Saying the data is incomplete and then turning around and pitching a number like 500 to 2,000 deaths that we should care about is quite two-faced. there are still between 13,000 and 16,000 deaths (not to mention injuries, like those stories you hear about people becoming permanently paralyzed.) Saying the balance of that isn't innocent and is somehow 'guilty' seems to imply that we shouldn't be concerned if they die. We should care about all of those deaths. I would also hope that you back up off that statement, since I wouldn't like it even if drunk drivers were the only ones killed by their own stupidity. I don't think you want to say that those who died with alcohol in their system were deserved fatalities. I'm quite certain you didn't mean that. All the same, please confirm that.
You're right, I'm certainly not saying that it's a good thing that drunk drivers kill themselves. But then I'm coming from the perspective that they're probably good people who made a mistake, rather than MADD's perspective that they're violent criminals and monsters. From MADD's point of view they could hardly be called innocent. I just want to reveal all the internal flaws in their logic. One of the critical flaws in their reasoning is that they not only assume alcohol to be present in every one of these 16,000 deaths, but also to be the sole cause even though the driver might not have even used alcohol or there could have been other causes for the crash. Their methods of calculation don't make sense. Undoubtedly, people die from drunk driving every day, and this is a terrible thing. But when MADD makes claims like the one above they are flat-out lying.
The reason you should stop your friend ought to be concern for his total welfare, not just trying to keep him from the cops.
Again, I feel that most drunk drivers have an over-inflated sense of ego. They think they are special and that they will not be the one to cause a wreck. I don't want them to be proven wrong.
Posters in this thread seem to have the sense that people are incapable of normal action as soon as they consume any kind of alcohol. It's a sentiment that's echoed across the country. We used to say "Don't let friends drive drunk," but now we say "You drink, you drive, you lose." I feel like I'm in some Bizarro world where everyone's a teetolling Mormon who loses control after their first sip of booze. People do not turn into slobbering idiots as soon as they down 2 martinis, and even MADD knows this. Is it really a question of being against drunk driving or are some people just against alcohol? (that's not an accusation towards you Crusade, it's an honest question)
I ask this because I honestly do not consider a moderate drinker to pose any significant risk to others. I'm basing this not only on personal experience, but also on the available data. Whether 16,000 or 500 people die per year from drunk driving is less relevant than the fact that most of them are killed by drivers with at least double the legal BAC limit in their system. If I thought that lower BAC standards would actually reduce the number of people killed or injured, then I would be much more willing to concede that personal liberty. However, there is little evidence to suggest that this is the case. If .10 were the limit and I tried to stop my friend from driving when he was at .08, I think he would be right to call me a meddling jerk. I'm not interested in allowing the government to criminalize an offense that mightcause an accident in a minority of cases for some people, particularly when the penalties are so high.
Edit: To bigred; I forgot to mention that it's very easy to be arrested for a DUI even without BAC evidence, or with a BAC under the limit. You're still subject to the officer's opinion - if you're "impaired" in his or her opinion, then you can be sent to jail. Field sobriety tests are notoriously subjective, and being nervous or edgy (as any person would be, guilty or not) only compounds the problem.
Edit again: To Zith; I absolutely agree that you can't measure the impact of drunk driving solely by fatalities. However, you should also try to keep in mind the total number of "drunk" drivers on the road. For every arrest (about 1.5 million per year), how many do you think go unnoticed? How often should we expect an accident occur given the danger that these people are assumed to pose? And last, is this really that from a normal accident rate (particularly for moderate drinkers)?
@ Zith, the .08 is what medical research has gauged to be the point where most people begin to become physically impared, such as slower reflexes, dulled senses, and clumsier motor skills. Which contributes to making a person more dangerous on the road.
More accidents are caused by the most drunk. Time for a dumb analogy that only vaguely catches the point: it is the difference between someone waving around a knife vs. a gun. The person waving the gun is more likely to seriously injure someone, but that doesn't mean the guy with the knife isn't dangerous.
I can't speak for others, but I am fine with people driving after they have had some drinks, but not too many. If they have had a few over enough time, they should be fine to drive. Those who become immediately impared should know that they cannot decide to drive by BAC and should just not drive at all. Still, I don't want the standard to be 'drive if you think you are fine, regardless of how much you have had.' After drinking a certain amount, you lose some of the ability to tell how far gone you are, and your judgment is impared. Even if you feel up to driving then, you probably shouldn't until you have sobered up some so you know for sure your have control of your faculties.
I put my standard at what it equates to for the legal limit: If you have had four drinks in an hour, plus one for each additional hour, you are most likely not fit to drive. It takes most people an hour for their liver to process one drink's worth of alcohol. For most people, four drinks floating around inside you waiting to be processed puts you at a .08.
The point is, the more acceptable it is to drive with drink in your system, the more likely it is that people are going to play around on the border of it.
@ Zith, the .08 is what medical research has gauged to be the point where most people begin to become physically impared, such as slower reflexes, dulled senses, and clumsier motor skills. Which contributes to making a person more dangerous on the road.
Interesting, I just searched around and couldn't find that research. Any ideas on where I could get it?
I'll go ahead and accept it. The trouble is that there are any number of ways to get slower reflexes - age, music, food, conversation, etc. - and those are allowed for obvious reasons. A small amount of alcohol isn't appreciably different from those others. Comparing accident rates instead allows us to see when alcohol becomes a factor significant enough to call for legal intervention in the matter.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
Interesting, I just searched around and couldn't find that research. Any ideas on where I could get it?
I'll go ahead and accept it. The trouble is that there are any number of ways to get slower reflexes - age, music, food, conversation, etc. - and those are allowed for obvious reasons. A small amount of alcohol isn't appreciably different from those others. Comparing accident rates instead allows us to see when alcohol becomes a factor significant enough to call for legal intervention in the matter.
Well the way I see it, after you listing other acceptable means of distractions/disablers of safest driving practices, is that the reason there are laws binding drunk driving is because BAC is rather simple to measure. Hell, you can buy breathalizers. They're great for parties--seriously.
In contrast, measuring how much listening to music whilst driving can only truly be measured in a proper wires-on-your-head testing room. When you get pulled over for unsafe driving, the officer whoops out his little tester and has you breathe and gets a reading. it's not practical to have him pull out a large machine from the police car, strap wires to your head, and have you play whatever song you were listening too at the same volume with you bobbin your head the same way.
Essentially what I'm saying is that you're correct: Practically anything and everything outside of simple safe driving techniques can affect your ability to drive. Whether it be taking a sip of water, munching on a sandwich, bobbing to your favorite tune, reading that last billboard, or furious about your fight with your girlfriend [lol, i know, just an example.....I know magic players don't have girlfriends.].
However, the reason why laws on drinking and what level is safe to drive are getting stricter is that it's easily measurable. And of course the fact that alcohol is behind so many other illegal acts [theft, vandalism, murder] makes it a top priority among driving distractions.
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It's also easy to tell if someone's been eating food or drinking coffee, but we don't outlaw them. Just having a radio or cell phone on is a distraction. All it takes is some research on decibel levels and a device to read them and you've got that, and pulling along side someone who's head-banging and playing their music loud enough for a microphone inside your car to pick it up could be grounds for "reckless music enjoyment." Billboards are easy enough to get rid of, but we'd never do that.
No, these aren't offenses, because as someone said, it doesn't take 100% of your attention to drive safely. At some point, they could become them, just as we Californians decided that when a cell phone takes one of your hands away it's too much a distraction, but the tiniest bit of distraction doesn't make it a major risk worthy of legal action.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
The major argument I'm seeing here is that a maximum BAC of 0.8 results in 'unjust' punishments. Let me ask you this then - when IS the punishment just?
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that I have to remind myself that some people still cling gladly to a nanny socialist state that makes cursing and not wearing a seatbelt criminal acts. That being the case, I'll answer. Pay attention to this answer, because it determines when a punishment is just in any situation for any crime at all.
When someone, other than the "criminal", has suffered, or was threatened with, tangible, demonstrable damages to their life, health, or property.
Someone getting on the road after several beers does not do this. This happens when they cause an accident through negligence, to which alcohol may be a contributing factor, or when they're swerving over the road or driving crazily. If there's any doubt about the latter, well, officers have plenty of loophole charges that cover just generally being a dick or danger to the public.
However, what we don't need is a law against driving tired. Why? Well, because people generally don't want to drive tired. They know that their reaction times and senses are impaired by sleep deprivation. They'll try to avoid it if they can, and if they have to, they'll take absolute care, because they realize that they could be responsible for an accident which could cost them their car, their freedom, their health or their life. Thus, the problem regulates itself. Ditto to people talking on the cellphone, or eating, or dialing the radio, or having a conversation, or whatever. We do things when we're driving that distract us all the time, but we try to compensate for them. It's not a perfect system, but it's preferrable, to most Americans, to being jailed everytime a cop sees you chowing on a burger while you're behind the wheel.
This sort of indicates to me that you're not listening. I clearly stated that it was his first offense.
Sorry. Apparently I got your anecdote mixed up with one of the others from this thread. I retract my statement, with the caveat that multiple offenders do in fact deserve it.
I attempted to demonstrate this by showing how MADD and the NHTSA inflate their figures to show more alcohol-related deaths than actually occur.
I dispute this on the grounds that alcohol-related traffic deaths can occur without the driver getting caught. That's why it's an estimate; they're attempting to compensate for incomplete statistics.
2. The real threat from drunk driving comes from habitual offenders and those with high BAC (>.14).
While I won't disagree that a greater threat comes from habitual offenders and those with higher BAC, it's disingenuous to use this to support a case that any other threat posed by drunk driving isn't "real."
In 2001 you were about 16 times more likely to be killed by a sober driver than one with a BAC < .14.
Here's why those statistics are misleading: Although 83.66% of accidents were caused by sober drivers, far more than 83.66% of all drivers on the road are sober. Likewise, the 2.33% of accidents cause by those with low BAC reflect a disproportionate number of accidents, since certainly they are less than 2.33% of all drivers on the road.
In the same database, we can find total numbers of alcohol-related deaths every year since 1994. We'll take this number at face value even though I've demonstrated how it can be inflated. You can find these numbers at www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov (click on the "Crashes" tab and go to "Alcohol").
So over the last 12 years as states have universally adopted the .08 standard and used tactics such as roadblocks, deaths from alcohol-related crashes have remained almost exactly the same.
I'd agree that this is an adequate demonstration that the new BAC standards are not currently much more effective than the old ones in preventing alcohol-related traffic deaths if the 2005 statistics quoted earlier in this thread didn't seem to indicate that the new laws are helping. Maybe these laws will have long-term effects on public behavior that have yet to be seen, and maybe they won't. In any case, there's room for improvement.
The reason for this is that these new laws, which are aimed at catching moderate drinkers, are not targeting the right people. Those people who can be educated have been, and have adjusted their behavior accordingly.
I'd argue that "the right people" includes just about everyone, and that your admitted bias precludes you from wanting to believe that your friend is one of them.
3. Enforcement of DUI law presumes guilt.
I'm glad that this was brought up earlier. DUI laws are unique in that they are the only serious criminal offense in which the burden of proof rests with the defendant. There are thousands of documented cases in which drivers received DUIs based purely upon the opinion of the arresting officer, without actual BAC evidence. This is unthinkable in other areas of criminal law.
Unfortunately, our legal system doesn't always live up to its principle of presumption of innocence, and this is not unique to DUI law. In any case, an officer's testimony is evidence, although it's for the court system to decide whether it's conclusive. I'm sure you're aware that wild accusations with no substantiation are unlikely to result in conviction, and also that other evidence is often available.
If there is not actually a great risk posed by moderate drinkers, police officers can make DUI arrests without probable cause and courts can make DUI convictions without evidence, then why does DUI legislation need to be so stringent?
This argument is undermined in a few ways:
1) You're begging the question by assuming that your premises are true. I, for one, do not agree that moderate drinking is a reasonable risk for a driver to take.
2) DUI law does not bypass or ignore probable cause. I can see how you'd get the opposite impression though, because the standards required for probable cause in general just aren't that high.
3) Courts do not convict without evidence. Testimony is evidence. Furthermore, we have breathalyzers and field tests for the explicit purpose of producing the necessary evidence for the courts to consider.
So, the answer is that DUI laws need to be stringent because your list of "ifs" is fiction.
I would much rather err on the side of liberty. As IBA said, it's very easy to demonize all drinkers and cry out for tougher laws. It's much harder to look critically at the evidence available and tell a grieving mother that you're very sorry for her loss, but a lower BAC limit would not have saved your son.
It's much easier to make emotional appeals to the virtue of the reader than to admit that maybe the law that hurts you or your friend does save lives. All laws that give us safety reduce our liberty, but it's a mistake to always err to one side or the other. Our quality of life rests on a reasonable balance of both.
In any state where refusal to take a BAC test constitutes a crime, then you are essentially being presumed guilty. Even if the arrest does not lead to a conviction, you're facing a suspended license, fines and legal fees. Simply being arrested for a DUI, even without conviction, is a major problem for most people.
You're not being presumed guilty, you're actually proving that you are guilty, of a different crime. Taking a BAC test does not, in itself, constitute an arrest, indictment, or charge. I agree it's unfortunate when people are arrested who are not guilty, but this is true of any crime, and most crimes are far more difficult to prove than DUI.
Frankly, I'm not willing to trust just a single police officer when a person's freedom and livelihood are on the line
Police officers are human and do err, but we need to entrust someone with the safety of the public, and it's their job, for which they are extensively trained, to bear that burden. Officers who abuse that trust need to be held accountable for it; enforcing the law does not place them above the law. Any system run by humans is imperfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to institute the best one we can.
I'm very confused by all the arguments citing reduced reaction times as a strike against drinkers. If you can't avoid someone who drove into you, then how can that be your fault? It might be possible to avoid them without those 2 beers in your system, but how can you be faulted for something that you may or may not have been able to do while completely sober? The fault is with the jerk who ran into you.
Reduced reaction times affect your ability to drive regardless of anyone else's shortcomings; no one else need be at fault. If a deer runs out in front of your car, you need to react quickly. Likewise, you need to be able to react quickly when a light turns red or when a slower driver makes a lane change in front of you, whether that driver was exercising good judgment or not.
But then I'm coming from the perspective that they're probably good people who made a mistake, rather than MADD's perspective that they're violent criminals and monsters. From MADD's point of view they could hardly be called innocent.
If MADD actually believed that about those people, they wouldn't be trying to reach them at all. Certainly the fact that they run an ostensibly preventative campaign indicates that they don't consider drunk drivers to be unreachable and monstrous people beyond any hope of reform.
Is it really a question of being against drunk driving or are some people just against alcohol? (that's not an accusation towards you Crusade, it's an honest question)
In the interest of full disclosure, I think it's pertinent to reveal that I am against alcohol across the board. That's not to say I think it should be outlawed, but that the world would be a far better place with no alcohol in it.
I'm not interested in allowing the government to criminalize an offense that mightcause an accident in a minority of cases for some people, particularly when the penalties are so high.
Consider the "penalty" paid by society in those minority of cases where something does go wrong. Severe injuries, massive property damage, and death are no laughing matter, even when compared to jail time and fines.
Quote from TheInfamousBearAssasin »
this distinction is completely arbitrary
It's anything but arbitrary, regardless of your disagreement with it.
When driver B slightly inebriates himself to the point where he's almost as bad as driver A when driver A is unimpaired, pretentious and self-righteous pharisees will pop out of the woodwork to condemn him for "endangering my loved ones and family" on the road, for being a selfish, horrible monster, etc., etc., etc...
These concerns are based on irrationality and emotion, not on logic.
It's ironic that you so frequently deride opposing arguments as emotional and illogical, since, whether it's true or not, this is itself an emotional appeal. Name calling ("pretentious, self-righteous pharisees") certainly isn't going to get you anywhere with any listener who values logic over rhetoric.
You're also turning a blind eye to the fact that driver B is deliberately engaging in an activity that increases the danger to others and could avoid it with only minor inconveniences. Furthermore, if driver A, even while sober, routinely drives as poorly as would be expected from an inebriated person, then driver A should not be on the road.
Although many, many people are able to drive competently while eating a peanut butter sandwich, there are those amongst us who cannot. Because a few indivdiuals pose a danger of eating peanut butter on the road, then having a violent allergic reaction and a causing an accident, we need a rule to apply equally to everyone where everyone who eats peanutbutter on the road gets sent to jail and their lives ruined, just to make sure they don't do it.
If you are allergic to peanut butter and know this before eating it while driving, then you are indeed recklessly endangering others. The law does need to prevent those with this condition from doing this, and it's easily demonstrable with blood tests who is and who isn't susceptible to peanut allergies. The difference is that with alcohol, although it's a matter of degree, everyone is susceptible to its effects, and everyone knows it. Thus, any person who drinks and then drives is knowingly causing greatly increased danger to others, unlike people who stoke allergies of which they were unaware.
Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, but widespread acknowledgement is no excuse for a law being unjust.
On this, I agree with you. However, widespread acknowledgement is sufficient reason to be wary of engaging in that activity. A person who knowingly breaks the law isn't necessarily in the wrong, but is necessarily behaving in a way inconsistent with an expectation of avoiding the consequences.
Well, if I saw rational arguments, I might believe that someone came to this stance logically, but I'm not willing to simply take it on faith, no.
I applaud this sentiment, with the caveat that your criteria for what constitutes a logical argument seems suspiciously similar to agreement with your own side of it, in this case.
What a monstrous argument. You concede that eating is at least as distracting, but you're okay with ignoring one and ruining peoples' lives over the latter because you can attack it easily?
I concede that in some cases, eating can be as distracting as drinking, but not that it typically is.
The law needs to deal with what it can handle rather than worry endlessly about what it cannot. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and lightning are also damaging, but the fact that they can't be legislated away prevents us from doing so. Is it monstrous not to outlaw hurricanes and earthquakes? No, it's a concession that we can't achieve what we could in a perfect world.
If someone shoots a gun in the air and someone else is injured, there's usually not a way of prosecuting them.
If they get caught doing it, there most certainly is. You're right that people can frequently do this and get away with it.
This applies to about five million things, some of which I've gone over. You could, for instance, while on a hunting trip, mistake someone for a deer or not see them or have a bullet go through an object and strike a person and cause them serious harm or death, and there's no real benefit to hunting- you could go to the damned grocery store. Do we throw people in jail for years for hunting? Or do we wait until they actually shoot someone to punish them and hope that the threat of punishment forces them to take suitable precautions?
What we do is require them to take those precautions in the first place, and punish them for refusal to comply. That's why we have licenses for hunting and for gun ownership.
But someone with alcohol in their system is held accountable even when their reduced reaction times aren't appreciable.
That's because it's impractical to give a DMV-style driving test to everyone who is pulled over on suspicion of intoxication, and furthermore it would be dangerous to do so. Requiring this kind of test at long intervals is sufficient to catch long-term disabling conditions like poor eyesight.
Oh, well argued. In that case, let's make driving illegal at all except for ambulances and fire trucks. Just to err on the side of caution.
I'm sure you're aware that, because of our infrastructural dependence on automotive transit, this would itself endanger the well-being of the public, and thus doesn't constitute erring on the side of caution at all.
Fundies would like to make Magic cards illegal- sure, there's no proof that Magic causes people to become baby-killing suicide-pact-swearing Satanists, but it's better to err on the side of caution, right?
There is, however, ample proof that drunk driving does cause accidents. If we didn't have this evidence (and also before we had it) I'd agree that it would be better to err on the side of personal liberty.
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that I have to remind myself that some people still cling gladly to a nanny socialist state that makes cursing and not wearing a seatbelt criminal acts. That being the case, I'll answer. Pay attention to this answer, because it determines when a punishment is just in any situation for any crime at all.
When someone, other than the "criminal", has suffered, or was threatened with, tangible, demonstrable damages to their life, health, or property.
Drunk driving does represent a threat to the life, health, and property of others.
However, what we don't need is a law against driving tired. Why? Well, because people generally don't want to drive tired. They know that their reaction times and senses are impaired by sleep deprivation. They'll try to avoid it if they can, and if they have to, they'll take absolute care, because they realize that they could be responsible for an accident which could cost them their car, their freedom, their health or their life. Thus, the problem regulates itself.
So I suppose what we don't need is laws against murder, because people don't generally want to murder each other? They know that murder is a gross violation of another person's rights and that it could engender resentment and provoke retribution, so they take care to avoid doing it, and for the most part, the problem regulates itself. However, this obviously isn't how laws work in a civilized society.
We need laws to protect us against those people whose misjudgment inclines them to do things that endanger us, regardless of whether those actions are widely considered unwise. In exchange, we give up our legal right to engage in those behaviors ourselves. This isn't a "socialist nanny state," it's thesocial contract and it's the backbone of civilization.
Quote from Hodoku »
The major argument I'm seeing here is that a maximum BAC of 0.8 results in 'unjust' punishments. Let me ask you this then - when IS the punishment just? As i've said before, the only way the years of jail time, lost lisence, ect. would ever seem fair is if said driver got convicted of manslaugter after an accident :/
When is boils down to it, drunk driving is illegal. This really means NO alcohol - however, the minimum BAC level is there to give drivers the benefit of the doubt, in case they drank hours ago and are fine now, or if they had some sort of alcohol-based medication.
QFT.
Quote from Bizkit Overlord »
Someone who drank a glass of wine an hour ago does not put everyone else at a "huge" risk
Nor will that person's BAC be as high as 0.08 in almost any case. Nonetheless, there are people who shouldn't drive in this condition. The BAC standards are there to give a minimum benefit of the doubt for sobriety, not to say that it's ok to be ~this~ drunk while driving.
Quote from Zith »
pulling along side someone who's head-banging and playing their music loud enough for a microphone inside your car to pick it up could be grounds for "reckless music enjoyment."
Do you seriously think it's safe for someone to do this while driving? We don't need to have a specific law against every single reason someone could drive unsafely; "reckless driving" pretty much covers it.
Quote from SpatulaoftheAges »
So as a Republican, you would say that the state should restrict my right to drive with a BAC of .02? That's a rather interesting take on your party's philosophies.
While I agree with Hodoku on this issue, I agree that this stance is not generally consistent with stereotypical Republican Party politics. But that's ok, because people don't have to agree with their own party on every issue. I'll even go so far as to say it's admirable when they speak out for what they individually believe is right, rather than what their party tells them.
As a side note, one thing that's important to understand about the Republican Party is that, while they sure talk a lot about limited government and individual liberty/responsibility, those ideas really aren't integrated very well into their stance on many issues (abortion, torture, military spending, gay marriage, the "War on Drugs" etc.) and are really just something they trot out when it's convenient to mobilize the Libertarian sympathizers and those who don't think about it deeply enough to avoid holding a wildly inconsistent double standard. That's not to say there aren't those who believe sincerely and intelligently in those principles; there are (Ron Paul comes to mind), but they aren't representative of mainstream Republican politics.
As for myself, I refuse to join any political party. I'm generally a liberal, but I'm happy to join with conservatives when I think they're right about an issue, and in this case I think they are.
Karma doesn't exist. You can't depend on it. If you count on it for justice or catharsis, you will find that you have placed your emotions on very unstable ground; and you will either repeat your disappointment in society over and over, or you will engage in a persistent delusion to protect yourself from that feeling.
When someone, other than the "criminal", has suffered, or was threatened with, tangible, demonstrable damages to their life, health, or property.
Someone getting on the road after several beers does not do this.
You are overlooking the fact that their action places the lives of others in jeopardy, and thus infringes upon the rights of others. You do not need de facto damage, in the same way that making death threats is still a crime even if you don't make good on the threat.
Our legal system is intended to be proactive rather than punitive. We have speeding laws to keep people from dying in car crashes. We have laws that prevent companies from poisoning our air and water to prevent future damage to people. And so on.
As to your claim that someone driving after consuming numerous beers does not put others in jeopardy, I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly think that. Do you believe that alcohol does not impair reaction time or judgement?
Nor will that person's BAC be as high as 0.08 in almost any case. Nonetheless, there are people who shouldn't drive in this condition. The BAC standards are there to give a minimum benefit of the doubt for sobriety, not to say that it's ok to be ~this~ drunk while driving.
Yes, I know, I wasn't arguing against the .08 BAC or whatever, but rather, the people who have said that they think any drop of alcohol in the system should result in a DUI charge.
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As I'm seeing it, TIBA is suggesting not that people are allowed to endanger others by drinking, but that people who pose a threat on the road for whatever reason should be interrupted by the police, be it for eating or talking on one's cell phone which makes the driver threatening to others. Because some people are able to talk on their cell phones or drink up to a 0.10 BAC without posing more harm than any other driver, it would be a needless infringement to draw a line at a BAC of 0.08, and would be inconsistent with the way other such threatening situations are handled.
As to your claim that someone driving after consuming numerous beers does not put others in jeopardy, I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly think that. Do you believe that alcohol does not impair reaction time or judgement?
This is in fact because TIBA, according to his post, believes that you should only punish people AFTER they needlessly kill someone. Funny, that - I wonder what people would say if the police arrested someone who was pointing a loaded gun to someones head, about to pull the trigger? After all, these situations are pretty much the same.
Yes, I know, I wasn't arguing against the .08 BAC or whatever, but rather, the people who have said that they think any drop of alcohol in the system should result in a DUI charge.
Sure, .08 is the 'baseline' for intoxication. What I am saying, is that many people DO in fact get impaired enough to be unable to drive after just a drink. While ultimately I would advocate total zero-tolerance, the lower we can make the maximum BAC limit, the better. After all, better be safe (and proactive) than sorry, especially when it involves someone's 'fun' resulting in deaths.
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As I'm seeing it, TIBA is suggesting not that people are allowed to endanger others by drinking, but that people who pose a threat on the road for whatever reason should be interrupted by the police, be it for eating or talking on one's cell phone which makes the driver threatening to others. Because some people are able to talk on their cell phones or drink up to a 0.10 BAC without posing more harm than any other driver, it would be a needless infringement to draw a line at a BAC of 0.08, and would be inconsistent with the way other such threatening situations are handled.
The main reason it is .08 is driven both by medical reasons and policy, that research has shown .08 is when most people begin to be impared, (and if you got pulled over, that imparement might be starting to show) and the policy reason is there have been studies that politicians have accepted that have shown that having the .08 limit makes the roads safer.
The people who are able to drive perfectly fine while eating, talking on a cell, or even being a bit drunk are not getting pulled over by the officers. There is some other violation, such as erratic driving, speeding, damage to the car, ect. that gets them to follow you, then discover offending behavior x.
Sometimes it is just bad luck, but you can reduce that bad luck by driving in such a way as you don't get picked up. Sometimes you get a real ass of a cop who will stop you for anything (no turn signal when changing lanes, going 4 miles over speed limit, ect.) Those are the exceptions rather than the rule, and generally if you are sober enough to drive carefully, you won't get pulled over. Otherwise, get your ass off the road.
Having talked on a cell at a stoplight in front of an officer without wearing my seat belt, I am fairly confident that they don't enforce those things unless they pull you over for another reason.
Now, we could discuss random checkpoints. I personally think those are counterproductive and cast too wide a net, but at the same time, I'm happy when they take someone off the road that has had too much. Not the .06 people, but the .15 people.
It's anything but arbitrary, regardless of your disagreement with it.
I really have to disagree. It's hard to even think of a way to generate hard numbers here, but we're talking about factors that throw a minor wrench in the works. All other factors are being ignored, all other levels of competence at driving, and people are pointing at anyone whose competence is slightly lowered by a couple too many beers and condemning that person as some kind of inhuman monster, equivalent to a child rapist. Why? Because they've been trained to, I guess. Either way, we're not talking about a hugely relevant threat to others on the road unless the person is actually drunk, in which case the police ought to be able to tell from their driving pattern long before they actually hit anyone.
It's ironic that you so frequently deride opposing arguments as emotional and illogical, since, whether it's true or not, this is itself an emotional appeal.
No it's not. Pointing out that an argument is illogical is anything but illogical.
Name calling ("pretentious, self-righteous pharisees") certainly isn't going to get you anywhere with any listener who values logic over rhetoric.
In this case, I think it rather would as the charge is true. People get ridiculously pretentious and self-righteous when talking about drunk driving. Witness this thread for evidence.
You're also turning a blind eye to the fact that driver B is deliberately engaging in an activity that increases the danger to others and could avoid it with only minor inconveniences. Furthermore, if driver A, even while sober, routinely drives as poorly as would be expected from an inebriated person, then driver A should not be on the road.
But we're not talking inebriation. The BAC limit is well below that point. And I would say we have to give a waiver to everyone who deliberately increases their chance of harming another in an accident, as long as that increase is very minor. Otherwise, we'd have to arrest everyone who buys an SUV or other large vehicle.
If you are allergic to peanut butter and know this before eating it while driving, then you are indeed recklessly endangering others. The law does need to prevent those with this condition from doing this, and it's easily demonstrable with blood tests who is and who isn't susceptible to peanut allergies.
*facepalms*
No, it doesn't. The law doesn't need to do a goddamn thing. This is a self-regulating problem. No one with sense is going to set off an allergic reaction while behind the wheel, and those that do are going to be clearly liable if they do cause an accident.
The difference is that with alcohol, although it's a matter of degree, everyone is susceptible to its effects, and everyone knows it. Thus, any person who drinks and then drives is knowingly causing greatly increased danger to others, unlike people who stoke allergies of which they were unaware.
Well, anyone eating a peanut butter sandwich is creating a slight distraction. Alchohol only becomes relevant at a certain point. And it's not .08
I concede that in some cases, eating can be as distracting as drinking, but not that it typically is.
The law needs to deal with what it can handle rather than worry endlessly about what it cannot. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and lightning are also damaging, but the fact that they can't be legislated away prevents us from doing so. Is it monstrous not to outlaw hurricanes and earthquakes? No, it's a concession that we can't achieve what we could in a perfect world.
But eating is fairly easy to spot in most circumstances, particularly in daylight. How do you reconcile that?
What we do is require them to take those precautions in the first place, and punish them for refusal to comply. That's why we have licenses for hunting and for gun ownership.
We also have licenses for driving. We don't have punishments for drunk hunting, as far as I'm aware.
I'm sure you're aware that, because of our infrastructural dependence on automotive transit, this would itself endanger the well-being of the public, and thus doesn't constitute erring on the side of caution at all.
We could certainly narrow it down to a handful of people engaging in public business, such as buses, ambulances, firetrucks and delivery trucks.
There is, however, ample proof that drunk driving does cause accidents. If we didn't have this evidence (and also before we had it) I'd agree that it would be better to err on the side of personal liberty.
But not ample proof that someone with a BAC of .09 causes accidents.
Drunk driving does represent a threat to the life, health, and property of others.
Drunk driving? Yes. "I've had several beers" driving? No. Not a real and present threat.
So I suppose what we don't need is laws against murder, because people don't generally want to murder each other? They know that murder is a gross violation of another person's rights and that it could engender resentment and provoke retribution, so they take care to avoid doing it, and for the most part, the problem regulates itself. However, this obviously isn't how laws work in a civilized society.
I suppose the obvious difference, that you're fully aware of, is that murder isn't a preventive law, and laws against drunk driving are. Technically speaking, if someone gets on the road while stoned out of their ****ing mind, and drives home perfectly safely, no one's been harmed. This isn't the case with murder.
We need laws to protect us against those people whose misjudgment inclines them to do things that endanger us, regardless of whether those actions are widely considered unwise. In exchange, we give up our legal right to engage in those behaviors ourselves. This isn't a "socialist nanny state," it's thesocial contract and it's the backbone of civilization.
That's exactly what a socialist nanny state is. A more libertarian form of government would punish only those who've committed actual crimes, and let the fear of punishment teach the rest not to break the law.
As to your claim that someone driving after consuming numerous beers does not put others in jeopardy, I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly think that. Do you believe that alcohol does not impair reaction time or judgement?
I think that that depends on the person and the number of beers consumed. Nor do I think that anyone's life is being put in distinct danger until a driver actually begins acting erratically, as is common with drivers who are truly drunk.
As I'm seeing it, TIBA is suggesting not that people are allowed to endanger others by drinking, but that people who pose a threat on the road for whatever reason should be interrupted by the police, be it for eating or talking on one's cell phone which makes the driver threatening to others. Because some people are able to talk on their cell phones or drink up to a 0.10 BAC without posing more harm than any other driver, it would be a needless infringement to draw a line at a BAC of 0.08, and would be inconsistent with the way other such threatening situations are handled.
No, I'm saying that minor nuissances which make a driver slightly more dangerous aren't really relevant enough to enforce, and the standards here are completely arbitrary. I don't like the idea of punishing someone criminally for a non-criminal act as a "preventive" measure, so I don't believe in punishing people for any of it. Now if they're switching speeds constantly or swirving all over the road...
This is in fact because TIBA, according to his post, believes that you should only punish people AFTER they needlessly kill someone. Funny, that - I wonder what people would say if the police arrested someone who was pointing a loaded gun to someones head, about to pull the trigger? After all, these situations are pretty much the same.
"Pretty much the same" must be some kind of German phrase or the other, because it has absolutely no sensible meaning in the context you just used it.
Someone who shoots someone in the head, or rams into them on the road, is senselessly killing someone, and they need to be punished as such.
Someone who drives recklessly, or points a gun at someone, or threatens to kill them, is threatening their life, and needs to be punished seriously, although obviously not as harshly as someone who actually follows through.
Someone who has a few beers before getting on the road, or talks on a cellphone while driving, or owns a gun, or tells someone that they hate them, is slightly more likely to kill someone than not, but it would be unreasonable and tyrannous to punish them criminally for this. In this case, having drunk a little before going on the road is like telling someone you hate them; it's more likely that you'll kill them than someone who never told them this, but what of it? We're still talking about very minor probabilities. It's unreasonable to re-arrange peoples lives over that. What you are suggesting is equivalent to saying that everyone who owns a gun increases their chance of murdering someone, so should be arrested.
Sure, .08 is the 'baseline' for intoxication. What I am saying, is that many people DO in fact get impaired enough to be unable to drive after just a drink. While ultimately I would advocate total zero-tolerance, the lower we can make the maximum BAC limit, the better. After all, better be safe (and proactive) than sorry, especially when it involves someone's 'fun' resulting in deaths.
No, I think it's far better, after all, that we not let the government start arresting people for any reason simply because they are a "potential threat". That's really not a can of worms I want to see opened at all, much less receiving the kind of wild support anti- "drunk" driving laws have, which only encourages government to go further with such legislation. It is the nature of government to draw more power to itself, and people must resist.
That's exactly what a socialist nanny state is. A more libertarian form of government would punish only those who've committed actual crimes, and let the fear of punishment teach the rest not to break the law.
I see this argument a lot from the conservative side and I always have the same question to ask:
Can you honestly claim that fear of punishment is an effective deterrant?
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No, I'm saying that minor nuissances which make a driver slightly more dangerous aren't really relevant enough to enforce, and the standards here are completely arbitrary. I don't like the idea of punishing someone criminally for a non-criminal act as a "preventive" measure, so I don't believe in punishing people for any of it. Now if they're switching speeds constantly or swirving all over the road...
Isn't that what I said? Maybe I shouldn't have said "for any reason". By "threatening behaviour", I was meaning "switching speeds constantly or swerving all over the road", and not simply being a bit of a worse driver than most.
I see this argument a lot from the conservative side and I always have the same question to ask:
Can you honestly claim that fear of punishment is an effective deterrant?
Is this question for serious? Of course it is. That's why society is able to function. In most areas of the law there aren't preventive measures; it's not illegal to tell someone you hate them or to own a gun, only to threaten them directly or to attack them.
Kraj, do you seriously believe that criminals would still be a minority if there was no punishment? Most people obey the law because they are aware of punishment. Example: (most) drivers in slow-moving traffic don't drive on the shoulder because they are afraid of being punished for doing so.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
Kraj, do you seriously believe that criminals would still be a minority if there was no punishment?
All I've done is call into question the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrant. I fail to see how that makes any kind of assertion regarding the absence of punishment.
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No it's not. Pointing out that an argument is illogical is anything but illogical.
If you were to explain how it's illogical, then that would be true. If you're going to just deride people as illogical without explaining how, then it's no better than name-calling. ("Would you rather be on the logical side of this argument, or the emotional side?") You don't have to take it on faith that people are being logical; nor should you take it on faith that they aren't.
In this case, I think it rather would as the charge is true. People get ridiculously pretentious and self-righteous when talking about drunk driving. Witness this thread for evidence.
Whether it's true has little to do with whether it's logical. It is argumentum ad hominem, probably the most widely known logical fallacy of them all. If you are indeed trying to appeal to peoples' logical sensibilities, then how about just using logic to do it? Name-calling has no place in it.
But we're not talking inebriation. The BAC limit is well below that point.
No, it isn't. There are indeed some people who can drive competently at higher BAC than 0.08, but a typical person is definitely inebriated at that level. That number wasn't pulled out of thin air, you know.
And I would say we have to give a waiver to everyone who deliberately increases their chance of harming another in an accident, as long as that increase is very minor. Otherwise, we'd have to arrest everyone who buys an SUV or other large vehicle.
Note that we actually do have extensive regulations to make sure that any car you buy in the US meets minimum standards of safety. I agree that very small degrees of danger do not warrant prosecution; that's why the legal BAC is 0.08 and not 0.00.
No, it doesn't. The law doesn't need to do a goddamn thing. This is a self-regulating problem. No one with sense is going to set off an allergic reaction while behind the wheel, and those that do are going to be clearly liable if they do cause an accident.
There are enough people with poor judgment out there that virtually no behavior can be considered self-regulating. The problem isn't that everyone and their mother is going to do it, it's that those who do should be held accountable. Are you suggesting that a person who does this shouldn't be held liable for that behavior? That's really what it sounds like when you say that the law need not intervene.
Well, anyone eating a peanut butter sandwich is creating a slight distraction. Alchohol only becomes relevant at a certain point. And it's not .08
If you're going to keep asserting that 0.08 is not a reasonable limit, then I'm going to ask you what you think is a reasonable limit. Would you be content with 0.10? 0.12? At what point on this continuum do you think your ability to be a jackass without fear of legal retribution is balanced out by the potentially disastrous consequences of your behavior?
But eating is fairly easy to spot in most circumstances, particularly in daylight. How do you reconcile that?
By pointing out that we have reckless driving laws that are sufficiently ambiguous to allow officers to pull over any driver who they feel is posing a danger on the road. Yes, these laws can be abused and cops aren't perfect, but if your eating is interfering with your driving then you deserve to be ticketed for it.
We also have licenses for driving. We don't have punishments for drunk hunting, as far as I'm aware.
And before you can get a license to drive, you have to take classes that teach you about the dangers of drunk driving.
I don't know much about the hunting laws. Maybe someone can fill us in on them.
We could certainly narrow it down to a handful of people engaging in public business, such as buses, ambulances, firetrucks and delivery trucks.
If we had a sufficient system of mass transit, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to do so. Of course, it won't happen any time soon, because it'd be a wildly unpopular idea.
But not ample proof that someone with a BAC of .09 causes accidents.
Wrong. There is ample proof that BAC does correlate with the likelihood of getting in an accident, and that higher BAC equals higher risk. Every study on the subject has concluded this. I don't suppose you'd be willing to allow all drunk driving, so where would you draw the line? Would you care to provide proof that your proposed limit is more reasonable than the current one? If you can, I'm sure lots of people would love to see it.
Drunk driving? Yes. "I've had several beers" driving? No. Not a real and present threat.
Again, we have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm sure you'll acknowledge that there are plenty of drivers who are dangerous after just a few drinks.
I suppose the obvious difference, that you're fully aware of, is that murder isn't a preventive law, and laws against drunk driving are.
The purpose of criminal law as a whole is to deter crime. Murderers face harsh penalties so that other people won't murder, and are confined or executed so that they can't murder anyone else. These measures are indeed aimed at prevention. An even more obvious example are the laws against death threats.
Technically speaking, if someone gets on the road while stoned out of their ****ing mind, and drives home perfectly safely, no one's been harmed. This isn't the case with murder.
A person who sends out 100 death threats but never actually kills anyone hasn't hurt anyone either. That doesn't mean it should be tolerated.
That's exactly what a socialist nanny state is. A more libertarian form of government would punish only those who've committed actual crimes, and let the fear of punishment teach the rest not to break the law.
So I take it you haven't read John Locke? Pretty much the entire foundation of political science is predicated on the idea that citizens band together and exchange personal freedom for safety.
Plus there's the obvious fact that driving under the influence of alcohol is an actual crime, and if you haven't done it, our system dictates that you shouldn't be punished for it.
Someone who shoots someone in the head, or rams into them on the road, is senselessly killing someone, and they need to be punished as such.
Someone who drives recklessly, or points a gun at someone, or threatens to kill them, is threatening their life, and needs to be punished seriously, although obviously not as harshly as someone who actually follows through.
Right, and we actually do punish DUI offenders less harshly than those have driven drunk and already caused an accident. That's why we have separate laws against manslaughter and so forth.
The concept of DUI laws is that drinking and driving is reckless driving.
Someone who has a few beers before getting on the road, or talks on a cellphone while driving, or owns a gun, or tells someone that they hate them, is slightly more likely to kill someone than not, but it would be unreasonable and tyrannous to punish them criminally for this. In this case, having drunk a little before going on the road is like telling someone you hate them; it's more likely that you'll kill them than someone who never told them this, but what of it? We're still talking about very minor probabilities. It's unreasonable to re-arrange peoples lives over that.
Are you going to actually show us those "minor probabilities"? Or are we just going to have to take your word for it? In this thread we've already seen a few sets of statistics that show a strong correlation between BAC and traffic fatalities. If you have actual information to add, that'd be more valuable than a cavalier dismissal of that data.
It would be tyrannous to punish a person for professing hate, but it would be credulous to imagine that a person who actively threatens another's life isn't a danger to society. Likewise, a person who has already willfully engaged in dangerous behavior like drunk driving poses a threat that can and should be addressed. There are already laws in some places against talking on cellphones while driving, and gun control is a perpetually controversial subject that's far more complicated than "tyranny vs. personal freedom."
No, I think it's far better, after all, that we not let the government start arresting people for any reason simply because they are a "potential threat". That's really not a can of worms I want to see opened at all, much less receiving the kind of wild support anti- "drunk" driving laws have, which only encourages government to go further with such legislation. It is the nature of government to draw more power to itself, and people must resist.
I agree that DUI laws rest on a slippery slope, so to speak, and that not every potentially threatening behavior should be punished or regulated.
Quote from Zith »
Kraj, do you seriously believe that criminals would still be a minority if there was no punishment? Most people obey the law because they are aware of punishment. Example: (most) drivers in slow-moving traffic don't drive on the shoulder because they are afraid of being punished for doing so.
Criminals are not a minority. Just about everyone has some kind of infraction behind them. Very few drivers have never had a speeding ticket, at the very least.
Anyways, forgive me for stating the obvious, but punishment is a semi-effective deterrent that reduces but does not eliminate crime.
Quote from Denver"D »
Punishment isn't supposed to act as a deterrent for crime. Punishment is the justice that balances the wrong doing of a crime.
Any effect punishment has as a deterrent is secondary to that purpose.
I disagree. The fear of punishment is pretty important for preventing crime.
Yes, punishment does satiate peoples' thirst for revenge, but that is its primary purpose only in a misanthropic and twisted society (or household, for that matter).
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Karma doesn't exist. You can't depend on it. If you count on it for justice or catharsis, you will find that you have placed your emotions on very unstable ground; and you will either repeat your disappointment in society over and over, or you will engage in a persistent delusion to protect yourself from that feeling.
IMO cell phones are a way worse and more common problem that people who are slightly drunk. Instead of arresting people because they have 0.08, someone should get the no cell phones while drving law in place.
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I think that that depends on the person and the number of beers consumed. Nor do I think that anyone's life is being put in distinct danger until a driver actually begins acting erratically, as is common with drivers who are truly drunk.
The reckless driving necessarily follows from the drunkeness. (And recklessness does not mean swerving.)
P1. All people who have a .08 BAC have poor reaction times.
P2. All people who have poor reaction times are unsafe drivers.
C. All people who have a .08 BAC are unsafe drivers.
My apologies. Felons are in the minority because of the fear of getting caught. As a direct result of removing punishment, crime rates would go up. This strongly suggests that punishment is a deterrent. There is a slight addition required, though, which is the belief one will be caught and punished is a deterrent, and that's why punishment's imperfect, but it's still fairly good at it.
Anyways, onto other matters. Comparing a "buzz" to eating or talking is flawed somewhat, I realized earlier today. You can stop talking or eating when it becomes necessary to have 100% attention on the road, but being elderly or drunk doesn't give you that option.
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My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
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You're right, I'm certainly not saying that it's a good thing that drunk drivers kill themselves. But then I'm coming from the perspective that they're probably good people who made a mistake, rather than MADD's perspective that they're violent criminals and monsters. From MADD's point of view they could hardly be called innocent. I just want to reveal all the internal flaws in their logic. One of the critical flaws in their reasoning is that they not only assume alcohol to be present in every one of these 16,000 deaths, but also to be the sole cause even though the driver might not have even used alcohol or there could have been other causes for the crash. Their methods of calculation don't make sense. Undoubtedly, people die from drunk driving every day, and this is a terrible thing. But when MADD makes claims like the one above they are flat-out lying.
Posters in this thread seem to have the sense that people are incapable of normal action as soon as they consume any kind of alcohol. It's a sentiment that's echoed across the country. We used to say "Don't let friends drive drunk," but now we say "You drink, you drive, you lose." I feel like I'm in some Bizarro world where everyone's a teetolling Mormon who loses control after their first sip of booze. People do not turn into slobbering idiots as soon as they down 2 martinis, and even MADD knows this. Is it really a question of being against drunk driving or are some people just against alcohol? (that's not an accusation towards you Crusade, it's an honest question)
I ask this because I honestly do not consider a moderate drinker to pose any significant risk to others. I'm basing this not only on personal experience, but also on the available data. Whether 16,000 or 500 people die per year from drunk driving is less relevant than the fact that most of them are killed by drivers with at least double the legal BAC limit in their system. If I thought that lower BAC standards would actually reduce the number of people killed or injured, then I would be much more willing to concede that personal liberty. However, there is little evidence to suggest that this is the case. If .10 were the limit and I tried to stop my friend from driving when he was at .08, I think he would be right to call me a meddling jerk. I'm not interested in allowing the government to criminalize an offense that mightcause an accident in a minority of cases for some people, particularly when the penalties are so high.
Edit: To bigred; I forgot to mention that it's very easy to be arrested for a DUI even without BAC evidence, or with a BAC under the limit. You're still subject to the officer's opinion - if you're "impaired" in his or her opinion, then you can be sent to jail. Field sobriety tests are notoriously subjective, and being nervous or edgy (as any person would be, guilty or not) only compounds the problem.
Edit again: To Zith; I absolutely agree that you can't measure the impact of drunk driving solely by fatalities. However, you should also try to keep in mind the total number of "drunk" drivers on the road. For every arrest (about 1.5 million per year), how many do you think go unnoticed? How often should we expect an accident occur given the danger that these people are assumed to pose? And last, is this really that from a normal accident rate (particularly for moderate drinkers)?
More accidents are caused by the most drunk. Time for a dumb analogy that only vaguely catches the point: it is the difference between someone waving around a knife vs. a gun. The person waving the gun is more likely to seriously injure someone, but that doesn't mean the guy with the knife isn't dangerous.
I can't speak for others, but I am fine with people driving after they have had some drinks, but not too many. If they have had a few over enough time, they should be fine to drive. Those who become immediately impared should know that they cannot decide to drive by BAC and should just not drive at all. Still, I don't want the standard to be 'drive if you think you are fine, regardless of how much you have had.' After drinking a certain amount, you lose some of the ability to tell how far gone you are, and your judgment is impared. Even if you feel up to driving then, you probably shouldn't until you have sobered up some so you know for sure your have control of your faculties.
I put my standard at what it equates to for the legal limit: If you have had four drinks in an hour, plus one for each additional hour, you are most likely not fit to drive. It takes most people an hour for their liver to process one drink's worth of alcohol. For most people, four drinks floating around inside you waiting to be processed puts you at a .08.
The point is, the more acceptable it is to drive with drink in your system, the more likely it is that people are going to play around on the border of it.
I'll go ahead and accept it. The trouble is that there are any number of ways to get slower reflexes - age, music, food, conversation, etc. - and those are allowed for obvious reasons. A small amount of alcohol isn't appreciably different from those others. Comparing accident rates instead allows us to see when alcohol becomes a factor significant enough to call for legal intervention in the matter.
Well the way I see it, after you listing other acceptable means of distractions/disablers of safest driving practices, is that the reason there are laws binding drunk driving is because BAC is rather simple to measure. Hell, you can buy breathalizers. They're great for parties--seriously.
In contrast, measuring how much listening to music whilst driving can only truly be measured in a proper wires-on-your-head testing room. When you get pulled over for unsafe driving, the officer whoops out his little tester and has you breathe and gets a reading. it's not practical to have him pull out a large machine from the police car, strap wires to your head, and have you play whatever song you were listening too at the same volume with you bobbin your head the same way.
Essentially what I'm saying is that you're correct: Practically anything and everything outside of simple safe driving techniques can affect your ability to drive. Whether it be taking a sip of water, munching on a sandwich, bobbing to your favorite tune, reading that last billboard, or furious about your fight with your girlfriend [lol, i know, just an example.....I know magic players don't have girlfriends.].
However, the reason why laws on drinking and what level is safe to drive are getting stricter is that it's easily measurable. And of course the fact that alcohol is behind so many other illegal acts [theft, vandalism, murder] makes it a top priority among driving distractions.
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No, these aren't offenses, because as someone said, it doesn't take 100% of your attention to drive safely. At some point, they could become them, just as we Californians decided that when a cell phone takes one of your hands away it's too much a distraction, but the tiniest bit of distraction doesn't make it a major risk worthy of legal action.
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that I have to remind myself that some people still cling gladly to a nanny socialist state that makes cursing and not wearing a seatbelt criminal acts. That being the case, I'll answer. Pay attention to this answer, because it determines when a punishment is just in any situation for any crime at all.
When someone, other than the "criminal", has suffered, or was threatened with, tangible, demonstrable damages to their life, health, or property.
Someone getting on the road after several beers does not do this. This happens when they cause an accident through negligence, to which alcohol may be a contributing factor, or when they're swerving over the road or driving crazily. If there's any doubt about the latter, well, officers have plenty of loophole charges that cover just generally being a dick or danger to the public.
However, what we don't need is a law against driving tired. Why? Well, because people generally don't want to drive tired. They know that their reaction times and senses are impaired by sleep deprivation. They'll try to avoid it if they can, and if they have to, they'll take absolute care, because they realize that they could be responsible for an accident which could cost them their car, their freedom, their health or their life. Thus, the problem regulates itself. Ditto to people talking on the cellphone, or eating, or dialing the radio, or having a conversation, or whatever. We do things when we're driving that distract us all the time, but we try to compensate for them. It's not a perfect system, but it's preferrable, to most Americans, to being jailed everytime a cop sees you chowing on a burger while you're behind the wheel.
They started this trend, and don't know when or how to stop it.
Sorry. Apparently I got your anecdote mixed up with one of the others from this thread. I retract my statement, with the caveat that multiple offenders do in fact deserve it.
I dispute this on the grounds that alcohol-related traffic deaths can occur without the driver getting caught. That's why it's an estimate; they're attempting to compensate for incomplete statistics.
While I won't disagree that a greater threat comes from habitual offenders and those with higher BAC, it's disingenuous to use this to support a case that any other threat posed by drunk driving isn't "real."
Here's why those statistics are misleading: Although 83.66% of accidents were caused by sober drivers, far more than 83.66% of all drivers on the road are sober. Likewise, the 2.33% of accidents cause by those with low BAC reflect a disproportionate number of accidents, since certainly they are less than 2.33% of all drivers on the road.
I'd agree that this is an adequate demonstration that the new BAC standards are not currently much more effective than the old ones in preventing alcohol-related traffic deaths if the 2005 statistics quoted earlier in this thread didn't seem to indicate that the new laws are helping. Maybe these laws will have long-term effects on public behavior that have yet to be seen, and maybe they won't. In any case, there's room for improvement.
I'd argue that "the right people" includes just about everyone, and that your admitted bias precludes you from wanting to believe that your friend is one of them.
Unfortunately, our legal system doesn't always live up to its principle of presumption of innocence, and this is not unique to DUI law. In any case, an officer's testimony is evidence, although it's for the court system to decide whether it's conclusive. I'm sure you're aware that wild accusations with no substantiation are unlikely to result in conviction, and also that other evidence is often available.
This argument is undermined in a few ways:
1) You're begging the question by assuming that your premises are true. I, for one, do not agree that moderate drinking is a reasonable risk for a driver to take.
2) DUI law does not bypass or ignore probable cause. I can see how you'd get the opposite impression though, because the standards required for probable cause in general just aren't that high.
3) Courts do not convict without evidence. Testimony is evidence. Furthermore, we have breathalyzers and field tests for the explicit purpose of producing the necessary evidence for the courts to consider.
So, the answer is that DUI laws need to be stringent because your list of "ifs" is fiction.
It's much easier to make emotional appeals to the virtue of the reader than to admit that maybe the law that hurts you or your friend does save lives. All laws that give us safety reduce our liberty, but it's a mistake to always err to one side or the other. Our quality of life rests on a reasonable balance of both.
You're not being presumed guilty, you're actually proving that you are guilty, of a different crime. Taking a BAC test does not, in itself, constitute an arrest, indictment, or charge. I agree it's unfortunate when people are arrested who are not guilty, but this is true of any crime, and most crimes are far more difficult to prove than DUI.
Police officers are human and do err, but we need to entrust someone with the safety of the public, and it's their job, for which they are extensively trained, to bear that burden. Officers who abuse that trust need to be held accountable for it; enforcing the law does not place them above the law. Any system run by humans is imperfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to institute the best one we can.
Reduced reaction times affect your ability to drive regardless of anyone else's shortcomings; no one else need be at fault. If a deer runs out in front of your car, you need to react quickly. Likewise, you need to be able to react quickly when a light turns red or when a slower driver makes a lane change in front of you, whether that driver was exercising good judgment or not.
If MADD actually believed that about those people, they wouldn't be trying to reach them at all. Certainly the fact that they run an ostensibly preventative campaign indicates that they don't consider drunk drivers to be unreachable and monstrous people beyond any hope of reform.
In the interest of full disclosure, I think it's pertinent to reveal that I am against alcohol across the board. That's not to say I think it should be outlawed, but that the world would be a far better place with no alcohol in it.
Consider the "penalty" paid by society in those minority of cases where something does go wrong. Severe injuries, massive property damage, and death are no laughing matter, even when compared to jail time and fines.
It's anything but arbitrary, regardless of your disagreement with it.
It's ironic that you so frequently deride opposing arguments as emotional and illogical, since, whether it's true or not, this is itself an emotional appeal. Name calling ("pretentious, self-righteous pharisees") certainly isn't going to get you anywhere with any listener who values logic over rhetoric.
You're also turning a blind eye to the fact that driver B is deliberately engaging in an activity that increases the danger to others and could avoid it with only minor inconveniences. Furthermore, if driver A, even while sober, routinely drives as poorly as would be expected from an inebriated person, then driver A should not be on the road.
If you are allergic to peanut butter and know this before eating it while driving, then you are indeed recklessly endangering others. The law does need to prevent those with this condition from doing this, and it's easily demonstrable with blood tests who is and who isn't susceptible to peanut allergies. The difference is that with alcohol, although it's a matter of degree, everyone is susceptible to its effects, and everyone knows it. Thus, any person who drinks and then drives is knowingly causing greatly increased danger to others, unlike people who stoke allergies of which they were unaware.
On this, I agree with you. However, widespread acknowledgement is sufficient reason to be wary of engaging in that activity. A person who knowingly breaks the law isn't necessarily in the wrong, but is necessarily behaving in a way inconsistent with an expectation of avoiding the consequences.
I applaud this sentiment, with the caveat that your criteria for what constitutes a logical argument seems suspiciously similar to agreement with your own side of it, in this case.
I concede that in some cases, eating can be as distracting as drinking, but not that it typically is.
The law needs to deal with what it can handle rather than worry endlessly about what it cannot. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and lightning are also damaging, but the fact that they can't be legislated away prevents us from doing so. Is it monstrous not to outlaw hurricanes and earthquakes? No, it's a concession that we can't achieve what we could in a perfect world.
If they get caught doing it, there most certainly is. You're right that people can frequently do this and get away with it.
What we do is require them to take those precautions in the first place, and punish them for refusal to comply. That's why we have licenses for hunting and for gun ownership.
That's because it's impractical to give a DMV-style driving test to everyone who is pulled over on suspicion of intoxication, and furthermore it would be dangerous to do so. Requiring this kind of test at long intervals is sufficient to catch long-term disabling conditions like poor eyesight.
I'm sure you're aware that, because of our infrastructural dependence on automotive transit, this would itself endanger the well-being of the public, and thus doesn't constitute erring on the side of caution at all.
There is, however, ample proof that drunk driving does cause accidents. If we didn't have this evidence (and also before we had it) I'd agree that it would be better to err on the side of personal liberty.
Drunk driving does represent a threat to the life, health, and property of others.
So I suppose what we don't need is laws against murder, because people don't generally want to murder each other? They know that murder is a gross violation of another person's rights and that it could engender resentment and provoke retribution, so they take care to avoid doing it, and for the most part, the problem regulates itself. However, this obviously isn't how laws work in a civilized society.
We need laws to protect us against those people whose misjudgment inclines them to do things that endanger us, regardless of whether those actions are widely considered unwise. In exchange, we give up our legal right to engage in those behaviors ourselves. This isn't a "socialist nanny state," it's the social contract and it's the backbone of civilization.
QFT.
Nor will that person's BAC be as high as 0.08 in almost any case. Nonetheless, there are people who shouldn't drive in this condition. The BAC standards are there to give a minimum benefit of the doubt for sobriety, not to say that it's ok to be ~this~ drunk while driving.
Do you seriously think it's safe for someone to do this while driving? We don't need to have a specific law against every single reason someone could drive unsafely; "reckless driving" pretty much covers it.
While I agree with Hodoku on this issue, I agree that this stance is not generally consistent with stereotypical Republican Party politics. But that's ok, because people don't have to agree with their own party on every issue. I'll even go so far as to say it's admirable when they speak out for what they individually believe is right, rather than what their party tells them.
As a side note, one thing that's important to understand about the Republican Party is that, while they sure talk a lot about limited government and individual liberty/responsibility, those ideas really aren't integrated very well into their stance on many issues (abortion, torture, military spending, gay marriage, the "War on Drugs" etc.) and are really just something they trot out when it's convenient to mobilize the Libertarian sympathizers and those who don't think about it deeply enough to avoid holding a wildly inconsistent double standard. That's not to say there aren't those who believe sincerely and intelligently in those principles; there are (Ron Paul comes to mind), but they aren't representative of mainstream Republican politics.
As for myself, I refuse to join any political party. I'm generally a liberal, but I'm happy to join with conservatives when I think they're right about an issue, and in this case I think they are.
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You are overlooking the fact that their action places the lives of others in jeopardy, and thus infringes upon the rights of others. You do not need de facto damage, in the same way that making death threats is still a crime even if you don't make good on the threat.
Our legal system is intended to be proactive rather than punitive. We have speeding laws to keep people from dying in car crashes. We have laws that prevent companies from poisoning our air and water to prevent future damage to people. And so on.
As to your claim that someone driving after consuming numerous beers does not put others in jeopardy, I don't see how any reasonable person could possibly think that. Do you believe that alcohol does not impair reaction time or judgement?
Yes, I know, I wasn't arguing against the .08 BAC or whatever, but rather, the people who have said that they think any drop of alcohol in the system should result in a DUI charge.
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This is in fact because TIBA, according to his post, believes that you should only punish people AFTER they needlessly kill someone. Funny, that - I wonder what people would say if the police arrested someone who was pointing a loaded gun to someones head, about to pull the trigger? After all, these situations are pretty much the same.
Sure, .08 is the 'baseline' for intoxication. What I am saying, is that many people DO in fact get impaired enough to be unable to drive after just a drink. While ultimately I would advocate total zero-tolerance, the lower we can make the maximum BAC limit, the better. After all, better be safe (and proactive) than sorry, especially when it involves someone's 'fun' resulting in deaths.
The main reason it is .08 is driven both by medical reasons and policy, that research has shown .08 is when most people begin to be impared, (and if you got pulled over, that imparement might be starting to show) and the policy reason is there have been studies that politicians have accepted that have shown that having the .08 limit makes the roads safer.
The people who are able to drive perfectly fine while eating, talking on a cell, or even being a bit drunk are not getting pulled over by the officers. There is some other violation, such as erratic driving, speeding, damage to the car, ect. that gets them to follow you, then discover offending behavior x.
Sometimes it is just bad luck, but you can reduce that bad luck by driving in such a way as you don't get picked up. Sometimes you get a real ass of a cop who will stop you for anything (no turn signal when changing lanes, going 4 miles over speed limit, ect.) Those are the exceptions rather than the rule, and generally if you are sober enough to drive carefully, you won't get pulled over. Otherwise, get your ass off the road.
Having talked on a cell at a stoplight in front of an officer without wearing my seat belt, I am fairly confident that they don't enforce those things unless they pull you over for another reason.
Now, we could discuss random checkpoints. I personally think those are counterproductive and cast too wide a net, but at the same time, I'm happy when they take someone off the road that has had too much. Not the .06 people, but the .15 people.
I really have to disagree. It's hard to even think of a way to generate hard numbers here, but we're talking about factors that throw a minor wrench in the works. All other factors are being ignored, all other levels of competence at driving, and people are pointing at anyone whose competence is slightly lowered by a couple too many beers and condemning that person as some kind of inhuman monster, equivalent to a child rapist. Why? Because they've been trained to, I guess. Either way, we're not talking about a hugely relevant threat to others on the road unless the person is actually drunk, in which case the police ought to be able to tell from their driving pattern long before they actually hit anyone.
No it's not. Pointing out that an argument is illogical is anything but illogical.
In this case, I think it rather would as the charge is true. People get ridiculously pretentious and self-righteous when talking about drunk driving. Witness this thread for evidence.
But we're not talking inebriation. The BAC limit is well below that point. And I would say we have to give a waiver to everyone who deliberately increases their chance of harming another in an accident, as long as that increase is very minor. Otherwise, we'd have to arrest everyone who buys an SUV or other large vehicle.
*facepalms*
No, it doesn't. The law doesn't need to do a goddamn thing. This is a self-regulating problem. No one with sense is going to set off an allergic reaction while behind the wheel, and those that do are going to be clearly liable if they do cause an accident.
Well, anyone eating a peanut butter sandwich is creating a slight distraction. Alchohol only becomes relevant at a certain point. And it's not .08
But eating is fairly easy to spot in most circumstances, particularly in daylight. How do you reconcile that?
We also have licenses for driving. We don't have punishments for drunk hunting, as far as I'm aware.
We could certainly narrow it down to a handful of people engaging in public business, such as buses, ambulances, firetrucks and delivery trucks.
But not ample proof that someone with a BAC of .09 causes accidents.
Drunk driving? Yes. "I've had several beers" driving? No. Not a real and present threat.
I suppose the obvious difference, that you're fully aware of, is that murder isn't a preventive law, and laws against drunk driving are. Technically speaking, if someone gets on the road while stoned out of their ****ing mind, and drives home perfectly safely, no one's been harmed. This isn't the case with murder.
That's exactly what a socialist nanny state is. A more libertarian form of government would punish only those who've committed actual crimes, and let the fear of punishment teach the rest not to break the law.
I think that that depends on the person and the number of beers consumed. Nor do I think that anyone's life is being put in distinct danger until a driver actually begins acting erratically, as is common with drivers who are truly drunk.
No, I'm saying that minor nuissances which make a driver slightly more dangerous aren't really relevant enough to enforce, and the standards here are completely arbitrary. I don't like the idea of punishing someone criminally for a non-criminal act as a "preventive" measure, so I don't believe in punishing people for any of it. Now if they're switching speeds constantly or swirving all over the road...
"Pretty much the same" must be some kind of German phrase or the other, because it has absolutely no sensible meaning in the context you just used it.
Someone who shoots someone in the head, or rams into them on the road, is senselessly killing someone, and they need to be punished as such.
Someone who drives recklessly, or points a gun at someone, or threatens to kill them, is threatening their life, and needs to be punished seriously, although obviously not as harshly as someone who actually follows through.
Someone who has a few beers before getting on the road, or talks on a cellphone while driving, or owns a gun, or tells someone that they hate them, is slightly more likely to kill someone than not, but it would be unreasonable and tyrannous to punish them criminally for this. In this case, having drunk a little before going on the road is like telling someone you hate them; it's more likely that you'll kill them than someone who never told them this, but what of it? We're still talking about very minor probabilities. It's unreasonable to re-arrange peoples lives over that. What you are suggesting is equivalent to saying that everyone who owns a gun increases their chance of murdering someone, so should be arrested.
No, I think it's far better, after all, that we not let the government start arresting people for any reason simply because they are a "potential threat". That's really not a can of worms I want to see opened at all, much less receiving the kind of wild support anti- "drunk" driving laws have, which only encourages government to go further with such legislation. It is the nature of government to draw more power to itself, and people must resist.
I see this argument a lot from the conservative side and I always have the same question to ask:
Can you honestly claim that fear of punishment is an effective deterrant?
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Isn't that what I said? Maybe I shouldn't have said "for any reason". By "threatening behaviour", I was meaning "switching speeds constantly or swerving all over the road", and not simply being a bit of a worse driver than most.
Is this question for serious? Of course it is. That's why society is able to function. In most areas of the law there aren't preventive measures; it's not illegal to tell someone you hate them or to own a gun, only to threaten them directly or to attack them.
So how do you account for the fact that crime still occurs?
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All I've done is call into question the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrant. I fail to see how that makes any kind of assertion regarding the absence of punishment.
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Any effect punishment has as a deterrent is secondary to that purpose.
If you were to explain how it's illogical, then that would be true. If you're going to just deride people as illogical without explaining how, then it's no better than name-calling. ("Would you rather be on the logical side of this argument, or the emotional side?") You don't have to take it on faith that people are being logical; nor should you take it on faith that they aren't.
Whether it's true has little to do with whether it's logical. It is argumentum ad hominem, probably the most widely known logical fallacy of them all. If you are indeed trying to appeal to peoples' logical sensibilities, then how about just using logic to do it? Name-calling has no place in it.
No, it isn't. There are indeed some people who can drive competently at higher BAC than 0.08, but a typical person is definitely inebriated at that level. That number wasn't pulled out of thin air, you know.
Note that we actually do have extensive regulations to make sure that any car you buy in the US meets minimum standards of safety. I agree that very small degrees of danger do not warrant prosecution; that's why the legal BAC is 0.08 and not 0.00.
There are enough people with poor judgment out there that virtually no behavior can be considered self-regulating. The problem isn't that everyone and their mother is going to do it, it's that those who do should be held accountable. Are you suggesting that a person who does this shouldn't be held liable for that behavior? That's really what it sounds like when you say that the law need not intervene.
If you're going to keep asserting that 0.08 is not a reasonable limit, then I'm going to ask you what you think is a reasonable limit. Would you be content with 0.10? 0.12? At what point on this continuum do you think your ability to be a jackass without fear of legal retribution is balanced out by the potentially disastrous consequences of your behavior?
By pointing out that we have reckless driving laws that are sufficiently ambiguous to allow officers to pull over any driver who they feel is posing a danger on the road. Yes, these laws can be abused and cops aren't perfect, but if your eating is interfering with your driving then you deserve to be ticketed for it.
And before you can get a license to drive, you have to take classes that teach you about the dangers of drunk driving.
I don't know much about the hunting laws. Maybe someone can fill us in on them.
If we had a sufficient system of mass transit, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to do so. Of course, it won't happen any time soon, because it'd be a wildly unpopular idea.
Wrong. There is ample proof that BAC does correlate with the likelihood of getting in an accident, and that higher BAC equals higher risk. Every study on the subject has concluded this. I don't suppose you'd be willing to allow all drunk driving, so where would you draw the line? Would you care to provide proof that your proposed limit is more reasonable than the current one? If you can, I'm sure lots of people would love to see it.
Again, we have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm sure you'll acknowledge that there are plenty of drivers who are dangerous after just a few drinks.
The purpose of criminal law as a whole is to deter crime. Murderers face harsh penalties so that other people won't murder, and are confined or executed so that they can't murder anyone else. These measures are indeed aimed at prevention. An even more obvious example are the laws against death threats.
A person who sends out 100 death threats but never actually kills anyone hasn't hurt anyone either. That doesn't mean it should be tolerated.
So I take it you haven't read John Locke? Pretty much the entire foundation of political science is predicated on the idea that citizens band together and exchange personal freedom for safety.
Plus there's the obvious fact that driving under the influence of alcohol is an actual crime, and if you haven't done it, our system dictates that you shouldn't be punished for it.
Right, and we actually do punish DUI offenders less harshly than those have driven drunk and already caused an accident. That's why we have separate laws against manslaughter and so forth.
The concept of DUI laws is that drinking and driving is reckless driving.
Are you going to actually show us those "minor probabilities"? Or are we just going to have to take your word for it? In this thread we've already seen a few sets of statistics that show a strong correlation between BAC and traffic fatalities. If you have actual information to add, that'd be more valuable than a cavalier dismissal of that data.
It would be tyrannous to punish a person for professing hate, but it would be credulous to imagine that a person who actively threatens another's life isn't a danger to society. Likewise, a person who has already willfully engaged in dangerous behavior like drunk driving poses a threat that can and should be addressed. There are already laws in some places against talking on cellphones while driving, and gun control is a perpetually controversial subject that's far more complicated than "tyranny vs. personal freedom."
I agree that DUI laws rest on a slippery slope, so to speak, and that not every potentially threatening behavior should be punished or regulated.
Criminals are not a minority. Just about everyone has some kind of infraction behind them. Very few drivers have never had a speeding ticket, at the very least.
Anyways, forgive me for stating the obvious, but punishment is a semi-effective deterrent that reduces but does not eliminate crime.
I disagree. The fear of punishment is pretty important for preventing crime.
Yes, punishment does satiate peoples' thirst for revenge, but that is its primary purpose only in a misanthropic and twisted society (or household, for that matter).
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The reckless driving necessarily follows from the drunkeness. (And recklessness does not mean swerving.)
P1. All people who have a .08 BAC have poor reaction times.
P2. All people who have poor reaction times are unsafe drivers.
C. All people who have a .08 BAC are unsafe drivers.
Anyways, onto other matters. Comparing a "buzz" to eating or talking is flawed somewhat, I realized earlier today. You can stop talking or eating when it becomes necessary to have 100% attention on the road, but being elderly or drunk doesn't give you that option.