
to fill up his allotted three hours, so he explained for us the
detailed table in the handbook, which says that you can drink a great
deal more than I ever imagined. Since it takes 45 minutes to burn up
the alcohol in one drink, it turns out that the average 12-stone
person is able to have three shots of whisky in one gulp (and US
measures are generous), or six or seven over four hours and then
drive home legally.

On the other hand, if they find an empty beer can in your car, it's a
fine of $105.

In the 50 states and the District of Colombia, there are 51 different
approaches to law on drugs, drinking and driving.

It is possible that some are even madder than this. And I speak
without rancour - since I pay-arsed all the tests, thank you.

Oh, yes, the terrorist connection. Apparently, Mohamed Atta, the
presumed ringleader of the hijackers, took the very same test, maybe
in the very same room. Now why didn't he take up drug-dealing and
drinking like a sensible boy?