It happened. As everybody knew it would, and now we get to have that collective “gotcha” laugh and the satisfaction of knowing that we are, once again, right about something, and will somebody only please listen to us because we know everything.

Someone was busted for DWI in Albuquerque operating one of the new e-scooters.

And as the e-scooters are new here, this is the first known instance of someone being caught drunk (on a e-scooter), and we never tire of reading/commenting on things that confirm our thinking, stories and reader comments on the incident abound. For example, as I write this, there have been seven comments to the ABQ Journal story on the incident. The Journal almost never gets seven comments on any story these days, even its immigration pieces.

Lost in all the feel-good about people doing bad in a universally predictable manner is this:

What if this young woman was driving a 3,000-4,000 pound vehicle drunk downtown at a speed higher than the 15 mph the e-scooters are capped “governed” at?

Well, now that you think about it, that would be far worse, but Scot, that happens all the time and isn’t new like this e-scooter thing. Therefore we should all bruise our collective backs from slapping ourselves in celebration over this arrest, and start/continue serious discussions of eliminating the e-scooter menace.

Okay, so maybe we should remove the e-scooter share program because the scooters attract drunks. But what if the scooters attract drunks away from driving 3,000-4,000 pound vehicles at speeds well over 15 mph? What if the overall societal danger of drunk driving is actually reduced by having the scooters?

As hypothetical policy, what if we lower the maximum scooter mph to say 7, or maybe 10 mph, as Washington D.C. has done after far more experience with them, and strategize best practices to integrate scooters with public transit into a way that successfully lowers the numbers of drunks operating 3,000-4,000 vehicles while not hurting, and perhaps helping, businesses that serve alcohol?

What if we did that? Well, after we slap each other on the backs for a few more days. Don’t want to miss a chance for communal righteousness. Just something to think about after this wave of “told you so” and schadenfreude giddiness subsides.

Have a great weekend, everybody! Stay vertical, regardless of how you get somewhere.