Are You the Worst Driver in America?

Photo courtesy of flickr user Open Sky Media via a Creative Commons license

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That’s the question the Travel Channel is taking on the road for its new reality show (and a new low for TV): “America’s Worst Driver.” You know that saying about not being able to look away from a car crash? Well, now you’ll get to watch lots of car crashes. And rewind them, pause, get up and use the bathroom, saunter over to the refrigerator and, yes, flip on the slo-mo—all from the comfort of your home.

A casting call on the Travel Channel’s website says that the predictably ill-fated show will “determine which city boasts America’s worst driver. Each week a number of bad drivers from a particular city will compete in a series of driving challenges designed to ferret out that city’s worst driver.” (Whereas, here at Mother Jones, we’re all about safe driving—and even hypermiling.) At the end of it all, the winners (or is it the losers?) from New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, and San Francisco will battle it out for the title in what I can only hope is a Demolition Derby-meets-bad-cable-TV showdown.

So, MoJo reader, which city do you think has the worst drivers in America? After a summer spent dodging cabbies, errant tourists, and indifferent New Yorkers in Manhattan, my vote goes to New York.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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