Reply #35: There's plenty of reasons to defend the one strike = lifetime disposal idiocy

[dmallind]

Remember what I disagreed with is NOT the punishment for actually doing harm while DUI but the idea that one DUI conviction should mean either lifetime driving bans or major prison terms.

The paranoia on thi issue is amazing. Think of what we are suggesting draconian prison terms for: Doing something that in some very low percentage of cases (even using MADD's own propaganda a drunk driver could drive so every bot for thousands of years before killing someone, 70% of the time the driver himself) might possibly hurt someone.

Can you think of another case where we criminalize tiny risks beyond minor citations?

Perhaps the issue here is the strange perception that this is not a tiny risk. Let's take that on first.

Let's start with the MADD propaganda that 41% of traffic fatalities are alcohol related (which in itself gets translated into small mninds by lousy reporting and incessant emotional handwringing to equal "drunk driving").

This comes from a "HBD" box for "had been drinking or taking drugs" being checked on the FARS - Fatal Accident Reporting System. here are some facts about this system:

Only half of the HBD checked drivers are ever tested for alcohol.
About half of those who ARE tested and recorded as HBD are over the legal limit. Many of the rest have trace readings that could be either outright errors or a squirt of cold medicine a few hours earlier.
It includes drivers who have been taking drugs - either legal or not, OTC or not.
It includes pedestrians
It is often checked routinely at certain hours of the night without any testing.

So we're already down to about 1/4 of the claimed ratio just based on the check box and how often it is is abused.


Now let's think of another issue. Even in MADDWorld 59% of fatal accidents involve no alcohol whatsoever. What causes those? Well let's see. Poor weather conditions. Badly maintained cars. Sudden appearances of deer, fallen rocks, etc. Just poor driving ability. What stops any of those things from applying to alcohol related (aka drunk driving) fatalities? Nothing at all obviously

No correction is made for any fatality where alcohol is present but where the accident could have been caused by other factors

And of course let's imagine that we have a truly drunk driver for once. Absolutely blotto. Certainly should not be on the road. He slowly weaves his car to a stop light at half the speed limit and finally owlishly perceives it is red, so stops. He is then rearended by a semi driver on his thirteenth hour without sleep and crushed like an egg. Bingo - another drunk driving death!

Fault is assumed to be with impaired driver even if in any other case the investigation would place fault with others

But do truly drunk drivers cause fatalities? Of course they do. But do they slaughter innocent people every time as emotional appeals would suggest? Not at all. In 70% of the cases where fatalities are caused by drivbers actually tested to be drunk, the driver themself is the only victim.

So in summary, only about 1/4 of claimed "drunk drivers" were ever demonstrated to actually BE so, they may or may not have been at fault. Alcohol may or may not have had any causal relationshiop even if they were, and 70% of the time they only kill themselves.

Now again using MADD's own numbers there are BILLIONS of "drunk driving" trips every year, and yet we get to a few hundred innocent people killed by truly drunk drivers yearly. Even if we assume the drunk driver was always at fault - pretend it's impossible that anybody can crash into a drnk or that a drunk's brakes can fail or that that a sudden obstacle can cause a drunk to serve out of control as it would any driver - the risk is minimal. Way way way lower than the risk of anything else that would cause such harsh penalties as many suggest. Essentially making a driver at a 0.08 level (which I have publicly demonstrated a 280lb person can achieve on ONE beer if stopped within a few minutes - and where do DUI patrols hang out usuually except just outside bars?) a lifetime pariah who must never be allowed to drive and will only be able to get the kind of job open to felons with extended prison terms is hardly an appropriate response to this risk. W

hy not instead criminalize the harmful action itself, and increase the penalties for the exacerbating factor of being drunk? So if you commit vehicular manslaughter and get say 5 years, if you were drunk you'd get 10. If you drive dangerously instead of getting 3pts and a $500 fine if you do it drunk you get 6pts and $1000 fine. Furthermore we could use a BAC that is truly drunk - 0.2 say, and make that a significant but still traffic offense if no other crime is present. Where else do we criminalize probability with no harm? Why should this be an exception when any sober (pun intended) analysis shows the risk is truly minimal? The only arguments against this POV are emotional. Laws should not be based on emotions.