As you probably know by now, U.S. National Team player Charlie Davies was recently arrested for allegedly driving 125 MPH in France. He has since said he was not actually driving, and that he was just covering for Sochaux teammate Jacques Faty, who thought his driver's license had been suspended.
The Truth About Charlie (Davies)
If the story had simply been that Davies was the passenger in a speeding car, I think we could chalk up to just a case of poor decision making by a 24-year-old. Unfortunately, that was never the story.
Even if you believe that Davies was not driving (and there are enough holes in the story to leave that from being settled), you still have a series of other questionable decisions that have to be accounted for.
- Why is he lying down in the front seat of a car (the reason he gives for not knowing how fast Faty was driving)? As a survivor of a horrific traffic accident, you'd like to think he understands the importance of properly wearing a seatbelt.
- Why did he think lying to the police was an acceptable solution (even if he thought it would keep anyone from being arrested that night)? He must have known, at the very least, that it would cast him in a bad light to have been caught speeding, to speak nothing of the legality of such a thing.
- Since it was apparently revealed that Faty's license wasn't even suspended, why didn't someone step up at the time and clear up the story? Davies hardly gets points for covering for a friend if a week later he set the record straight anyway.
As much as I’d like to see Davies make a full and complete recovery, there’s really no way to spin this story in a way he doesn’t look awful. I know I did a lot of dumb things when I was kid, but I’m not even sure 24 qualifies as being that young. In any case, as the survivor of a traffic accident that killed a friend and nearly killed you, he’s just not the average 24-year-old anyway. One way or another, Davies is guilty of very bad decision-making.
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