| Some (maybe only slightly related or relevant) background: In Germany, there is a pretty serious problem with dangerous driving and street racing: In the last ten or so years, there has been long string of downtown races that have killed numerous innocent bystanders in all major German cities. This went so far that recently the German law has been changed and killing somebody while participating in a street race is now treated as "first degree murder". This year, the first conviction under this law was upheld by the German "supreme court". Still, street racing is on the rise. Now, the uncomfortable truth is that the demographics of the offenders skew towards young German men that do not consider themselves to be culturally German or even European. I am not trying to enter a debate on the how much value different cultures place on life. What I am trying to do is to point out that when you consider how the human mind works, it is almost inevitable that these issues are starting to appear to be interlinked. What you have here is a very hot debate on road safety, which is already a topic that is very emotionally charged for a lot of people. Considering that there does actually seem to be a cultural correlation, it is somewhat predictable, if sad, that the public debate around here is now slowly starting to turn into an cultural/ethnic argument. My personal opinion is that we need a massive crackdown on street racing and dangerous driving to prevent this topic from turning into yet another ethnic fault line in Germany. |