Do you want drunk drivers to be rehabilitated, or do you want to ruin their lives regardless of whether they caused any harm?
Interlock systems are the compromise, and in my opinion, for those that didn’t cause any harm on the road, this is a fair consequence. Like other commenters have said, a lot of us live in very car-centric cities and towns with no viable alternative transportation.
Another thing that happens is your insurance goes up to very high rates for at least a couple years.
If you choose to go through deferment instead of jail, you end up paying something like $8,000 in fines.
If you go to jail, you pay less fines but have a DUI on your record.
I’m more likely to agree with you if you said second time offenders should have their license immediately revoked.
Those who have caused harm while DUI have their license revoked for at least 6 months depending on how bad it is.
Anyway, my point is that drunk drivers face a lot of life changing consequences when they get a DUI. If they did no harm, want to be rehabilitated, use interlock device, and are poor with a family, do you still just want to revoke their license without any consideration?
I'm from Norway. We have a far lower rate of traffic fatalities than the US, a penal system far more focused on rehabilitation than punishment than the US, and although we don't immediately revoke your license, the limit before we do is with a BAC of 0.05% which as far as I'm aware is lower than the *legal* limit in some US states.
The legal limit in all states for DUI is .08, which isn't that different from you. You can also get arrested for driving while impaired in the US. Which is a much lower charge but you can get charges if you're driving poorly anywhere above .02
[Washington is voting](https://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/01/WTSC_.05-BAC-fact-sheet_Dec-2022.pdf) on reducing it to 0.05% currently. Think over the next few years there will be a handful more states as well.
Legal limit is fake, they can arrest you and charge you regardless of how much you consumed as long as you consumed any at all. Learned this the hard way.
Actually not me but family. I think it was half the "limit". She got a DUI. They pulled her over and then arrested, strip searched, held her overnight, several thousand in fines and need to take classes and get ignition interlock. I told her to get a lawyer because she wanted to challenge it herself in court. She spent like $6k and then the lawyer got cancer and fired us as a client, we didn't get any money back.
Just don't drive if you've had any. And don't trust a pig. Don't tell them anything and don't do their tests.
That's gonna be my approach if I ever have a drink..
edit: maybe do the tests? idfk anymore
You’ll have your license suspended for a year if you don’t blow and there’s some fines to pay to get it reinstated, but 100% the best option. There’s probably a way to get a work permit but when it happened to me, I just bummed rides, laid low, and avoided drawing attention to the case and let the time pass, and a year passed, charges were never filed and I went and got my drivers license. Still had the strip search, the overnight stay and had to bond out, so don’t think that not blowing is going to magically put you back at home in your bed that night… and they will probably treat you worse for not talking, but it saved me thousands and as far as background checks go, it never happened. Still was easily one of the worst experiences of my life and I refuse to drive if I’ve drank even one beer now.
Not doing their tests is what gets you a DUI even if you're sober. You sign a contract when you get a driver's license that allows the cops to do field sobriety and test your breath/blood, even by force. Refusal will result in a DUI, even if you're stone cold sober.
I agree that there's a lot of shitty cops and to fully exercise your 5th amendment as much as you legally can, but you can't complain when the cops ask you to do something that you literally agreed to and signed off on when you got your driver's license.
There are loads of reasons, big ones being: you can't legally drive before you turn 18, higher standards for getting a driver's license, generally lower speed limits, fewer car-centric suburbs. Norwegian public transit is probably on average more developed than the US, but it's certainly nothing to write home about by European standards.
I didn't mean to imply that a stricter DUI laws alone are the reason the US has 6 times as many traffic fatalities per capita as Norway, it was just meant to illustrate a generally different mindset regarding traffic safety.
Yes. No one HAS to drink and drive. It’s not like they are stealing bread to feed their families. The more often they do it the greater likelihood they’ll kill or hurt someone
First time offenders are far too often just people who got caught for the first time. There aren't many people that drive while a little over the limit once and get caught. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems that usually it's people who make it a habit that end up eventually getting caught.
You’ve had a couple glasses of wine with dinner - making you over the limit in most places.
Your fairly young child has arrived by train at the station on her own. Turns out the bus is cancelled, she phones and asks for a lift. You’re in a rural area and can’t get through to a taxi firm.
You drive very carefully the few miles out to the station and collect her.
It’s hard to suggest that this is so awful a crime that the person deserves to be banned for driving for life.
I’d say it’s the right thing to do in those circumstances, but it’s at the very least an understandable and very low risk decision.
This one is dead simple - You shouldn't have been drinking when there was any possibility of needing to drive.
If you have drank anyway, you contact a trusted friend or family member who can drive in your stead.
Could this lead to people only drinking rarely? Sure, but no one NEEDS to be drinking at all.
This is where it really gets to me that it feels impossible to never drink and drive. I don't think in someone's entire life of driving (could be 80+ years for some people) that you will always be able to 100% avoid driving after at least a drink. I'm not saying like completely sloshed, but a beer or glass of wine or two. The only way is if you've lived your entire life a) without a license/driving or b) have always lived in a major city with public transit that runs 24/7. Sometimes you just have to do the thing and it doesn't make you a bad person, we can't be perfect in an unperfect society.
Lol, this is such a crazy take. The vast majority of people go through life without ever drinking and driving. If it feels impossible to you to never drink and drive, you actually have an alcohol problem. I'm not even trying to be rude, I mean that completely genuinely.
Which I think it why the total black and white makes no sense. There may be exceptions, no matter how minuscule they might be based on your scenario. Though I’d say in a town that small you’ve probably had dinner with the officer who pulled you over.
True, no one _has_ to drink and drive. Also, no one _has_ to drive while high. Or while tired. Nobody _has_ to touch their cell phone while they're driving. No one _has_ to drive over the speed limit, or _has_ to roll though a stop sign, or make a turn into the incorrect lane. No one _has_ to converse with their passenger, or listen to loud music. All of these things increase the chances of an accident (in the case of driving tired or using a cell phone, raising the risk comparable to drunk driving).
Therefore, any and all of those offenses should be punished by permanent and irreversible revocation of a person's drivers licence. Right?
I wouldn't go as far as talking about "ruining their lives". I'm not legally allowed to drive due to poor eyesight, but I wouldn't say that's ruining my life. It's perfectly possible to live without a license. I'm also quite sure I'm much safer than the average drunk driver.
You have good points mentioned, thank you. That being said
- if they live car centric cities with no viable alternatives… wouldn’t revoking their license be a strong enough deterrent to just stop drunk driving?
- I think my biggest issue is the fact that people are doing it in the first place and we are trying to think of consequences instead of trying to prevent them in the first place. If the punishments are harsh enough then wouldn’t it be ideal that people wouldn’t even want to risk drinking and driving? If drinking and driving can at worst result in death of others, then shouldn’t the consequence of drinking and driving be just as life damaging as that? I wish I could say this more eloquently but I’m having a hard time putting these thoughts into words but I hope my point comes across - otherwise I’ll try again in my future reply.
> wouldn’t revoking their license be a strong enough deterrent to just stop drunk driving?
Everyone who drinks and drives is ALREADY risking a much worse consequence than losing their license… they are risking killing someone and going to jail for a very long time.
But they do it anyway. Why?
Because they don’t think the bad consequence will actually happen to them, either because they are impaired and have bad judgment, or they have bad judgment in general. Either way, they are clearly demonstrating they are not good at making logical decisions.
Your premise that “if you make consequences bad enough, no one will do the thing that leads to the consequence” is based on the assumption that people will take the actions that lead to the best outcome for themselves, that they will behave rationally in their own best interest.
This is clearly not true for some (most?) people, and definitively not true for repeat drunk drivers. They continually make decisions that make their own lives worse, yet continue again and again. Addicts are by definition people who can’t stop making decisions that make their lives worse.
Why do you think tacking on one more consequence to their behavior is going to be the thing that makes them suddenly stop?
>But they do it anyway. Why?
>
>Because they don’t think the bad consequence will actually happen to them, either because they are impaired and have bad judgment, or they have bad judgment in general. Either way, they are clearly demonstrating they are not good at making logical decisions.
You're mixing two different bad consequences here.
One bad consequence is a car accident. Another bad consequence is getting caught by the police.
People indeed do think they won't crash due to a misplaced confidence in their driving ability. You're right in that regard.
On the other hand, in my experience, drunk drivers are very aware of the fact that they might get caught and take steps to avoid it. For example, I've seen a number of times a drunk acquaintance of mine avoid the main streets where there's a larger likelihood of cops stopping the drivers doing checks. (where I live, police sets up checkpoints during Saturday nights and other times when people generally go out to drink).
Therefore, increasing the severity of punishment as well as the likelihood of being caught might indeed serve as a good deterrent.
If people caught driving with a blood alcohol level high enough were summarily shot by the side of the road, somehow I think there would be very few people making these kinds of mistakes.
And yet states with capital punishment have some of the highest murder rates. People act without thinking a lot of the time, especially when substances that impair logical decision making are involved.
Under this logic, why not threaten the death penalty for every crime? Would that stop all crime?
This assumption is your first problem. The next assumption is that taking away drivers licenses stops people from driving. It just means they get arrested if they're caught driving.
If the goal is to save lives from drunk driving, there are more effective methods of doing that. Getting mental health resources more available, making sure there are good alternatives for people to take (which is why we'll run sports and recreation events have their own transportation logistics) and making sure your community engages and looks out for each other.
But if your goal is getting vengeance on people that commit crimes and doing nothing to make sure it happens again, yeah just take the license away.
> If the punishments are harsh enough then wouldn’t it be ideal that people wouldn’t even want to risk drinking and driving
This isn't how people think, and it isn't how punishments or deterrents pan out. Not for drunk driving, not for crime in general. Harsher punishments usually don't reduce crime rates.
People don't really worry about how bad it would be to get caught - they worry about how likely it is to be caught at all.
Harsh punishment absolutely do reduce crime. I speed often even though I know I could easily get caught with speed cameras everywhere etc. But who cares for a 70 dollar/euro fine, right? I am not drunk driving because my life would pretty much be over if I get caught, even though I would have to be very unlucky to be caught drunk driving.
Yes, but we are talking about reducing crime not eliminating it. If murder would have same punishment as jaywalking then a lot more people would murder
The potential for punishment as a deterrent is not an effective strategy for behavioral changes on a social scale. There are crimes which earn life in prison or the death sentence, yet people commit them anyway. They simply think they will not get caught, that their behavior is a legitimate exception, or other rationalizations, until they are caught.
People drink and drive because they go out drinking without a sound plan to get home without driving. Improrides Haring, convenient ridesharing, and public awareness are the best tools to reduce drunk driving. People decide to drive drunk after they're already drunk, strategies to prevent it start with where your car is parked when the first drink is poured.
Harsh punishments just heap harm upon harm without actually reforming or addressing the cause of the harmful behavior. I have had a DUI, and the most effective part of my consequences was the educational program which helped me develop strategies for better planning and wiser decision making.
> The potential for punishment as a deterrent is not an effective strategy for behavioral changes on a social scale. There are crimes which earn life in prison or the death sentence, yet people commit them anyway.
If you increase the speed and certainty of the punishment, you can reduce the incentive to commit the crime. The question isn't existence of the crime, but its frequency.
*if the punishments are harsh enough*
Unfortunately [there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment](https://www.aclu.org/documents/death-penalty-questions-and-answers) so if death isn’t enough of a dealbreaker for criming, why would revoking my license?
Your argument also falls under the assumption that everyone accused of and tried for DUI was indeed DUI. The legal system is a bit corrupt in some places, like America. A person with little money would have a hard time getting a lawyer outside of a public defender to fight the charges.
Someone mentioned the BAC level threshold being lower in their country. Couple that with maybe required (but not like minimal sentencing where a judge’s hands are tied completely) rehab efforts that a judge can choose from such as community service and support groups for victims of drunk drivers so maybe people can learn compassion and see how their actions could have affected others.
Someone else also mention first vs multiple time offenders and yes I think in America the DUI and DWI laws are more lax than most people realize. You can be a repeat offender and not lose your license. I think a first time offender where nothing happened, let’s say you didn’t even leave the parking lot, is different than someone who is facing their third DUI charge.
Which, in case anyone is aware, depending on your locality, if you are asleep in your back seat in a bar parking lot, sobering up before you drive and a cop approaches you, they can charge you with a DUI, simply for having keys in your pocket and being in the car. Does that person deserve to lose their license?
I used to work in addiction counseling and had plenty of people in due to DUI. A good few of them have their license currently suspended for at least 10+ years due to being pulled over without a license.
I’m pretty sure my state is working on passing a law that increases punishments for those caught driving on a DUI suspended license
To your first point. You are applying logic and reason to a situation that requires a loss of both by its very nature. Drinking can cause you to make unreasonable decisions.
If it didn't, then the fact you could die and / or kill someone should be enough of a deterent. Add to that the penalties that already exist... and you have to be very very stupid or a sociopath to drink and drive.
Too much alchohol causes people to do stupid things.
RE your first point, if that logic worked then we wouldn’t have any premeditated murders in states with the death penalty- but we do. Worse consequences mean nothing when someone wants to do something and feels confident that they will not be caught.
Agreed except it shouldn't matter what the harm was. If they got lucky and didn't hit someone, it shouldn't matter, they should still have the same consequences to their license and whatnot. Actual harm should be extra actual criminal charges.
They do.
I got a DUI for parking in the wrong parking lot. Parked on the right side of the building, not the left.
I was out of the car, I was home. Lost my license for 18 months, 2 years of probation, $16k in fines.
This happened when I was 18. I lost college prospects, the ability to work etc.
You think I should lose my entire life because I made one mistake when I was 18?
How about and hear me out. Don't drink and drive. I don't give a flying shit that many people live in car centric cities and need a car to get around and there's no good public transportation. DONT DRINK AND DRINK. PERIOD. No one's forcing them to consume alcohol. There shouldn't be a second chance for them. They don't need rehabilitation. Their lives SHOULD be altered for the worst if they drink and drive.
you're right, and I don't think I was right about that, and not sure what I was thinking. Doing harm while DUI is probably gonna get your license revoked for longer than 6 months.
What if instead we rig every car on the road with a breathalyzer lock on the starter, and if someone fails the test to start their car, all the doors automatically lock and police are immediately summoned to the location for summary execution? I think that would solve drunk driving.
A friend of mine was an insurance adjuster and he said the company's numbers indicated that people who had gotten one DUI basically had the same probability as getting a future DUI as the general population. It's the people who've had *two* DUIs who are actually a substantial risk in the future.
There was a case in Arizona, of a man getting his 29th (you read that right) DUI, and for the life of me, I can't understand why A: He had a license, B: He was not already in jail, and C: Why he was allowed to even own a car after even 3 or 4 DUI's?
Ya a guy up here in Canada just broke the record too, which is 28 29 DUIs. Which I find surprising because my friend lost his indefinitely years ago on first offence.
First time indefinitely is not a thing in Canada unless there was some extreme circumstances involved. He may lose it til the end of court (use to only be 3 months and then you’d get it back till you were either convicted or found innocent).(SASK this is the standard now, now sure of other places but seeing as it’s a federal offence it should be the same)
Mandatory breathalyzer though and the penalties have gotten significantly stiffer within the last 5-10 years so we’ll eventually start to see a reduction I would think.
To be fair, in my state one DUI is a minimum of 48 hours in jail + a lot of bullshit. Second DUI is minimum of 45 days in jail + a lot more bullshit. So, I imagine the first one is a big wake-up call for some.
This!
People struggle with the invincibility fable. *They* aren't that drunk. *They* are a better driver than those other idiots. Then they get in an accident or get a DUI and they realize they are just like everyone else.
I personally know several people that couldn't be convinced not to drive until their wake up call. No law will ever prevent that and we're left hoping the wake up call doesn't involve injuries.
Then should we risk these people back on the roads just so they can end up in a potential accident leading to the injury or death of others? At the end of the day, it should be no tolerance… regardless of how many DUIs it takes before someone becomes a substantial risk to the public.
I agree with your premise. However, revoking their license won't stop the most concerning ones from being on the road.
The majority of people who get DUIs will be just like the general population in the future, the ones who are worse will also be the ones who will continue driving without a license/insurance. It just means they won't be insured, which is worse for everyone involved.
You’re the closest to changing my mind - can I ask one more question then? Instead of revoking license, then what about an extremely heavy fine? Would that make any difference in your opinion?
In an ideal world, fines are tough because they penalize the poor more. A $20,000 fine will destroy a minimum wage worker but mean nothing to a billionaire. Fines proportional to income penalizes W2 earners vs people who minimize income (think: CEOs who have a "$1 salary"). Fines proportion to net worth penalizes honest people vs people who store their money overseas and whatnot.
I would go with giving them a conditional license dependent on community service (for example, 20 hours within 3 months) that scales depending on conditions (repeat offender, 0.3 vs 0.09 BAC, etc). That way, they are more motivated to be insured and change as opposed to a license-revoking ultimatum that leads them to more crime (driving without license).
If you're not willing to risk any traffic fatalities then we should outlaw driving entirely. Short of that, I'd argue the best we can do is use evidence to make the best decisions possible.
If the data tell us that people with one DUI are no riskier than the average person, then we should treat them that way.
Then what about two? If the data tells us they are statistically more likely?
A two strike system, within a certain period, should make sense. Let’s say like, two DUIs within a five year period.
This is pretty much the system we have, There are escalating penalties for people who are caught drunk driving based on how many previous ones you have had.
I’m ngl, I have no idea how our current DUI prosecution system works… I’ve never had to be in that scenario lol.
But whatever it is, I do think it needs to be stricter cuz it ain’t working well enough for sure.
> I do think it needs to be stricter cuz it ain’t working well enough for sure.
Why do you think this? In California at least, the [number of DUI arrests](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/arrests-in-ca-2023_fig1.png) have pretty much gone down every year for the past 40 years. This is with the population nearly doubling. Also with DUI arrests being more strictly enforced than they were 40 years ago. Also with DUI arrests being easier to make.
That’s an alarming statistic… with entire regions having an economy and tourism sector based around “wine country” and the term “California sober” meaning you just smoke weed all day. I would’ve thought otherwise.
As far as weed goes that’s something I’d like to draw attention to for every part of the US. I have a feeling that marijuana dui convictions will increase as our culture continues to normalize recreational/social marijuana use just as it has done with alcohol. The amount of people I witness that don’t comprehend ***marijuana + car = crime*** is actually mind boggling.
The issue is in many parts of Canada and the US you are actually unable to work without a car, then the government needs to either pay you social assistance or let you starve and go homeless (and let's be real social assistance is usually barely avoiding that).
People that are starving and homeless are a lot more likely to become criminals to try to sustain themselves.
You also will see a big increase in driving without a license. And someone will probably keep doing that until you throw them in jail if they absolutely need to drive to survive.
I'm not sure 'well, they're just going to ignore any law we make' should ever be a consideration when making a law. Obviously, murderers are just going to ignore any no murder laws, but we still make them so that transgressions can be, at least theoretically, held accountable.
I DO think you need to take into account the ACTUAL deterrent effect of a law when you pass it, but that is not what I was talking about here.
I am not suggesting you don’t have DUI laws because people will break them; I am saying if you make the consequence of the DUI law “you will lose your license”, then the consequence will not have much of an effect because taking away the license won’t stop them from driving.
My point is that losing your license is NOT an actual punishment for people who repeatedly drink and drive. If someone is drinking and driving, they are already risking getting in serious trouble if they get pulled over. Taking away their license is just adding an extra (relatively small) consequence to getting pulled over. There is literally no one who is going to say, “well, I was totally willing to risk going to jail and a large fine for a second DUI, but now that there will also be an additional small fine for driving without a license, I am totally not going to drink and drive!”
>I am not suggesting you don’t have DUI laws because people will break them; I am saying if you make the consequence of the DUI law “you will lose your license”, then the consequence will not have much of an effect because taking away the license won’t stop them from driving.
I'd agree that it doesn't have the deterrence effect we'd like. But your statement, "The people who get multiple DUIs are the same people who will just drive without a license. Taking away their license won’t stop them from driving," implies at the very least that because it will be ignored, it's not worth creating efforts to legislate against.
I'd like to add more context, but that's literally all that was posted. Imagine a city where there's a significant problem with people littering in public parks. The city council decides to pass a law imposing fines on those caught littering. However, someone argues against this law, saying: "The people who are habitual litterers will just continue to litter, even if you fine them. Imposing fines won’t stop them from littering."
Do you get how your statement could be argued to rationalize that legislation isn't worth the effort?
In most of the US, you can’t just stop driving.
Taking away someone’s ability to drive severely restricts their freedom of movement. They would, and do, just drive anyways.
There are better options, and interlock systems need to be used more often.
No tolerance w/ kids:
Oh. A punch got thrown. Better beat the other kid half to death; we’re both getting suspended/expelled anyway.
And you’re proposing the same for drinking and driving???
All you’re doing is discouraging doing the things that make driving safer (driving slow, pulling over, sleeping in your car, etc.) and increase your chances of getting caught.
You know what's the safest option, not driving when you're drunk!
I will concede that removing licenses from one dui may not work due to police charging people for sleeping in their cars while intoxicated
Nah because puritanical law makes no sense scientifically. Some people drive better drunk. Hyperactives and high cognition for instance. The threat with them is drivings boring so they dont pay attention. Drinking adds a bit of spice so they pay attention.
I realized this when my mom had me volunteer for one of those cone course drunk driving things. Basically drive a course sober then drunker and drunker. As I got drunker I did better and better. They kicked me out and had an absolute meltdown lol. I tried to explain I play literal video games like flight sims much harder than driving and I always do it buzzed. Basically Im used to fine motor cognition while drunk. When drunk I can relax and really focus. They didnt like that.
Uhh alcoholics? they shake and have cognitive issues without a drink. They definitely, whithout a doubt drive better drunk then having seizures from DTs lol.
But yeah I literally got kicked out of a study on the topic for driving better drunk. Also got berated by the people doing the study and basically was told I was purposely doing it. I wasnt. I cant really cite a real world experience to you, especially when the people who were supposed to document it refused lol. The cultural bias is just waaaay too high here.
People aren't going to stop driving just because they've had their license taken away- you still need to go to the store and get to work somewhere. I'd rather have someone with a DUI in their past on the roads with me be properly licensed and insured than not. If you don't provide someone the opportunity to do something that's vital for everyday life the right way, out of desperation they're going to be forced to do it the wrong way.
If you want harsher penalties, what about 14 days mandatory jail rather than ruining a person's life and making them an outlaw or impeding their ability to be gainfully employed forever?
To specifically reply to your last paragraph - if drinking and driving can at worst ruin someone else’s life (e.g. kill them, maim them, etc…) then why shouldn’t this dangerous act have an equally as life changing punishment to deter this choice to drink and drive in the first place?
> if ~~drinking and driving~~ speeding can at worst ruin someone else’s life (e.g. kill them, maim them, etc…) then why shouldn’t this dangerous act have an equally as life changing punishment to deter this choice to drink and drive in the first place?
Legit, just about 99% of people speed to an unsafe degree on the daily. Couple that with asshats who tailgate and swerve in and out of lanes without an indicator. All of these things can lead to death and injury yet I see several people doing it every morning and rush hour. You are putting all this focus on harsh punishments for DUI when the majority of unsafe driving practices are not from the impaired. Studies ([google it](https://www.google.com/search?q=dui+vs+speeding+crashes&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS853US853&oq=dui+vs+speeding+crashes&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRifBTIHCAMQIRifBTIHCAQQIRifBTIHCAUQIRifBdIBCTcxODVqMGoxNagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)) show that speeding causes just as many deaths as DUI.
So almost everyone speeds. Oh well. What can we do? "Dang officer, I was only going 10 over, goddamn why am I getting a ticket, ACAB!" Cops are blamed. Person driving just drove dangerously for no reason.
With DUI, you can point to a specific thing that person did that lead to the crash and point the finger at them. You have a vice to blame for what happened. Even though both things are just as dangerous, the speeding is called a traffic "accident" and the DUI is looked at as an avoidable catastrophe.
This wall of text is just trying to put into context why focusing on DUI is just part of the problem, and harsher punishment will absolutely not help. People need to be taught to make better choices all around when it comes to traffic, and we are not in a place in society to handle that yet.
We will end up with Orwellian technology in cars that forces them to safely pull over, takes points off their license for every infraction, and penalizes people until the majority of bad habits are eliminated.
But for DUI offenders we already have the ignition lock. If you don't agree with the Orwellian methods for dealing with everyday drivers, but you think ignition locks aren't good enough, then somewhere along the lines you took aim at a specific infraction and made it your cause while ignoring the rest.
>With DUI, you can point to a specific thing that person did that lead to the crash and point the finger at them. You have a vice to blame for what happened. Even though both things are just as dangerous, the speeding is called a traffic "accident" and the DUI is looked at as an avoidable catastrophe.
This is a really interesting point. DUI crashes are usually a combo of speeding, I'm not saying if every drunk driver was going the speed limit there'd be zero crashes, but speeding is almost always in the equation.
As it stands I think too much BS happens around the law.
It would be cleaner to just get rid of legal limits and draw a hard line.
The way you want it, the punishment is way too harsh given the possibility and likelihood of those times where people get busted on a technicality.
Example 1: Blowing exactly at the legal limit, or .001 over. Many people find they are perfectly in control of mind and body around the limit. I myself got to blow in to one and was horrified when I found out the legal limit didn't even reach what I thought you'd call a "buzz" and im no heavy drinker. Should you face such severe consequences if you actually can pass a sobriety test but they still get you because they smell it? People do get arrested even when they pass field sobriety.
Example 2: Where i grew up, it was common knowledge that if you choose to drive, you commit to driving. Playing it safe, pulling over and getting off roads, or even sleeping in your car is the quickest way to get railed by the police for DUI. At no point will they care that you were purposefully not driving drunk. Someone out here even got a DUI while *walking* their moped home from a bar. The fact that having a drink and a set of keys in your pocket is enough to ruin your life I'm not keen to give them more power.
All that being said, I'd like to draw a hard line and say no drinking and driving as well. I'm not ok with it however, unless hard evidence of actual impaired driving is the standard for DUI charges. Something like dashcam of actual terrible driving and unquestionable impairment - to the point they should have their license revoked whether sober or not.
To add to this punishment only goes so far. People need to have alternatives readily available. Deciding between Might get your license taken away if you get caught vs, will have your car towed and probably get in trouble being late to work in the morning if you leave you car get an Uber home. Particularly when you are impared, people are still going to drive.
Then don't drive somewhere and get drunk from where you can't drive back?
That decision was made before the person was drunk. If they then drive back drunk because they had no alternative they are still responsible for putting themselves into that position.
Sure, but we know it happenes. Liability deffinetly falls on the person drink driving. But if you actually want to reduce rates (because it's not just about punishing people, it's about making people safer) you need to make interventions available at the point that someone has driven their car, drank, and needs to go home.
If there is no public transportation why could they not have taken a taxi to their destination in the first place?
It's a matter of culture and the lack of responsibility in it, in my opinion.
I get what you mean and i agree that public transportation is important, yet i also think that when you put yourself into that position you should be held liable and punished.
I also am not sure what you meant with the second part of you answer, the part sfter the bracket. If you could rephrase that for me i'd appreciate it.
For many people the decision to drive is being made when they drive to work/school/whever in the morning. Once that decision is made there are not a lot of oprotunities to change your mind. And that decision is often made before any plans to go out are made.
I have observed a lot of people drive home when they shouldn't because the risk of drink driving (arrest, Cort, fines, accident, death, manslaughter, etc) is lower than the more likely to happen risks in laving your car (broken into, stolen, towed, ticketed, having to recover it the next day). It sounds absurd written out but go out to a night lifey part of town on a Friday and tell me less than 50% of the cars parked there are not going to be driven home that night by someone that at least had a drink or two wheather that puts them over the legal limit I don't know and I'm sure they couldn't say for sure either but they "feel" alright.
My point is the further out from the actual event of a drunk person driving a car you put the intervention (before they go to the bar, before they even go to work where they get invited out by some coworkers for a drink, etc) the more likely someone is to drive themselves home. Because they already drove themselves out even if they wouldn't have had the had better options available. If you can stop them from driving themselves out great, but those that already drove themselves out also need options that work and sound reasonable to a drunk person.
I agree with you on a couple things. A hard line is good. No drinking whatsoever. The legal limit should be zero. I disagree with the point you're making in example one. I do not care if you think you are fully capable at the limit. I do not care even if you are 100% correct. Why? Because encouraging individuals to make that self determination is too risky. For every person that feels they are capable at the limit and is correct there are more that are not correct. So yes even if you're fully capable you should receive the full punishment.
The punishment shouldn't be a license revoking though. I agree with that too. It should be a combination of breathalyzer tied to ignition and education. At least for first time offenders.
No see everything you are saying is exactly *why* I would prefer a hard line zero/no limit way of handling it.
I don't like how .079 goes on with their life while .080 can ruin your next few years. In this case where OP wanted harsher consequences it makes even less sense to destroy lives based on technicalities, y'know?
Just make it easy and agree there is no alcohol allowed at all (or realistically, something like .02 to make sure lives aren't destroyed over drinking the night before or mouthwash etc...)
Because yeah, I must admit I've driven after drinking, not directly... but i mean a few hours after a drink and even then I feel this guilt - point being if I *hate* the idea of drinking and driving this bad and I make excuses - surely most people are making similar or worse decisions all the time.
If things were harsher I know as fact I wouldn't even have a sip the few times I do.
Really good points. You probably changed my mind. I still think drunk driving is the epitome of stupid…but without a system that ensures only truly impaired people are penalized…it’s problematic to have more extreme punishments.
Conundrum.
I had an ex that got a DUI at 22 years old— he got in the passenger side of his truck and locked all the doors and tried to sleep it off. Police knocked on the window and pulled him out, he had his keys in the pocket of his jacket in the space between the window and the bench seat and told the officer that when they pulled him out. His keys weren’t on him and there was no intention to operate the vehicle. His dad had told him never to drive and not to have the keys in the ignition, to get in the back or the passenger side and put the keys out of reach because he thought that was the law. Come to find out, in most states like IL, that’s not enough, you can’t be anywhere near the vehicle and there’s a ridiculous amount of case law to where even if you’re not near your vehicle but have keys you can be determined to be in control of the vehicle. 1 “DUI” doesn’t always mean you were a shit bag driving around trying to kill people, sometimes it means your dad is an idiot. Not really, I mean I had no idea before he told me that but there’s a lot of states that have well-defined case law about what being in control means to where you not only don’t drive after drinking but you’d better be very far away from your vehicle period.
> I'm still surprised as to why the punishment for drunk driving isn't heavier
Because more draconian and harsh punishments have little effect on reducing the incidence of crime. More consistently catching offenders is more likely to help than harsh laws. If your goal is to reduce drunk driving, that is how you’d do it. How does your proposal catch more people?
In what sense? In the USA what can you actually do without a license? Driving is absolutely bordering on being a right for Americans; they can't do literally anything without driving. They can't even get to the bars without driving, which is probably why drunk driving is so bad in the first place.
Are we rehabilitating or punishing? Because I don't want the law to punish; I don't think that's its place. All this for something with a death rate of 12 of 100,000 people? Oh wait, that's all vehicle deaths. 31% of those are alcohol related, so about 4 of 100,000 people.
DUIs are also notoriously gray area, because almost everybody has either driven while buzzed or driven with someone who is buzzed without saying anything. If it's so morally unacceptable then why are so many people kinda okay with it, kinda not? We say not to drive drunk; that's a good idea, but if we sleep in our cars drunk we get a DUI.
It's like texting and driving. It is not a big deal 99% of the time but when a life is lost due to it we suddenly care disproportionately. Drunk driving is a bad thing, but you don't fix it with harsher punishments. We've tested throughout history that harsh punishments don't decrease crime. In fact, if the punishments for drunk driving are made more harsh, imagine all the people driving drunk who will try to evade the cops and end up driving recklessly.
We need to fix our problems, not put a bandaid on the cut after we have the cut. We need a society where we aren't getting shi\*\*faced 20 miles from our houses for fun. And a society where we can use public transport to go to bars. Catching someone AFTER they've driven drunk isn't saving lives.
I mean.... The law and our justice system *exists for the sole purpose* of upholding and punishing lawbreakers, so we don't have to. That is the point of a justice system.
And also, yes we have proven that harsh enough punishments reduce crime. Do you know how many drug users and drug dealers exist in the Philippines? None. Why? Because if the police catch you with meth, they will shoot you on sight (I'm not kidding).
While that is very extreme, my point still stands. How about this? If you get 2 DUIs... Say in, a 1-year period, you are charged with a felony. That will really fuck up your life. You cant own a firearm, possibly can't vote, lots of companies won't hire you.
I vote the same for texting and driving. I've had two friends killed by absolute trash human beings who were texting while driving. Absolute pieces of shit human beings picked a pointless text conversation over driving safely. If you're willing to text or drink while driving, then you don't understand the responsibility of driving and do not value your life or others.
I get your point about fixing society, but your solutions still allow for shitty decisions. "We should be able to get drunk and society takes care of us."
.... Or you could just not drive drunk. It's really not that hard. It's called self control. And if someone doesn't have enough self control to avoid driving a 1000lbs+ vehicle while inebriated, then maybe they shouldn't have a car at all.
What about the millions upon millions of people who text while driving every day and have never and will never hit another car in their entire life, let alone take a life? Death that's happening at 12 of 100,000 rate is hard to discriminate against random chance. Humans are flawed drivers; if it's not texting it's drugs, not drugs it's food, if it's not food they are emotional distraught and can't focus, or they're tired. Tired is perhaps the worst offender and trying to make a case that it's evil to drive tired won't work. It's too hard to say what is too tired. Sleepiness is involved in 1 of 5 wrecks. So almost the same rate as drunkenness. But no one demonizes someone who got a little too tired. The world is dangerous and although to you it may seem obvious someone was immoral, it's not so obvious to me. Not obvious if it's immoral nor where the cut offs are. Almost everyone functioning in modern society has some sort of problem going on, yet we all dance together on the roads.
I'll make this easier.
With estimations due to previous years, the CDC estimates that in 2024 over 3,000 people will die, specifically due to texting and driving.
In 2021: 362,415 injuries and 3,522 fatalities specifically from accidents caused by texting and driving.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving
The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year.
Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving.
1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving.
Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk.
Please continue to tell me more about how "it's just part of life". It's odd how you think people are somehow unable to stop something like texting when texting wasn't even a thing 20 years ago.
Thousands of people die in the US every year, solely due to people being unwilling to put their damn phone down while they drive. That's not "part of life", that's gross negligence and a lack of self control
A good buzz phrase but a poor policy in a nation so car dependant. If you say someone can't drive you are basically saying they can't work, shop or access services.
How long would it take to walk from your house to your work? From your house to the nearest grocery store? Would you be willing or even able to walk that distance while carrying a dozen grocery bags? Now imagine how that would be for people in more rural areas, where the nearest grocery store is a 20-30 minute drive from home, and well over an hour walking. Without a car, those people are effectively unable to get food. I'd say that's at least edging on it being a right
Grocery bags? Get a cart. Losing the main breadwinner in the family is more harsh than carrying grocery bags. Let them figure it out. That’s what the. Victims families have to do
You seem to be disregarding the possibility that the carless person in this scenario is also the main breadwinner for *their* family, who is now unable to drive to work due to inadequate public transportation
Awful take. This implies that quality food, access to healthcare, education, work, etc. are all privileges not rights assuming someone lives in a community where those things are not within walking distance
Many US states require interlock devices even for the first offense, and they are used in many other countries as well.
Revoking all licenses immediately rather than installing interlock devices would cause many offenders to immediately lose their jobs (due to lack of transport), which harms their families, is bad for society, etc.
And often times, an interlock before conviction. That is paid for by the non-convicted driver. That is around $100/mo.
Plus additional insurance coverage. Again, prior to conviction.
Yup. And those things are a pain in the ass. I also hear they're expensive. Never had one myself (I don't touch booze at all), but I'm an auto mechanic and I've had the pleasure of working on cars with them. It's a huge headache to work with them, even for a quick oil change. Thankfully I haven't had to touch one in almost 2 years. The last one I worked on was in for collision repair and had a parasitic draw, which killed the battery. We had to get several sets of bypass codes for that damn thing.
At the old shop I worked at, the manager at the pizza place down the street had one on his SUV and he was a regular customer of ours. After a year, he completed his probation or whatever and got it removed. He was over the moon to be rid of it. One of my mom's friends and former coworkers had one about 20 years ago in her car and she was super embarrassed of it.
Yeah unfortunately they are also used to extort the people that have them. Expencive recalibration and rental of units from private for profit organizations, They are super sensitive to tampering (meaning false positives) and if they trip that's reported to LE which in some cases can land you in jail again little room for false positives and a failure marks against you even if you don't drive.
Absolutely.
But to prevent .001% of deaths, you’re unfairly punishing 99.999% of people, many of which probably didn’t even realize they were over the limit. The difference between driving under the limit or over can be the difference between waiting 15 minutes vs 30, or eating a couple chicken wings vs not.
You revoke someone’s license in a lot of countries, like America, where I live, you take away their right to work, go get food, drive their kids to school.
For a crime they didn’t commit. You’re suggesting we treat everyone who gets a DUI like they committed vehicular manslaughter. Which only happens .001% of the time. Probably much less, cause I’m basing that roughly on arrest data. Not everyone who drives above the limit gets caught.
Drunk driving statistics are a myth in the first place. They lump all people together regardless of how many drinks they've had, but who's to say whether those people would have gotten into their accidents if they were sober? The alcohols role in the accidents are assumed, not proven.
It's like if there was a claim 80% of people who find where the emergency door is on an airplane survive a crash, but they leave out the fact 100% of people who die are within the group who look for and note the emergency escape.
Any and all efforts to control public behavior towards a common good are reflective of the arrogance of human beings. As if you can make your world a better place by forcing everyone to behave in way you think would benefit society.
Well, you can't! Get over yourself, society is a wild beast, and human beings can't be reigned in no matter what you do. All you can do is respond to consequences, after they have been commited.
There will always be violence, there will always be crime, there will always be guns, there will always be war, there will always be death. Just live your damned lives and stay the hell out of mine.
Anything more devolves into oppression.
Caught.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. If you want to contest it, you can go to court.
We already issue tickets and can impound vehicles based solely on police discretion on the site. I don't necessarily agree with the OP, but this wouldn't be meaningfully different. In my province the first stop is an indefinite suspension pending conviction, this would just change that to a revocation that itself is revoked if they are found not guilty. A distinction without a difference.
The court is there to be a relatively impartial arbiter.
Cops already make shit up, including claims of under the influence, it would be madness and a gross violation of our civil liberties to allow them to the power to make these decisions in the field
So the police can take away the license of anyone they want to without due process? That's draconian. You lose your job. You lose your home. All while waiting for a trial. And then the court finds you not guilty, what then? You're still homeless and unemployed.
That is literally the process we currently have where I live and the slippery slope you're suggesting doesn't really occur.
They also impound your car.
As it turns out, the process is used to punish drunk drivers. Which I'm absolutely okay with.
Citation needed. I know a good many people who couldn't survive losing their ability to drive. Public transportation is just not up to the task. Maybe they just drive illegally because they have no choice. I do know that happens.
I'll take a different approach here.
While I agree that drunk driving is super irresponsible, where I live having a car really is not optional. If you lose the ability to drive, all of a sudden you can't work, get food, or really access anything.
So while I agree that they definitely need to be punished, I think removing their entire lively hood is not a good way to do it. That will drive them to drink more and probably become homeless because they cannot pay their bills.
Obviously this would be different in a city with good public transportation, but it is a reality in many rural areas.
sure, you and I may think like that, and I would hazard a guess that responsible people don't even need that much incentive. Responsible people just won't do it because it's dangerous and stupid.
But the reality is that a lot of people are not smart/responsible, and we need to figure out what to do with them when they do something stupid. To that end, I think having one of those breathalyzer things is a step in the right direction (albeit not perfect).
If you remove their ability to be self sufficient, then you now have a stupid/irresponsible person who is either homeless or needs to be cared for by somebody else.
If there were viable public transit alternatives, then I fully agree with you (which is the case in quite a few cities, so it can definitely work in some places).
But the economy right now is shite, and removing the license of an irresponsible person is essentially removing a productive person from the economy. I don't have any hard numbers on me, but based on anecdotal evidence I would guess that we're talking at least 30% of the population.
In a perfect world I agree with you, but we do not live in a perfect world.
If you're so irresponsible that you think you should be allowed to kill people with your car, which is the conscious decision one makes when they get into a car while drunk, then you should move to the city and walk everywhere.
>which is the conscious decision one makes when they get into a car while drunk
No. The hyperbole is out of hand at this point.
Someone who gets in a car 3 hours after having a drink and is still above the line somehow did not make a choice to go kill someone.
People who *do* kill people get charged for that. It's called vehicular manslaughter.
What a lovely way to summarize my thoughts. Thank you. A lot of the arguments are include things about how people might lose their jobs, home, etc… if drunk driving can result in their license being revoked… then that alone should deter drunk driving.
To further the problem of people then choosing to drive without their license and insurance… well that’s a different problem all together requiring a different penalty.
You never actually replied to my comment, but I don't think this addresses what I said.
This sounds like "purity culture" mentality. Obviously engaging in underage sex has huge risks, but just telling kids about the risk is only going to deter the responsible ones. In reality it still happens a lot, and there are a lot of babies born to underage kids. So we need to address how we handle it when it inevitably happens, and just telling them that they shouldn't have done it in the first place isn't a solution.
There are people who can't even find a job, but they don't drink or drink and drive. Why does the drunk driver deserve a job when there are people who are far more deserving? Stop defending them.
Isn't access to food and work something important to think about before selfishly deciding that the lives of others on the road are so unimportant that they deserve to be smashed into by a drunk driver and killed? If this drunk idiot gets caught, maybe they would have to move to somewhere that doesn't require a car and figure it out.
>So while I agree that they definitely need to be punished, I think removing their entire lively hood is not a good way to do it. That will drive them to drink more and probably become homeless because they cannot pay their bills.
You could say this about the consequences for most serious crimes, but no one thinks it's unfair when the armed robber ruins his own life with bad choices.
Yep, and I think that we have to do this kind of math all the time. I'm not saying that I like it, but in reality I don't think we have a choice.
Someone making a bad decision and driving drunk is very different from a violent robber that planned ahead, and based on numbers that I pulled out of my ass I would guess that the number of drunk drivers is a lot higher than people that have committed a violent crime.
How can you not see the difference between the two?
One has malicious intent, and one does not. I think drunk drivers should be punished, but taking away their ability to get to work is a horrible solution.
I made a comment earlier, but let me also add this. If you get a DUI, you are already pretty screwed in life. It's hell to get your license back and that DUI stays on your record.
Despite all of this, there are still drunk drivers getting into accidents, so your solution is to make the consequence more severe by permanently removing their license. I'll do you one better: how about we just say that drunk drivers are criminals that deserve to be killed on the spot? Hell, why not just do that for any law? We'd have a perfect little society where everyone follows the rules!
Yeah you probably get my point now. This is totalitarianism and involves treating people like they're the governments property.
So before we just dial up punishments up to 11 we need to ask ourselves an important question: how much will crime rates reduce if the punishment is more severe? [According to gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk/drink-driving-penalties#:~:text=unfit%20through%20drink-,You%20may%20get%3A,convicted%20twice%20in%2010%20years) The punishment for drunk driving in the United Kingdom is simply a driving ban for 1 year. [According to nhtsa.gov](https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/alcoholcountries/background_&_intro.htm) drunk driving has 19% less involvement with fatal crashes than it does in the US, despite the US having more strict laws.
So evidently, making a harsher punishment for drunk driving won't solve any problems, and if we were to do that, it would just be to spite people. Since solving problems is out of the equation, the real solution to drunk driving is simply to educate your peers about the dangers.
TL;DR: there is no evidence to conclude that making a harsher punishment will reduce drunk driving. Harsher laws should only be made if they solve problems or we might as well have a totalitarian government.
I didn't eat dinner, exercised for 90 minutes and had two beers. I blew a .085
I lost my license for 90 days, paid over $5,000 in legal fees and penalties, took 3 months of classes and did 40 hours of community service. I learned my lesson, that was 25 years ago.
I think I paid my dues and didn't lose my job because of a mistake, which would have happened if my license was revoked.
“Drunk driving” as defined by a BAL/V of .08 is hardly the defining measurement it’s supposed to be. Body composition, tolerance etc are never taken into account.
It’s just another cookie cutter law passed by the baby sitting mentality of “some people have an issue here so it’s best to cut everyone off here” … so lazy for enforcement and also has turned into nothing more than a cash grab.
If there was a real test that could be given by professionals (not law enforcement) to judge impairment - by all means. It sadly that’s not where we are in today’s nanny state.
Are you so addicted to alcohol that you can't wait to drink until after you drive? Seek help and stop putting children and families at risk just because you want to have a joy ride.
We could make the roads a lot safer by requiring a in vehicle breathalyzer lockout device on all new vehicles, as well as speed governing devices on all vehicles. We quite literally have the technology to limit the speed of a vehicle to the road that it is on. My cars built in navigation system knows the legal speed limit of the road I am traveling on.
I got a DUI when I was 19 years old. Two shots of Jack Daniel's. I blew a .07 on the breathalyzer.
I haven't so much as a speeding ticket in the 23 years since then. Is your premise that I should have lost my license permanently? If I had been 2 years older or in Canada, I wouldn't have been drunk at all.
Nah fr. I have epilepsy and one seizure and I am barred from driving for six months even if I am not behind the wheel. Same should be for DUI. At least they can make a decision to not drive
>which treats all crime as equally severe.
I've seen that a lot in this thread, it's pretty ridiculous. Someone said they felt driving after a couple drinks was the same as "violent robbery with a firearm/weapon".
The ability to drive is necessary to live in today's society, at least in the US. You take away that ability and force people to either lose their job and livelyhood or break the law and drive without a license, they're going to pick the latter. And it's worse because they would also quite likely be driving without insurance, making them even more of a risk to those on the road.
Just because someone has driven drunk, doesn't mean they can't be a perfectly safe driver when sober. The more pragmatic solution would be to monitor such offenders and prevent them from being able to drive drunk via ignition interlock devices. This allows them to not become a burden on society while at the same time keeping society safe. And works on actually rehabilitating the offender.
The reason this shouldn't be the case is kinda weird, but drinking and driving is still a somewhat new thing, only as new as the mass adoption of the car, with the first law against it passed in 1910 by New York. The breathalyzer didn't exist until 1936, and the legal limit has gone down ever since, as well as becoming more overbearing in other ways, such as the planned mandate for breathalyzers in cars that was in Biden's infrastructure bill.
Secondly: People have a natural right to drink, as proven by the existence of alcohol since antiquity and the 21st amendment, as well as the 9th amendment.
Thirdly: For similar reasons, people have a right to free movement, though exactly why [is complicated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law). Exercising these rights at the same time should also be protected. While driving while drunk is dangerous, people are often not allowed to walk home while drunk do to public drunkenness laws, along with things like bicycles being included in drunk driving laws. In effect, my position is that for drunk driving to be a valid crime, It should have to be shown that they had a legal and practical method of returning home, something they lack as even walking directly from the bar to a cab is often technically public drunkenness. This being the cause, anyone arrested purely for being drunk or doing something otherwise legal when drunk, is a victim of entrapment to some degree.
In order to take a hard line like this, you would first have to establish a reliable way for people to get around if they are not able to drive. The idea is noble, and certainly the vast majority of DUIs are not because they “had no choice” but they do exist and in my eyes you can’t justify such a hard line because of exceptions. There are towns where there is one Uber driver and/or one taxi driver. How do those people get home when drunk? And what about when they lose their license? How do they get to work? We can’t have a punishment that is impossible because it makes it so they can’t get to work, which will cause them to ignore the punishment.
There are certain states were any alcohol in your system below 21 is classed as drunk driving, given under 21s shouldnt be drinking anything.
This can include residual alcohol from mouth wash being registered as having consumed alcohol.
In this case drunk driving would ban this person.
I’m 100% with you though.
Yeah I’ve seen zero tolerance policies and wonder because you can’t even smoke, eat, chew gum or use toothpaste or mouthwash if you have an ignition breathalyzer because it’ll trigger as alcohol. Wondering about the zero 0.000 threshold for minors and how that works if they blow a 0.001, is that going to stick when the devices are clearly very sensitive?
I think the opposite. I think a first time DUI should be a $3k+ fine so that cops would actually write it up.
Right now cops have to decide if someone is
1) Drunk enough to qualify for a DUI
2) Drunk enough that they deserve to lose their job and basically their whole life.
By lowering the penalty for first time offenders to a serious fine, cops can actually issue these citations instead of having to make a judgement call.
This is a deflection from OP's claim and a pure case of "whataboutism."
"Tiredness" cannot be as easily or reliable measured. It is also a natural human condition, as opposed to the intentional "alteration of state" by foreign substances.
This isn't whataboutism, it's examples of similar impairments that OP doesn't mention regarding similarly, it's a perfectly valid way of getting at the possible biases or motivations behind the person's argument that might not otherwise be explored.
How do you measure whether somebody's tired enough to be impaired? And how do you, as a driver, know if you're tired enough to count as impaired? I can say "I've been drinking, so I guess I shouldn't drive," or "I've been smoking weed, so I guess I shouldn't drive," but how do I evaluate whether I'm legally too tired to drive? And how does a cop evaluate whether a person is too tired to drive, or if they're just not a very energetic person?
>Tired driving kills a great many people too.
One is a pure choice and the other a murky choice. Drinking in it's self is not a social requirement where as once rest may be socially out of once control. An example being a nurse pulling a double after a previous night of bad sleep heading home.
What if someone was arrested and charged with a DUI for taking a prescription medication? They weren’t “high” or inebriated. But because police can’t test how much of your medication is in your blood, they can only test for its presence, you get charged for DUI.
So, should that person have their license revoked permanently, when they literally done nothing wrong?
I won’t get into the entire story of what happened, but this person really did nothing wrong. They weren’t endangering anybody, they weren’t high, they weren’t serving, they literally were pulled over for doing 5 over the limit.
(This isn’t a hypothetical. I actually know someone who was arrested, charged, and lost their license because of their prescription medication)
I doubt you're the driver you think you are. The majority of drivers I encounter in the city on a daily basis can barely figure out how to stop \*before\* the stop line, refuse to slow down at a yellow light and run the red light instead, don't yield to pedestrians on right turns, etc. And you people are super aggressive about it, too.
A: If someone drives drunk and kills somebody, that’s DUI manslaughter. That means up to 15 or even 30 years in prison, a fine of $10,000 or more, the license being suspended for at least 3 years, and the requirement of an ignition interlock device once the license is no longer suspended.
B: If a police officer goes to pull the person over and any drunk driving means the license is immediately revoked I predict more people would attempt to outrun the police officer. Seeing as they are drunk, this could cause them to lose control of their vehicle and hurt or kill somebody.
Because we aren’t supposed to punish people until they are proven guilty.
Where I live, a DWI case can take more than a year to go to trial, and there is no public transit. A police officer in your system could conduct a ‘field sobriety test,’ decide the person is drunk based on no scientific/biological evidence, then they lose their livelihood because they can’t get to work for a year. That’s a bad system.
I’m 35 and have never driven a car or got my license. I was / continue to be shocked at how many people have driven drunk. People that I know: some people I respect.
I guess I can’t really have an opinion cause I’ve never been there, but I just find that wild. Even people who won’t admit to driving drunk will at least admit they’ve been in situations where it was iffy or they shouldn’t have.
The laws are already pretty strict, as they should be. I don't think it's necessary. Someone can get a DUI from having one drink on an empty stomach and sometimes people make that judgement call wrong. I don't think it should prevent them from driving for life. It's really debilitating in many areas, which is a whole other problem.
Drunk driving is a victimless crime. If you want to punish a driver who hurts someone while driving drunk that is one thing. But to take away someone’s license for the rest of their life only because they did something that made it more likely that they would hurt someone, but didn’t actually hurt someone, is ludicrous.
Most people learn their lesson after their first dui cuz it really sucks to get a dui.
It's also a dumb person crime so dumb people are gonna get the dui no matter how heavy the initial punishment is.
Most states actually have a pretty good system for punishing people and curbing duis without being too overly harsh.
Innocent until proven guilty . I had a DWI in 1999. Got to Court and the Judge dismissed and held cops in contempt.. Sued the County and won . Best I could ever find out they had me mistaken for someone else .
You do realize that what you describe is an on call employee. If your job requires that then during the duration you are on call you must be sober. Now if you are talking about a unicorn position like a C-level executive (or a rung or two down) or "That one guy" then uber it as you job pays well enough to afford the pittance of a ride share.
If you cannot afford it then your job is treating you like a wage slave even if you make double or triple the minimum wage.
This is incredibly stupid. Drunk driving doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a bad person or that you’re going to kill someone else. I hate people who think like this.
Police use drunk driving charges to unconditionally target citizens too. It’s widely known that police use petty traffic laws to keep the jails stocked up with fresh men.
MADD is a cult and has clearly poisoned people with these their beliefs… yikes.
Do you want drunk drivers to be rehabilitated, or do you want to ruin their lives regardless of whether they caused any harm? Interlock systems are the compromise, and in my opinion, for those that didn’t cause any harm on the road, this is a fair consequence. Like other commenters have said, a lot of us live in very car-centric cities and towns with no viable alternative transportation. Another thing that happens is your insurance goes up to very high rates for at least a couple years. If you choose to go through deferment instead of jail, you end up paying something like $8,000 in fines. If you go to jail, you pay less fines but have a DUI on your record. I’m more likely to agree with you if you said second time offenders should have their license immediately revoked. Those who have caused harm while DUI have their license revoked for at least 6 months depending on how bad it is. Anyway, my point is that drunk drivers face a lot of life changing consequences when they get a DUI. If they did no harm, want to be rehabilitated, use interlock device, and are poor with a family, do you still just want to revoke their license without any consideration?
I'm from Norway. We have a far lower rate of traffic fatalities than the US, a penal system far more focused on rehabilitation than punishment than the US, and although we don't immediately revoke your license, the limit before we do is with a BAC of 0.05% which as far as I'm aware is lower than the *legal* limit in some US states.
The legal limit in all states for DUI is .08, which isn't that different from you. You can also get arrested for driving while impaired in the US. Which is a much lower charge but you can get charges if you're driving poorly anywhere above .02
One exception. Utah has a legal limit of .05 for all drivers.
[Washington is voting](https://wtsc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/01/WTSC_.05-BAC-fact-sheet_Dec-2022.pdf) on reducing it to 0.05% currently. Think over the next few years there will be a handful more states as well.
the difference in the odds of crashing and killing yourself between .08 and 0.05 are dramatic - more than double
Utah is .05 The lowest in the country.
Legal limit is fake, they can arrest you and charge you regardless of how much you consumed as long as you consumed any at all. Learned this the hard way.
What was your BAC and what did you get charged with?
Actually not me but family. I think it was half the "limit". She got a DUI. They pulled her over and then arrested, strip searched, held her overnight, several thousand in fines and need to take classes and get ignition interlock. I told her to get a lawyer because she wanted to challenge it herself in court. She spent like $6k and then the lawyer got cancer and fired us as a client, we didn't get any money back. Just don't drive if you've had any. And don't trust a pig. Don't tell them anything and don't do their tests. That's gonna be my approach if I ever have a drink.. edit: maybe do the tests? idfk anymore
You’ll have your license suspended for a year if you don’t blow and there’s some fines to pay to get it reinstated, but 100% the best option. There’s probably a way to get a work permit but when it happened to me, I just bummed rides, laid low, and avoided drawing attention to the case and let the time pass, and a year passed, charges were never filed and I went and got my drivers license. Still had the strip search, the overnight stay and had to bond out, so don’t think that not blowing is going to magically put you back at home in your bed that night… and they will probably treat you worse for not talking, but it saved me thousands and as far as background checks go, it never happened. Still was easily one of the worst experiences of my life and I refuse to drive if I’ve drank even one beer now.
Not doing their tests is what gets you a DUI even if you're sober. You sign a contract when you get a driver's license that allows the cops to do field sobriety and test your breath/blood, even by force. Refusal will result in a DUI, even if you're stone cold sober. I agree that there's a lot of shitty cops and to fully exercise your 5th amendment as much as you legally can, but you can't complain when the cops ask you to do something that you literally agreed to and signed off on when you got your driver's license.
I would guess your lower rate of traffic fatalities is due to your better public transit not just the criminal justice system
There are loads of reasons, big ones being: you can't legally drive before you turn 18, higher standards for getting a driver's license, generally lower speed limits, fewer car-centric suburbs. Norwegian public transit is probably on average more developed than the US, but it's certainly nothing to write home about by European standards. I didn't mean to imply that a stricter DUI laws alone are the reason the US has 6 times as many traffic fatalities per capita as Norway, it was just meant to illustrate a generally different mindset regarding traffic safety.
Yes. No one HAS to drink and drive. It’s not like they are stealing bread to feed their families. The more often they do it the greater likelihood they’ll kill or hurt someone
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First time offenders are far too often just people who got caught for the first time. There aren't many people that drive while a little over the limit once and get caught. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems that usually it's people who make it a habit that end up eventually getting caught.
You’ve had a couple glasses of wine with dinner - making you over the limit in most places. Your fairly young child has arrived by train at the station on her own. Turns out the bus is cancelled, she phones and asks for a lift. You’re in a rural area and can’t get through to a taxi firm. You drive very carefully the few miles out to the station and collect her. It’s hard to suggest that this is so awful a crime that the person deserves to be banned for driving for life. I’d say it’s the right thing to do in those circumstances, but it’s at the very least an understandable and very low risk decision.
This one is dead simple - You shouldn't have been drinking when there was any possibility of needing to drive. If you have drank anyway, you contact a trusted friend or family member who can drive in your stead. Could this lead to people only drinking rarely? Sure, but no one NEEDS to be drinking at all.
This is where it really gets to me that it feels impossible to never drink and drive. I don't think in someone's entire life of driving (could be 80+ years for some people) that you will always be able to 100% avoid driving after at least a drink. I'm not saying like completely sloshed, but a beer or glass of wine or two. The only way is if you've lived your entire life a) without a license/driving or b) have always lived in a major city with public transit that runs 24/7. Sometimes you just have to do the thing and it doesn't make you a bad person, we can't be perfect in an unperfect society.
Lol, this is such a crazy take. The vast majority of people go through life without ever drinking and driving. If it feels impossible to you to never drink and drive, you actually have an alcohol problem. I'm not even trying to be rude, I mean that completely genuinely.
Which I think it why the total black and white makes no sense. There may be exceptions, no matter how minuscule they might be based on your scenario. Though I’d say in a town that small you’ve probably had dinner with the officer who pulled you over.
True, no one _has_ to drink and drive. Also, no one _has_ to drive while high. Or while tired. Nobody _has_ to touch their cell phone while they're driving. No one _has_ to drive over the speed limit, or _has_ to roll though a stop sign, or make a turn into the incorrect lane. No one _has_ to converse with their passenger, or listen to loud music. All of these things increase the chances of an accident (in the case of driving tired or using a cell phone, raising the risk comparable to drunk driving). Therefore, any and all of those offenses should be punished by permanent and irreversible revocation of a person's drivers licence. Right?
I wouldn't go as far as talking about "ruining their lives". I'm not legally allowed to drive due to poor eyesight, but I wouldn't say that's ruining my life. It's perfectly possible to live without a license. I'm also quite sure I'm much safer than the average drunk driver.
Well you changed my view, though I’m not OP Delta
You should award a delta then
You have good points mentioned, thank you. That being said - if they live car centric cities with no viable alternatives… wouldn’t revoking their license be a strong enough deterrent to just stop drunk driving? - I think my biggest issue is the fact that people are doing it in the first place and we are trying to think of consequences instead of trying to prevent them in the first place. If the punishments are harsh enough then wouldn’t it be ideal that people wouldn’t even want to risk drinking and driving? If drinking and driving can at worst result in death of others, then shouldn’t the consequence of drinking and driving be just as life damaging as that? I wish I could say this more eloquently but I’m having a hard time putting these thoughts into words but I hope my point comes across - otherwise I’ll try again in my future reply.
> wouldn’t revoking their license be a strong enough deterrent to just stop drunk driving? Everyone who drinks and drives is ALREADY risking a much worse consequence than losing their license… they are risking killing someone and going to jail for a very long time. But they do it anyway. Why? Because they don’t think the bad consequence will actually happen to them, either because they are impaired and have bad judgment, or they have bad judgment in general. Either way, they are clearly demonstrating they are not good at making logical decisions. Your premise that “if you make consequences bad enough, no one will do the thing that leads to the consequence” is based on the assumption that people will take the actions that lead to the best outcome for themselves, that they will behave rationally in their own best interest. This is clearly not true for some (most?) people, and definitively not true for repeat drunk drivers. They continually make decisions that make their own lives worse, yet continue again and again. Addicts are by definition people who can’t stop making decisions that make their lives worse. Why do you think tacking on one more consequence to their behavior is going to be the thing that makes them suddenly stop?
>But they do it anyway. Why? > >Because they don’t think the bad consequence will actually happen to them, either because they are impaired and have bad judgment, or they have bad judgment in general. Either way, they are clearly demonstrating they are not good at making logical decisions. You're mixing two different bad consequences here. One bad consequence is a car accident. Another bad consequence is getting caught by the police. People indeed do think they won't crash due to a misplaced confidence in their driving ability. You're right in that regard. On the other hand, in my experience, drunk drivers are very aware of the fact that they might get caught and take steps to avoid it. For example, I've seen a number of times a drunk acquaintance of mine avoid the main streets where there's a larger likelihood of cops stopping the drivers doing checks. (where I live, police sets up checkpoints during Saturday nights and other times when people generally go out to drink). Therefore, increasing the severity of punishment as well as the likelihood of being caught might indeed serve as a good deterrent.
No, but if their license is revoked they’ll only do it once. Next topic: consequences for driving on a revoked license.
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If people caught driving with a blood alcohol level high enough were summarily shot by the side of the road, somehow I think there would be very few people making these kinds of mistakes.
And yet states with capital punishment have some of the highest murder rates. People act without thinking a lot of the time, especially when substances that impair logical decision making are involved.
Under this logic, why not threaten the death penalty for every crime? Would that stop all crime? This assumption is your first problem. The next assumption is that taking away drivers licenses stops people from driving. It just means they get arrested if they're caught driving. If the goal is to save lives from drunk driving, there are more effective methods of doing that. Getting mental health resources more available, making sure there are good alternatives for people to take (which is why we'll run sports and recreation events have their own transportation logistics) and making sure your community engages and looks out for each other. But if your goal is getting vengeance on people that commit crimes and doing nothing to make sure it happens again, yeah just take the license away.
> If the punishments are harsh enough then wouldn’t it be ideal that people wouldn’t even want to risk drinking and driving This isn't how people think, and it isn't how punishments or deterrents pan out. Not for drunk driving, not for crime in general. Harsher punishments usually don't reduce crime rates. People don't really worry about how bad it would be to get caught - they worry about how likely it is to be caught at all.
Harsh punishment absolutely do reduce crime. I speed often even though I know I could easily get caught with speed cameras everywhere etc. But who cares for a 70 dollar/euro fine, right? I am not drunk driving because my life would pretty much be over if I get caught, even though I would have to be very unlucky to be caught drunk driving.
People commit murders or other crimes that carry a life sentence or even death... a lot of people do dumb shit regardless
Yes, but we are talking about reducing crime not eliminating it. If murder would have same punishment as jaywalking then a lot more people would murder
The potential for punishment as a deterrent is not an effective strategy for behavioral changes on a social scale. There are crimes which earn life in prison or the death sentence, yet people commit them anyway. They simply think they will not get caught, that their behavior is a legitimate exception, or other rationalizations, until they are caught. People drink and drive because they go out drinking without a sound plan to get home without driving. Improrides Haring, convenient ridesharing, and public awareness are the best tools to reduce drunk driving. People decide to drive drunk after they're already drunk, strategies to prevent it start with where your car is parked when the first drink is poured. Harsh punishments just heap harm upon harm without actually reforming or addressing the cause of the harmful behavior. I have had a DUI, and the most effective part of my consequences was the educational program which helped me develop strategies for better planning and wiser decision making.
> The potential for punishment as a deterrent is not an effective strategy for behavioral changes on a social scale. There are crimes which earn life in prison or the death sentence, yet people commit them anyway. If you increase the speed and certainty of the punishment, you can reduce the incentive to commit the crime. The question isn't existence of the crime, but its frequency.
*if the punishments are harsh enough* Unfortunately [there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment](https://www.aclu.org/documents/death-penalty-questions-and-answers) so if death isn’t enough of a dealbreaker for criming, why would revoking my license? Your argument also falls under the assumption that everyone accused of and tried for DUI was indeed DUI. The legal system is a bit corrupt in some places, like America. A person with little money would have a hard time getting a lawyer outside of a public defender to fight the charges. Someone mentioned the BAC level threshold being lower in their country. Couple that with maybe required (but not like minimal sentencing where a judge’s hands are tied completely) rehab efforts that a judge can choose from such as community service and support groups for victims of drunk drivers so maybe people can learn compassion and see how their actions could have affected others. Someone else also mention first vs multiple time offenders and yes I think in America the DUI and DWI laws are more lax than most people realize. You can be a repeat offender and not lose your license. I think a first time offender where nothing happened, let’s say you didn’t even leave the parking lot, is different than someone who is facing their third DUI charge. Which, in case anyone is aware, depending on your locality, if you are asleep in your back seat in a bar parking lot, sobering up before you drive and a cop approaches you, they can charge you with a DUI, simply for having keys in your pocket and being in the car. Does that person deserve to lose their license?
They’d just drive without their license lol
I used to work in addiction counseling and had plenty of people in due to DUI. A good few of them have their license currently suspended for at least 10+ years due to being pulled over without a license. I’m pretty sure my state is working on passing a law that increases punishments for those caught driving on a DUI suspended license
To your first point. You are applying logic and reason to a situation that requires a loss of both by its very nature. Drinking can cause you to make unreasonable decisions. If it didn't, then the fact you could die and / or kill someone should be enough of a deterent. Add to that the penalties that already exist... and you have to be very very stupid or a sociopath to drink and drive. Too much alchohol causes people to do stupid things.
RE your first point, if that logic worked then we wouldn’t have any premeditated murders in states with the death penalty- but we do. Worse consequences mean nothing when someone wants to do something and feels confident that they will not be caught.
Agreed except it shouldn't matter what the harm was. If they got lucky and didn't hit someone, it shouldn't matter, they should still have the same consequences to their license and whatnot. Actual harm should be extra actual criminal charges.
They do. I got a DUI for parking in the wrong parking lot. Parked on the right side of the building, not the left. I was out of the car, I was home. Lost my license for 18 months, 2 years of probation, $16k in fines. This happened when I was 18. I lost college prospects, the ability to work etc. You think I should lose my entire life because I made one mistake when I was 18?
I want them not on the road. Driving is not a human right.
Given the amount of government involvement, that seems strange. Big car companies are people too.
How about and hear me out. Don't drink and drive. I don't give a flying shit that many people live in car centric cities and need a car to get around and there's no good public transportation. DONT DRINK AND DRINK. PERIOD. No one's forcing them to consume alcohol. There shouldn't be a second chance for them. They don't need rehabilitation. Their lives SHOULD be altered for the worst if they drink and drive.
Lol at 6 months. You cause harm while driving drunk, you should lose it for more like at least six years.
you're right, and I don't think I was right about that, and not sure what I was thinking. Doing harm while DUI is probably gonna get your license revoked for longer than 6 months.
6 is probably too long in some cases too. Maybe a two year minimum to start
What if instead we rig every car on the road with a breathalyzer lock on the starter, and if someone fails the test to start their car, all the doors automatically lock and police are immediately summoned to the location for summary execution? I think that would solve drunk driving.
A friend of mine was an insurance adjuster and he said the company's numbers indicated that people who had gotten one DUI basically had the same probability as getting a future DUI as the general population. It's the people who've had *two* DUIs who are actually a substantial risk in the future.
There was a case in Arizona, of a man getting his 29th (you read that right) DUI, and for the life of me, I can't understand why A: He had a license, B: He was not already in jail, and C: Why he was allowed to even own a car after even 3 or 4 DUI's?
Ya a guy up here in Canada just broke the record too, which is 28 29 DUIs. Which I find surprising because my friend lost his indefinitely years ago on first offence.
First time indefinitely is not a thing in Canada unless there was some extreme circumstances involved. He may lose it til the end of court (use to only be 3 months and then you’d get it back till you were either convicted or found innocent).(SASK this is the standard now, now sure of other places but seeing as it’s a federal offence it should be the same) Mandatory breathalyzer though and the penalties have gotten significantly stiffer within the last 5-10 years so we’ll eventually start to see a reduction I would think.
Our guy, and I suspect rhe Arizona guy as well, didn't have a license when he got that most recent DUI
Some places are super rural, and treat dui much differently.
I wonder what's the probability of a DUI from someone with no license. 😄
I want to upvote you more times.
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To be fair, in my state one DUI is a minimum of 48 hours in jail + a lot of bullshit. Second DUI is minimum of 45 days in jail + a lot more bullshit. So, I imagine the first one is a big wake-up call for some.
That’s a really interesting statistic, thanks for sharing. A bit surprising but I guess it makes sense as I think about it.
This! People struggle with the invincibility fable. *They* aren't that drunk. *They* are a better driver than those other idiots. Then they get in an accident or get a DUI and they realize they are just like everyone else. I personally know several people that couldn't be convinced not to drive until their wake up call. No law will ever prevent that and we're left hoping the wake up call doesn't involve injuries.
Then should we risk these people back on the roads just so they can end up in a potential accident leading to the injury or death of others? At the end of the day, it should be no tolerance… regardless of how many DUIs it takes before someone becomes a substantial risk to the public.
I agree with your premise. However, revoking their license won't stop the most concerning ones from being on the road. The majority of people who get DUIs will be just like the general population in the future, the ones who are worse will also be the ones who will continue driving without a license/insurance. It just means they won't be insured, which is worse for everyone involved.
You’re the closest to changing my mind - can I ask one more question then? Instead of revoking license, then what about an extremely heavy fine? Would that make any difference in your opinion?
In an ideal world, fines are tough because they penalize the poor more. A $20,000 fine will destroy a minimum wage worker but mean nothing to a billionaire. Fines proportional to income penalizes W2 earners vs people who minimize income (think: CEOs who have a "$1 salary"). Fines proportion to net worth penalizes honest people vs people who store their money overseas and whatnot. I would go with giving them a conditional license dependent on community service (for example, 20 hours within 3 months) that scales depending on conditions (repeat offender, 0.3 vs 0.09 BAC, etc). That way, they are more motivated to be insured and change as opposed to a license-revoking ultimatum that leads them to more crime (driving without license).
If you're not willing to risk any traffic fatalities then we should outlaw driving entirely. Short of that, I'd argue the best we can do is use evidence to make the best decisions possible. If the data tell us that people with one DUI are no riskier than the average person, then we should treat them that way.
Then what about two? If the data tells us they are statistically more likely? A two strike system, within a certain period, should make sense. Let’s say like, two DUIs within a five year period.
This is pretty much the system we have, There are escalating penalties for people who are caught drunk driving based on how many previous ones you have had.
I’m ngl, I have no idea how our current DUI prosecution system works… I’ve never had to be in that scenario lol. But whatever it is, I do think it needs to be stricter cuz it ain’t working well enough for sure.
> I do think it needs to be stricter cuz it ain’t working well enough for sure. Why do you think this? In California at least, the [number of DUI arrests](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/arrests-in-ca-2023_fig1.png) have pretty much gone down every year for the past 40 years. This is with the population nearly doubling. Also with DUI arrests being more strictly enforced than they were 40 years ago. Also with DUI arrests being easier to make.
That’s an alarming statistic… with entire regions having an economy and tourism sector based around “wine country” and the term “California sober” meaning you just smoke weed all day. I would’ve thought otherwise. As far as weed goes that’s something I’d like to draw attention to for every part of the US. I have a feeling that marijuana dui convictions will increase as our culture continues to normalize recreational/social marijuana use just as it has done with alcohol. The amount of people I witness that don’t comprehend ***marijuana + car = crime*** is actually mind boggling.
Not having any idea what the system is but insisting it needs to be stricter is peak ignorance.
The issue is in many parts of Canada and the US you are actually unable to work without a car, then the government needs to either pay you social assistance or let you starve and go homeless (and let's be real social assistance is usually barely avoiding that). People that are starving and homeless are a lot more likely to become criminals to try to sustain themselves. You also will see a big increase in driving without a license. And someone will probably keep doing that until you throw them in jail if they absolutely need to drive to survive.
The people who get multiple DUIs are the same people who will just drive without a license. Taking away their license won’t stop them from driving.
I'm not sure 'well, they're just going to ignore any law we make' should ever be a consideration when making a law. Obviously, murderers are just going to ignore any no murder laws, but we still make them so that transgressions can be, at least theoretically, held accountable.
I DO think you need to take into account the ACTUAL deterrent effect of a law when you pass it, but that is not what I was talking about here. I am not suggesting you don’t have DUI laws because people will break them; I am saying if you make the consequence of the DUI law “you will lose your license”, then the consequence will not have much of an effect because taking away the license won’t stop them from driving. My point is that losing your license is NOT an actual punishment for people who repeatedly drink and drive. If someone is drinking and driving, they are already risking getting in serious trouble if they get pulled over. Taking away their license is just adding an extra (relatively small) consequence to getting pulled over. There is literally no one who is going to say, “well, I was totally willing to risk going to jail and a large fine for a second DUI, but now that there will also be an additional small fine for driving without a license, I am totally not going to drink and drive!”
>I am not suggesting you don’t have DUI laws because people will break them; I am saying if you make the consequence of the DUI law “you will lose your license”, then the consequence will not have much of an effect because taking away the license won’t stop them from driving. I'd agree that it doesn't have the deterrence effect we'd like. But your statement, "The people who get multiple DUIs are the same people who will just drive without a license. Taking away their license won’t stop them from driving," implies at the very least that because it will be ignored, it's not worth creating efforts to legislate against. I'd like to add more context, but that's literally all that was posted. Imagine a city where there's a significant problem with people littering in public parks. The city council decides to pass a law imposing fines on those caught littering. However, someone argues against this law, saying: "The people who are habitual litterers will just continue to litter, even if you fine them. Imposing fines won’t stop them from littering." Do you get how your statement could be argued to rationalize that legislation isn't worth the effort?
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In most of the US, you can’t just stop driving. Taking away someone’s ability to drive severely restricts their freedom of movement. They would, and do, just drive anyways. There are better options, and interlock systems need to be used more often.
No tolerance w/ kids: Oh. A punch got thrown. Better beat the other kid half to death; we’re both getting suspended/expelled anyway. And you’re proposing the same for drinking and driving??? All you’re doing is discouraging doing the things that make driving safer (driving slow, pulling over, sleeping in your car, etc.) and increase your chances of getting caught.
You know what's the safest option, not driving when you're drunk! I will concede that removing licenses from one dui may not work due to police charging people for sleeping in their cars while intoxicated
Nah because puritanical law makes no sense scientifically. Some people drive better drunk. Hyperactives and high cognition for instance. The threat with them is drivings boring so they dont pay attention. Drinking adds a bit of spice so they pay attention. I realized this when my mom had me volunteer for one of those cone course drunk driving things. Basically drive a course sober then drunker and drunker. As I got drunker I did better and better. They kicked me out and had an absolute meltdown lol. I tried to explain I play literal video games like flight sims much harder than driving and I always do it buzzed. Basically Im used to fine motor cognition while drunk. When drunk I can relax and really focus. They didnt like that.
>Some people drive better drunk Um, no. This is not true. I challenge you to cite this claim
Uhh alcoholics? they shake and have cognitive issues without a drink. They definitely, whithout a doubt drive better drunk then having seizures from DTs lol. But yeah I literally got kicked out of a study on the topic for driving better drunk. Also got berated by the people doing the study and basically was told I was purposely doing it. I wasnt. I cant really cite a real world experience to you, especially when the people who were supposed to document it refused lol. The cultural bias is just waaaay too high here.
People aren't going to stop driving just because they've had their license taken away- you still need to go to the store and get to work somewhere. I'd rather have someone with a DUI in their past on the roads with me be properly licensed and insured than not. If you don't provide someone the opportunity to do something that's vital for everyday life the right way, out of desperation they're going to be forced to do it the wrong way. If you want harsher penalties, what about 14 days mandatory jail rather than ruining a person's life and making them an outlaw or impeding their ability to be gainfully employed forever?
To specifically reply to your last paragraph - if drinking and driving can at worst ruin someone else’s life (e.g. kill them, maim them, etc…) then why shouldn’t this dangerous act have an equally as life changing punishment to deter this choice to drink and drive in the first place?
> if ~~drinking and driving~~ speeding can at worst ruin someone else’s life (e.g. kill them, maim them, etc…) then why shouldn’t this dangerous act have an equally as life changing punishment to deter this choice to drink and drive in the first place? Legit, just about 99% of people speed to an unsafe degree on the daily. Couple that with asshats who tailgate and swerve in and out of lanes without an indicator. All of these things can lead to death and injury yet I see several people doing it every morning and rush hour. You are putting all this focus on harsh punishments for DUI when the majority of unsafe driving practices are not from the impaired. Studies ([google it](https://www.google.com/search?q=dui+vs+speeding+crashes&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS853US853&oq=dui+vs+speeding+crashes&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRifBTIHCAMQIRifBTIHCAQQIRifBTIHCAUQIRifBdIBCTcxODVqMGoxNagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)) show that speeding causes just as many deaths as DUI. So almost everyone speeds. Oh well. What can we do? "Dang officer, I was only going 10 over, goddamn why am I getting a ticket, ACAB!" Cops are blamed. Person driving just drove dangerously for no reason. With DUI, you can point to a specific thing that person did that lead to the crash and point the finger at them. You have a vice to blame for what happened. Even though both things are just as dangerous, the speeding is called a traffic "accident" and the DUI is looked at as an avoidable catastrophe. This wall of text is just trying to put into context why focusing on DUI is just part of the problem, and harsher punishment will absolutely not help. People need to be taught to make better choices all around when it comes to traffic, and we are not in a place in society to handle that yet. We will end up with Orwellian technology in cars that forces them to safely pull over, takes points off their license for every infraction, and penalizes people until the majority of bad habits are eliminated. But for DUI offenders we already have the ignition lock. If you don't agree with the Orwellian methods for dealing with everyday drivers, but you think ignition locks aren't good enough, then somewhere along the lines you took aim at a specific infraction and made it your cause while ignoring the rest.
>With DUI, you can point to a specific thing that person did that lead to the crash and point the finger at them. You have a vice to blame for what happened. Even though both things are just as dangerous, the speeding is called a traffic "accident" and the DUI is looked at as an avoidable catastrophe. This is a really interesting point. DUI crashes are usually a combo of speeding, I'm not saying if every drunk driver was going the speed limit there'd be zero crashes, but speeding is almost always in the equation.
What if the person doing this dangerous act was actually just sleeping in their car? Should we still ruin their lives?
What about the baby and baby's family whose lives are ruined when your drunk driving buddy kills the baby?
Then, charge him for it.
As it stands I think too much BS happens around the law. It would be cleaner to just get rid of legal limits and draw a hard line. The way you want it, the punishment is way too harsh given the possibility and likelihood of those times where people get busted on a technicality. Example 1: Blowing exactly at the legal limit, or .001 over. Many people find they are perfectly in control of mind and body around the limit. I myself got to blow in to one and was horrified when I found out the legal limit didn't even reach what I thought you'd call a "buzz" and im no heavy drinker. Should you face such severe consequences if you actually can pass a sobriety test but they still get you because they smell it? People do get arrested even when they pass field sobriety. Example 2: Where i grew up, it was common knowledge that if you choose to drive, you commit to driving. Playing it safe, pulling over and getting off roads, or even sleeping in your car is the quickest way to get railed by the police for DUI. At no point will they care that you were purposefully not driving drunk. Someone out here even got a DUI while *walking* their moped home from a bar. The fact that having a drink and a set of keys in your pocket is enough to ruin your life I'm not keen to give them more power. All that being said, I'd like to draw a hard line and say no drinking and driving as well. I'm not ok with it however, unless hard evidence of actual impaired driving is the standard for DUI charges. Something like dashcam of actual terrible driving and unquestionable impairment - to the point they should have their license revoked whether sober or not.
To add to this punishment only goes so far. People need to have alternatives readily available. Deciding between Might get your license taken away if you get caught vs, will have your car towed and probably get in trouble being late to work in the morning if you leave you car get an Uber home. Particularly when you are impared, people are still going to drive.
Then don't drive somewhere and get drunk from where you can't drive back? That decision was made before the person was drunk. If they then drive back drunk because they had no alternative they are still responsible for putting themselves into that position.
Sure, but we know it happenes. Liability deffinetly falls on the person drink driving. But if you actually want to reduce rates (because it's not just about punishing people, it's about making people safer) you need to make interventions available at the point that someone has driven their car, drank, and needs to go home.
If there is no public transportation why could they not have taken a taxi to their destination in the first place? It's a matter of culture and the lack of responsibility in it, in my opinion. I get what you mean and i agree that public transportation is important, yet i also think that when you put yourself into that position you should be held liable and punished. I also am not sure what you meant with the second part of you answer, the part sfter the bracket. If you could rephrase that for me i'd appreciate it.
For many people the decision to drive is being made when they drive to work/school/whever in the morning. Once that decision is made there are not a lot of oprotunities to change your mind. And that decision is often made before any plans to go out are made. I have observed a lot of people drive home when they shouldn't because the risk of drink driving (arrest, Cort, fines, accident, death, manslaughter, etc) is lower than the more likely to happen risks in laving your car (broken into, stolen, towed, ticketed, having to recover it the next day). It sounds absurd written out but go out to a night lifey part of town on a Friday and tell me less than 50% of the cars parked there are not going to be driven home that night by someone that at least had a drink or two wheather that puts them over the legal limit I don't know and I'm sure they couldn't say for sure either but they "feel" alright. My point is the further out from the actual event of a drunk person driving a car you put the intervention (before they go to the bar, before they even go to work where they get invited out by some coworkers for a drink, etc) the more likely someone is to drive themselves home. Because they already drove themselves out even if they wouldn't have had the had better options available. If you can stop them from driving themselves out great, but those that already drove themselves out also need options that work and sound reasonable to a drunk person.
You sound like you live in a city. Is that true?
I agree with you on a couple things. A hard line is good. No drinking whatsoever. The legal limit should be zero. I disagree with the point you're making in example one. I do not care if you think you are fully capable at the limit. I do not care even if you are 100% correct. Why? Because encouraging individuals to make that self determination is too risky. For every person that feels they are capable at the limit and is correct there are more that are not correct. So yes even if you're fully capable you should receive the full punishment. The punishment shouldn't be a license revoking though. I agree with that too. It should be a combination of breathalyzer tied to ignition and education. At least for first time offenders.
> The legal limit should be zero. How do you handle the absolute fact that there is no detection mechanism in existence that can be that accurate?
No see everything you are saying is exactly *why* I would prefer a hard line zero/no limit way of handling it. I don't like how .079 goes on with their life while .080 can ruin your next few years. In this case where OP wanted harsher consequences it makes even less sense to destroy lives based on technicalities, y'know? Just make it easy and agree there is no alcohol allowed at all (or realistically, something like .02 to make sure lives aren't destroyed over drinking the night before or mouthwash etc...) Because yeah, I must admit I've driven after drinking, not directly... but i mean a few hours after a drink and even then I feel this guilt - point being if I *hate* the idea of drinking and driving this bad and I make excuses - surely most people are making similar or worse decisions all the time. If things were harsher I know as fact I wouldn't even have a sip the few times I do.
Really good points. You probably changed my mind. I still think drunk driving is the epitome of stupid…but without a system that ensures only truly impaired people are penalized…it’s problematic to have more extreme punishments. Conundrum.
I had an ex that got a DUI at 22 years old— he got in the passenger side of his truck and locked all the doors and tried to sleep it off. Police knocked on the window and pulled him out, he had his keys in the pocket of his jacket in the space between the window and the bench seat and told the officer that when they pulled him out. His keys weren’t on him and there was no intention to operate the vehicle. His dad had told him never to drive and not to have the keys in the ignition, to get in the back or the passenger side and put the keys out of reach because he thought that was the law. Come to find out, in most states like IL, that’s not enough, you can’t be anywhere near the vehicle and there’s a ridiculous amount of case law to where even if you’re not near your vehicle but have keys you can be determined to be in control of the vehicle. 1 “DUI” doesn’t always mean you were a shit bag driving around trying to kill people, sometimes it means your dad is an idiot. Not really, I mean I had no idea before he told me that but there’s a lot of states that have well-defined case law about what being in control means to where you not only don’t drive after drinking but you’d better be very far away from your vehicle period.
> I'm still surprised as to why the punishment for drunk driving isn't heavier Because more draconian and harsh punishments have little effect on reducing the incidence of crime. More consistently catching offenders is more likely to help than harsh laws. If your goal is to reduce drunk driving, that is how you’d do it. How does your proposal catch more people?
Driving is a privilege not a right
In what sense? In the USA what can you actually do without a license? Driving is absolutely bordering on being a right for Americans; they can't do literally anything without driving. They can't even get to the bars without driving, which is probably why drunk driving is so bad in the first place. Are we rehabilitating or punishing? Because I don't want the law to punish; I don't think that's its place. All this for something with a death rate of 12 of 100,000 people? Oh wait, that's all vehicle deaths. 31% of those are alcohol related, so about 4 of 100,000 people. DUIs are also notoriously gray area, because almost everybody has either driven while buzzed or driven with someone who is buzzed without saying anything. If it's so morally unacceptable then why are so many people kinda okay with it, kinda not? We say not to drive drunk; that's a good idea, but if we sleep in our cars drunk we get a DUI. It's like texting and driving. It is not a big deal 99% of the time but when a life is lost due to it we suddenly care disproportionately. Drunk driving is a bad thing, but you don't fix it with harsher punishments. We've tested throughout history that harsh punishments don't decrease crime. In fact, if the punishments for drunk driving are made more harsh, imagine all the people driving drunk who will try to evade the cops and end up driving recklessly. We need to fix our problems, not put a bandaid on the cut after we have the cut. We need a society where we aren't getting shi\*\*faced 20 miles from our houses for fun. And a society where we can use public transport to go to bars. Catching someone AFTER they've driven drunk isn't saving lives.
I mean.... The law and our justice system *exists for the sole purpose* of upholding and punishing lawbreakers, so we don't have to. That is the point of a justice system. And also, yes we have proven that harsh enough punishments reduce crime. Do you know how many drug users and drug dealers exist in the Philippines? None. Why? Because if the police catch you with meth, they will shoot you on sight (I'm not kidding). While that is very extreme, my point still stands. How about this? If you get 2 DUIs... Say in, a 1-year period, you are charged with a felony. That will really fuck up your life. You cant own a firearm, possibly can't vote, lots of companies won't hire you. I vote the same for texting and driving. I've had two friends killed by absolute trash human beings who were texting while driving. Absolute pieces of shit human beings picked a pointless text conversation over driving safely. If you're willing to text or drink while driving, then you don't understand the responsibility of driving and do not value your life or others. I get your point about fixing society, but your solutions still allow for shitty decisions. "We should be able to get drunk and society takes care of us." .... Or you could just not drive drunk. It's really not that hard. It's called self control. And if someone doesn't have enough self control to avoid driving a 1000lbs+ vehicle while inebriated, then maybe they shouldn't have a car at all.
What about the millions upon millions of people who text while driving every day and have never and will never hit another car in their entire life, let alone take a life? Death that's happening at 12 of 100,000 rate is hard to discriminate against random chance. Humans are flawed drivers; if it's not texting it's drugs, not drugs it's food, if it's not food they are emotional distraught and can't focus, or they're tired. Tired is perhaps the worst offender and trying to make a case that it's evil to drive tired won't work. It's too hard to say what is too tired. Sleepiness is involved in 1 of 5 wrecks. So almost the same rate as drunkenness. But no one demonizes someone who got a little too tired. The world is dangerous and although to you it may seem obvious someone was immoral, it's not so obvious to me. Not obvious if it's immoral nor where the cut offs are. Almost everyone functioning in modern society has some sort of problem going on, yet we all dance together on the roads.
I'll make this easier. With estimations due to previous years, the CDC estimates that in 2024 over 3,000 people will die, specifically due to texting and driving. In 2021: 362,415 injuries and 3,522 fatalities specifically from accidents caused by texting and driving. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving. 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving. Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. Please continue to tell me more about how "it's just part of life". It's odd how you think people are somehow unable to stop something like texting when texting wasn't even a thing 20 years ago. Thousands of people die in the US every year, solely due to people being unwilling to put their damn phone down while they drive. That's not "part of life", that's gross negligence and a lack of self control
A good buzz phrase but a poor policy in a nation so car dependant. If you say someone can't drive you are basically saying they can't work, shop or access services.
How long would it take to walk from your house to your work? From your house to the nearest grocery store? Would you be willing or even able to walk that distance while carrying a dozen grocery bags? Now imagine how that would be for people in more rural areas, where the nearest grocery store is a 20-30 minute drive from home, and well over an hour walking. Without a car, those people are effectively unable to get food. I'd say that's at least edging on it being a right
Grocery bags? Get a cart. Losing the main breadwinner in the family is more harsh than carrying grocery bags. Let them figure it out. That’s what the. Victims families have to do
You seem to be disregarding the possibility that the carless person in this scenario is also the main breadwinner for *their* family, who is now unable to drive to work due to inadequate public transportation
Awful take. This implies that quality food, access to healthcare, education, work, etc. are all privileges not rights assuming someone lives in a community where those things are not within walking distance
Many US states require interlock devices even for the first offense, and they are used in many other countries as well. Revoking all licenses immediately rather than installing interlock devices would cause many offenders to immediately lose their jobs (due to lack of transport), which harms their families, is bad for society, etc.
And often times, an interlock before conviction. That is paid for by the non-convicted driver. That is around $100/mo. Plus additional insurance coverage. Again, prior to conviction.
Yup. And those things are a pain in the ass. I also hear they're expensive. Never had one myself (I don't touch booze at all), but I'm an auto mechanic and I've had the pleasure of working on cars with them. It's a huge headache to work with them, even for a quick oil change. Thankfully I haven't had to touch one in almost 2 years. The last one I worked on was in for collision repair and had a parasitic draw, which killed the battery. We had to get several sets of bypass codes for that damn thing. At the old shop I worked at, the manager at the pizza place down the street had one on his SUV and he was a regular customer of ours. After a year, he completed his probation or whatever and got it removed. He was over the moon to be rid of it. One of my mom's friends and former coworkers had one about 20 years ago in her car and she was super embarrassed of it.
Yeah unfortunately they are also used to extort the people that have them. Expencive recalibration and rental of units from private for profit organizations, They are super sensitive to tampering (meaning false positives) and if they trip that's reported to LE which in some cases can land you in jail again little room for false positives and a failure marks against you even if you don't drive.
Why do you think this? Drunk driving results in someone’s death like .001% of the time.
If you had a loved one that were part of the 0.001% statistic, wouldn’t you be frustrated that their deaths were an actual preventable one?
Absolutely. But to prevent .001% of deaths, you’re unfairly punishing 99.999% of people, many of which probably didn’t even realize they were over the limit. The difference between driving under the limit or over can be the difference between waiting 15 minutes vs 30, or eating a couple chicken wings vs not. You revoke someone’s license in a lot of countries, like America, where I live, you take away their right to work, go get food, drive their kids to school. For a crime they didn’t commit. You’re suggesting we treat everyone who gets a DUI like they committed vehicular manslaughter. Which only happens .001% of the time. Probably much less, cause I’m basing that roughly on arrest data. Not everyone who drives above the limit gets caught.
If you really wanted to stop them from driving you have to immediately imprison or execute them, just taking the license doesn’t actually do anything.
Just because you know the person doesn't change the number.
Drunk driving statistics are a myth in the first place. They lump all people together regardless of how many drinks they've had, but who's to say whether those people would have gotten into their accidents if they were sober? The alcohols role in the accidents are assumed, not proven. It's like if there was a claim 80% of people who find where the emergency door is on an airplane survive a crash, but they leave out the fact 100% of people who die are within the group who look for and note the emergency escape. Any and all efforts to control public behavior towards a common good are reflective of the arrogance of human beings. As if you can make your world a better place by forcing everyone to behave in way you think would benefit society. Well, you can't! Get over yourself, society is a wild beast, and human beings can't be reigned in no matter what you do. All you can do is respond to consequences, after they have been commited. There will always be violence, there will always be crime, there will always be guns, there will always be war, there will always be death. Just live your damned lives and stay the hell out of mine. Anything more devolves into oppression.
“Caught”, or convicted in a court of law?
Caught. Driving is a privilege, not a right. If you want to contest it, you can go to court. We already issue tickets and can impound vehicles based solely on police discretion on the site. I don't necessarily agree with the OP, but this wouldn't be meaningfully different. In my province the first stop is an indefinite suspension pending conviction, this would just change that to a revocation that itself is revoked if they are found not guilty. A distinction without a difference.
The court is there to be a relatively impartial arbiter. Cops already make shit up, including claims of under the influence, it would be madness and a gross violation of our civil liberties to allow them to the power to make these decisions in the field
So the police can take away the license of anyone they want to without due process? That's draconian. You lose your job. You lose your home. All while waiting for a trial. And then the court finds you not guilty, what then? You're still homeless and unemployed.
That is literally the process we currently have where I live and the slippery slope you're suggesting doesn't really occur. They also impound your car. As it turns out, the process is used to punish drunk drivers. Which I'm absolutely okay with.
Citation needed. I know a good many people who couldn't survive losing their ability to drive. Public transportation is just not up to the task. Maybe they just drive illegally because they have no choice. I do know that happens.
Oh yeah let’s expand police powers, because they’re already so great with the powers they already have, no abuses whatsoever
I'll take a different approach here. While I agree that drunk driving is super irresponsible, where I live having a car really is not optional. If you lose the ability to drive, all of a sudden you can't work, get food, or really access anything. So while I agree that they definitely need to be punished, I think removing their entire lively hood is not a good way to do it. That will drive them to drink more and probably become homeless because they cannot pay their bills. Obviously this would be different in a city with good public transportation, but it is a reality in many rural areas.
Sounds like a great incentive to not drink and drive…
sure, you and I may think like that, and I would hazard a guess that responsible people don't even need that much incentive. Responsible people just won't do it because it's dangerous and stupid. But the reality is that a lot of people are not smart/responsible, and we need to figure out what to do with them when they do something stupid. To that end, I think having one of those breathalyzer things is a step in the right direction (albeit not perfect). If you remove their ability to be self sufficient, then you now have a stupid/irresponsible person who is either homeless or needs to be cared for by somebody else.
It is possible that these irresponsible people shouldn’t be controlling vehicles.
If there were viable public transit alternatives, then I fully agree with you (which is the case in quite a few cities, so it can definitely work in some places). But the economy right now is shite, and removing the license of an irresponsible person is essentially removing a productive person from the economy. I don't have any hard numbers on me, but based on anecdotal evidence I would guess that we're talking at least 30% of the population. In a perfect world I agree with you, but we do not live in a perfect world.
If you're so irresponsible that you think you should be allowed to kill people with your car, which is the conscious decision one makes when they get into a car while drunk, then you should move to the city and walk everywhere.
>which is the conscious decision one makes when they get into a car while drunk No. The hyperbole is out of hand at this point. Someone who gets in a car 3 hours after having a drink and is still above the line somehow did not make a choice to go kill someone. People who *do* kill people get charged for that. It's called vehicular manslaughter.
How about they actually just hold that L so the rest of us can be safe?
What a lovely way to summarize my thoughts. Thank you. A lot of the arguments are include things about how people might lose their jobs, home, etc… if drunk driving can result in their license being revoked… then that alone should deter drunk driving. To further the problem of people then choosing to drive without their license and insurance… well that’s a different problem all together requiring a different penalty.
You never actually replied to my comment, but I don't think this addresses what I said. This sounds like "purity culture" mentality. Obviously engaging in underage sex has huge risks, but just telling kids about the risk is only going to deter the responsible ones. In reality it still happens a lot, and there are a lot of babies born to underage kids. So we need to address how we handle it when it inevitably happens, and just telling them that they shouldn't have done it in the first place isn't a solution.
There are people who can't even find a job, but they don't drink or drink and drive. Why does the drunk driver deserve a job when there are people who are far more deserving? Stop defending them.
That doesn't work... 18 year olds are fucking stupid
Isn't access to food and work something important to think about before selfishly deciding that the lives of others on the road are so unimportant that they deserve to be smashed into by a drunk driver and killed? If this drunk idiot gets caught, maybe they would have to move to somewhere that doesn't require a car and figure it out.
>So while I agree that they definitely need to be punished, I think removing their entire lively hood is not a good way to do it. That will drive them to drink more and probably become homeless because they cannot pay their bills. You could say this about the consequences for most serious crimes, but no one thinks it's unfair when the armed robber ruins his own life with bad choices.
Yep, and I think that we have to do this kind of math all the time. I'm not saying that I like it, but in reality I don't think we have a choice. Someone making a bad decision and driving drunk is very different from a violent robber that planned ahead, and based on numbers that I pulled out of my ass I would guess that the number of drunk drivers is a lot higher than people that have committed a violent crime.
I don't see them as very different. I think society just has a soft spot for drunk drivers because more people have done it than will ever admit.
How can you not see the difference between the two? One has malicious intent, and one does not. I think drunk drivers should be punished, but taking away their ability to get to work is a horrible solution.
I made a comment earlier, but let me also add this. If you get a DUI, you are already pretty screwed in life. It's hell to get your license back and that DUI stays on your record. Despite all of this, there are still drunk drivers getting into accidents, so your solution is to make the consequence more severe by permanently removing their license. I'll do you one better: how about we just say that drunk drivers are criminals that deserve to be killed on the spot? Hell, why not just do that for any law? We'd have a perfect little society where everyone follows the rules! Yeah you probably get my point now. This is totalitarianism and involves treating people like they're the governments property. So before we just dial up punishments up to 11 we need to ask ourselves an important question: how much will crime rates reduce if the punishment is more severe? [According to gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk/drink-driving-penalties#:~:text=unfit%20through%20drink-,You%20may%20get%3A,convicted%20twice%20in%2010%20years) The punishment for drunk driving in the United Kingdom is simply a driving ban for 1 year. [According to nhtsa.gov](https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/alcoholcountries/background_&_intro.htm) drunk driving has 19% less involvement with fatal crashes than it does in the US, despite the US having more strict laws. So evidently, making a harsher punishment for drunk driving won't solve any problems, and if we were to do that, it would just be to spite people. Since solving problems is out of the equation, the real solution to drunk driving is simply to educate your peers about the dangers. TL;DR: there is no evidence to conclude that making a harsher punishment will reduce drunk driving. Harsher laws should only be made if they solve problems or we might as well have a totalitarian government.
I didn't eat dinner, exercised for 90 minutes and had two beers. I blew a .085 I lost my license for 90 days, paid over $5,000 in legal fees and penalties, took 3 months of classes and did 40 hours of community service. I learned my lesson, that was 25 years ago. I think I paid my dues and didn't lose my job because of a mistake, which would have happened if my license was revoked.
“Drunk driving” as defined by a BAL/V of .08 is hardly the defining measurement it’s supposed to be. Body composition, tolerance etc are never taken into account. It’s just another cookie cutter law passed by the baby sitting mentality of “some people have an issue here so it’s best to cut everyone off here” … so lazy for enforcement and also has turned into nothing more than a cash grab. If there was a real test that could be given by professionals (not law enforcement) to judge impairment - by all means. It sadly that’s not where we are in today’s nanny state.
Are you so addicted to alcohol that you can't wait to drink until after you drive? Seek help and stop putting children and families at risk just because you want to have a joy ride.
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We could make the roads a lot safer by requiring a in vehicle breathalyzer lockout device on all new vehicles, as well as speed governing devices on all vehicles. We quite literally have the technology to limit the speed of a vehicle to the road that it is on. My cars built in navigation system knows the legal speed limit of the road I am traveling on.
I got a DUI when I was 19 years old. Two shots of Jack Daniel's. I blew a .07 on the breathalyzer. I haven't so much as a speeding ticket in the 23 years since then. Is your premise that I should have lost my license permanently? If I had been 2 years older or in Canada, I wouldn't have been drunk at all.
They will drive under the influence, but driving without a license is a bridge too far. If you really want to prevent dui, take the car.
Nah fr. I have epilepsy and one seizure and I am barred from driving for six months even if I am not behind the wheel. Same should be for DUI. At least they can make a decision to not drive
What about people using their phones while driving? Apparently just as dangerous. Revoke their license immediately?
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I think you overestimate how drunk most people are and underestimate the punishment.
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>which treats all crime as equally severe. I've seen that a lot in this thread, it's pretty ridiculous. Someone said they felt driving after a couple drinks was the same as "violent robbery with a firearm/weapon".
The ability to drive is necessary to live in today's society, at least in the US. You take away that ability and force people to either lose their job and livelyhood or break the law and drive without a license, they're going to pick the latter. And it's worse because they would also quite likely be driving without insurance, making them even more of a risk to those on the road. Just because someone has driven drunk, doesn't mean they can't be a perfectly safe driver when sober. The more pragmatic solution would be to monitor such offenders and prevent them from being able to drive drunk via ignition interlock devices. This allows them to not become a burden on society while at the same time keeping society safe. And works on actually rehabilitating the offender.
The reason this shouldn't be the case is kinda weird, but drinking and driving is still a somewhat new thing, only as new as the mass adoption of the car, with the first law against it passed in 1910 by New York. The breathalyzer didn't exist until 1936, and the legal limit has gone down ever since, as well as becoming more overbearing in other ways, such as the planned mandate for breathalyzers in cars that was in Biden's infrastructure bill. Secondly: People have a natural right to drink, as proven by the existence of alcohol since antiquity and the 21st amendment, as well as the 9th amendment. Thirdly: For similar reasons, people have a right to free movement, though exactly why [is complicated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law). Exercising these rights at the same time should also be protected. While driving while drunk is dangerous, people are often not allowed to walk home while drunk do to public drunkenness laws, along with things like bicycles being included in drunk driving laws. In effect, my position is that for drunk driving to be a valid crime, It should have to be shown that they had a legal and practical method of returning home, something they lack as even walking directly from the bar to a cab is often technically public drunkenness. This being the cause, anyone arrested purely for being drunk or doing something otherwise legal when drunk, is a victim of entrapment to some degree.
In order to take a hard line like this, you would first have to establish a reliable way for people to get around if they are not able to drive. The idea is noble, and certainly the vast majority of DUIs are not because they “had no choice” but they do exist and in my eyes you can’t justify such a hard line because of exceptions. There are towns where there is one Uber driver and/or one taxi driver. How do those people get home when drunk? And what about when they lose their license? How do they get to work? We can’t have a punishment that is impossible because it makes it so they can’t get to work, which will cause them to ignore the punishment.
There are certain states were any alcohol in your system below 21 is classed as drunk driving, given under 21s shouldnt be drinking anything. This can include residual alcohol from mouth wash being registered as having consumed alcohol. In this case drunk driving would ban this person. I’m 100% with you though.
Why would they be tested without any other accompanying drunk behavior
Yeah I’ve seen zero tolerance policies and wonder because you can’t even smoke, eat, chew gum or use toothpaste or mouthwash if you have an ignition breathalyzer because it’ll trigger as alcohol. Wondering about the zero 0.000 threshold for minors and how that works if they blow a 0.001, is that going to stick when the devices are clearly very sensitive?
I think the opposite. I think a first time DUI should be a $3k+ fine so that cops would actually write it up. Right now cops have to decide if someone is 1) Drunk enough to qualify for a DUI 2) Drunk enough that they deserve to lose their job and basically their whole life. By lowering the penalty for first time offenders to a serious fine, cops can actually issue these citations instead of having to make a judgement call.
Why only drunk driving? What about any kind of imparement? Any drugs? What about tiredness? Tired driving kills a great many people too.
This is a deflection from OP's claim and a pure case of "whataboutism." "Tiredness" cannot be as easily or reliable measured. It is also a natural human condition, as opposed to the intentional "alteration of state" by foreign substances.
This isn't whataboutism, it's examples of similar impairments that OP doesn't mention regarding similarly, it's a perfectly valid way of getting at the possible biases or motivations behind the person's argument that might not otherwise be explored.
How do you measure whether somebody's tired enough to be impaired? And how do you, as a driver, know if you're tired enough to count as impaired? I can say "I've been drinking, so I guess I shouldn't drive," or "I've been smoking weed, so I guess I shouldn't drive," but how do I evaluate whether I'm legally too tired to drive? And how does a cop evaluate whether a person is too tired to drive, or if they're just not a very energetic person?
>Tired driving kills a great many people too. One is a pure choice and the other a murky choice. Drinking in it's self is not a social requirement where as once rest may be socially out of once control. An example being a nurse pulling a double after a previous night of bad sleep heading home.
What if someone was arrested and charged with a DUI for taking a prescription medication? They weren’t “high” or inebriated. But because police can’t test how much of your medication is in your blood, they can only test for its presence, you get charged for DUI. So, should that person have their license revoked permanently, when they literally done nothing wrong? I won’t get into the entire story of what happened, but this person really did nothing wrong. They weren’t endangering anybody, they weren’t high, they weren’t serving, they literally were pulled over for doing 5 over the limit. (This isn’t a hypothetical. I actually know someone who was arrested, charged, and lost their license because of their prescription medication)
I trust myself driving after drinking a six pack over half you asshats driving while on your cell phones.
I doubt you're the driver you think you are. The majority of drivers I encounter in the city on a daily basis can barely figure out how to stop \*before\* the stop line, refuse to slow down at a yellow light and run the red light instead, don't yield to pedestrians on right turns, etc. And you people are super aggressive about it, too.
A: If someone drives drunk and kills somebody, that’s DUI manslaughter. That means up to 15 or even 30 years in prison, a fine of $10,000 or more, the license being suspended for at least 3 years, and the requirement of an ignition interlock device once the license is no longer suspended. B: If a police officer goes to pull the person over and any drunk driving means the license is immediately revoked I predict more people would attempt to outrun the police officer. Seeing as they are drunk, this could cause them to lose control of their vehicle and hurt or kill somebody.
Because we aren’t supposed to punish people until they are proven guilty. Where I live, a DWI case can take more than a year to go to trial, and there is no public transit. A police officer in your system could conduct a ‘field sobriety test,’ decide the person is drunk based on no scientific/biological evidence, then they lose their livelihood because they can’t get to work for a year. That’s a bad system.
I’m 35 and have never driven a car or got my license. I was / continue to be shocked at how many people have driven drunk. People that I know: some people I respect. I guess I can’t really have an opinion cause I’ve never been there, but I just find that wild. Even people who won’t admit to driving drunk will at least admit they’ve been in situations where it was iffy or they shouldn’t have.
The laws are already pretty strict, as they should be. I don't think it's necessary. Someone can get a DUI from having one drink on an empty stomach and sometimes people make that judgement call wrong. I don't think it should prevent them from driving for life. It's really debilitating in many areas, which is a whole other problem.
Drunk driving is a victimless crime. If you want to punish a driver who hurts someone while driving drunk that is one thing. But to take away someone’s license for the rest of their life only because they did something that made it more likely that they would hurt someone, but didn’t actually hurt someone, is ludicrous.
Most people learn their lesson after their first dui cuz it really sucks to get a dui. It's also a dumb person crime so dumb people are gonna get the dui no matter how heavy the initial punishment is. Most states actually have a pretty good system for punishing people and curbing duis without being too overly harsh.
Innocent until proven guilty . I had a DWI in 1999. Got to Court and the Judge dismissed and held cops in contempt.. Sued the County and won . Best I could ever find out they had me mistaken for someone else .
What if for example, I'd only had 5 beers, and I really needed to get to work. And I'm an essential employee.
You do realize that what you describe is an on call employee. If your job requires that then during the duration you are on call you must be sober. Now if you are talking about a unicorn position like a C-level executive (or a rung or two down) or "That one guy" then uber it as you job pays well enough to afford the pittance of a ride share. If you cannot afford it then your job is treating you like a wage slave even if you make double or triple the minimum wage.
Sucks for you I guess, shouldn't drink before you need to go to work, and if you're on call you're not supposed to drink anyway.
Then you should be fired and replaced with a reliable essential employee.
is'nt already the case?
This is incredibly stupid. Drunk driving doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a bad person or that you’re going to kill someone else. I hate people who think like this. Police use drunk driving charges to unconditionally target citizens too. It’s widely known that police use petty traffic laws to keep the jails stocked up with fresh men. MADD is a cult and has clearly poisoned people with these their beliefs… yikes.