DN: Michigan officials fight drunk driving with talking urinal cakes

[JMS]

Michigan officials fight drunk driving with talking urinal cakes

Talk about your captive audiences!

In an effort to cut down on drunken driving, the state is distributing the totally awesome named Interactive Urinal Communicators to some bars, restaurants and other drinkaterias in Wayne, Bay, Ottawa and Delta counties.

Yup, talking urinal cakes.

Four hundred of the cakes will be distributed to 200 eateries prior to July Fourth, said Anne Readette, spokeswoman for the Office of Highway Safety Planning, a division of the Michigan State Police.

"We're doing this to draw attention to Fourth of July drunk driving enforcement," Readette said.

"We want people to be safe and make responsible decisions."

No joke: The company behind the product is Wizmark, a Crownsville, Md., outfit that bills itself as the only company in the world to produce interactive urinal cakes. Some sing and flash lights.

(Please resist the urge to envision a cake screaming: "I'm melting, I'm melting.")

Actually the cakes offer a message that is short, sweet and entirely nonjudgmental: "Listen up. That's right, I'm talking to you. Had a few drinks? Maybe a few too many?

"Then do yourself and everyone else a favor: Call a sober friend or a cab. Oh, and don't forget to wash your hands."

In a way the cakes, which are activate by motion and not moisture, are a brilliant move due to "Guy Rules," the unwritten but unalterable codes that guide men's social behavior for every event in life.

Really, really high on the list is that dudes never, ever look or talk to the guy on either side of the urinal.

Guys are limited to looking down or staring straight ahead (never up, if you're really hammered you might fall over backward, which would break another important GR.)

The state also took into account that the last stop most guys make before leaving a bar is to the men's room.

The cakes run about $21 each, last for about three months (man, that is a lot of rain) with the tab picked up by federal traffic safety funds.

First prediction: Somebody, somewhere will inevitably reach in and (ewwww) steal one of the cakes.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120629/OPINION03/206290341#ixzz1zD2zxzBJ

[zoony]

I've always wondered why there isn't advertising on the back of toilet stall doors

[Koolblue13]

Dude, I gotta go, the urinal just yelled at me.

Seriously though, this is a huge waste of money. First off, if you won't listen to your friends and family, who's going to listen to the toilet?

[Teller]

The jokes are obvious, but I think the idea is actually a good one.

[zoony]

The jokes are obvious, but I think the idea is actually a good one.

a better idea would be to have local cab companies pay for the advertising- and include their phone number.

---------- Post added June-29th-2012 at 03:08 PM ----------

they could even have fun with it.

something like "if you can't keep your stream on the bullseye for 5 seconds, call us for a ride home"

[d0ublestr0ker0ll]

Urinal cakes.

[Teller]

a better idea would be to have local cab companies pay for the advertising- and include their phone number.

Oh yeah. It could go a million different ways....

Cake: "Hey, have you had too much to drink?"

Customer: "Piss on you."

Cake: "I might be getting pissed ON, but you're gonna be pissed OFF if you get arrested for DUI."

*

I'd like to see the girl on Leno do an interactive thing with a mic in the urinal cake instead of a pre-recorded message, like she does with the photo booth. That'd be funny as hell.

Course, on second thought, she's gotta nice voice, so it might make "flow" difficult.

[SKINS@THEGOALLINE]

I take it Michigan women don't drink . :pfft:

[Teller]

I take it Michigan women don't drink . :pfft:

I didn't even consider that.

---------- Post added June-29th-2012 at 03:47 PM ----------

I'd have to steal one (preferably as soon as it was put in, and before it was used) and re-record the message:

*bum bum bum*

"Welllll here's a little ditty,

Your life is kinda ****ty,

Your wife ain't all the pretty,

Or you would be at home!

But stay a little longer,

Her heart is growing stronger,

Even though it's wronger,

For your boss to throw the bone!

Ohhhhhhh....

So have another beer, Jeeves,

And wait until your boss leaves!

Just don't go hoooooome, right nooooowwwww!"

dum-dum diddle-diddle dum-dum diddle-diddle BAH BAH, WAHH WAHH!

"Hey!"

[Corcaigh]

My kid was very amused with an episode of CatDog where Dog is in the bathroom and says "Hey cat I found a mint!".

I was amused too.

[CrypticVillain]

[China]

Are 'super drunks' on the increase on Michigan roads? Highest levels are five times the limit

Michigan’s drunken drivers appear to be getting drunker.

While drunken-driving arrests have fallen sharply, a new MLive Media Group analysis indicates motorists with a blood-alcohol level of .17 percent or higher – more than twice Michigan’s legal limit – are increasing.

These so-called "super drunks" accounted for 44 percent of all Michigan drivers arrested in 2011 after tests showed they were driving with a .08 blood-alcohol level or higher, up from 40.5 percent in 2006.

One reason: Reduced manpower means police are missing less obvious drunks as they focus efforts elsewhere.

"A lot of that can be tied back into less enforcement," said Grand Blanc Township Police Chief David Stamm, whose department nevertheless has doubled its arrests even as it lost seven or eight officers in the past five years.

This past May alone, his officers arrested a 45-year-old woman with a .34 blood-alcohol level, and a 26-year-old man with a level of .49 – highest this year in Michigan, state police records show.

Click on the link for the full article