# Drinking and Driving: Is Enforcement Hypocritical? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2009, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272 "2009-10-27T06:28:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/21 "2009-10-29T00:05:01Z")
I think it’s a little hypocritical to ( at least where I live ), force bars to provide parking (can’t get a license if you don’t!) and then make them liable if people drive home drunk. Clearly a conflict, I’d say. (I have been in an accident, that almost took my life, caused by a drunk driver. And I’ve made my living, most of my adult life serving alcohol. For what it’s worth.) I don’t think I know of any way I would change the laws, it’s hairy to be sure. But to answer the OP, yeah, I have always found this part a little hypocritical. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/22 "2009-10-29T01:20:45Z")
> [@Recliner](#): > > **On a purely theoretical level: is the way we handle the enforcement of drunk-driving laws “fair”, firstly, and secondly, is it rational (in the sense of altering the behavior)?** I recently read the book _Superfreakonomics_ (Stepven Levitt & Stephen Dubner), which revealed what I think is a rather shocking statistic (pg.2) that there is only 1 arrest for every 27,000 miles driven drunk. Which means that on average you could drive drunk across the the entire country (coast to coast) and back and do this routine four times before you could expect to get caught! People drive drunk because they can get away with it. We could step up enforcement and make penalties harsher. But that requires the public to accept increased taxation and general hassle of dealing with random checkpoints to deter DUI’s. How much would this enforcement cost, and could that extra money be used in some more efficient way to save lives? I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/23 "2009-10-29T01:36:28Z")
I seem to recall that a couple of American bars installed Breathalyzers, and the patrons immediately started to use them to compete for the highest score. Typical. The solution would seem to be to configure the machine to simply say “yes, you’re over the limit”, or “no, you’re under the limit”. Probably too much liability, though. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/24 "2009-10-29T04:00:55Z")
Fortunately, most drunk diving occurs between midnight and 4 am when everyone else on the road is likely to also be driving drunk. ---
**Author:** ![Recliner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a88e57/32.png) [@Recliner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recliner)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/25 "2009-10-29T10:14:33Z")
> [@Oredigger77](#): > > I think this is the best solution. People don’t know how drunk they are when they get behind the wheel and even doing the calculation of a drink per hour can give wrong answers based on what you’re drinking and your size. I luckily live about a mile from the bar in my town so I just walk home most nights but knowing would make that decision easier. If people knew they were over the limit I think less would drive rather then just feeling ok then driving. > > The other thing I think would help would be using physical tests to determine drunkenness. I’ve helped out with training new police officers by being the drunk subject for their roadside sobriety tests and at a .08 I feel fine and have better motor control then most people who are stonecold sober if we tested for ability to drive rather then alcohol content I think we could do a better job of eliminating the dangerous drivers. In fact, this really appears to be one true flaw – individuals are engaging in behavior (consuming alcohol at a bar) that, to any reasonable outsider, appears to be completely acceptable in the society. The problem is that individuals are told to either find a designated driver (I know there are people willing to do this, but I don’t recall too many 23-year-olds who enjoyed going to bars and not drinking), or just “know when to say when”. Great, but you **don’t** know, and nobody’s willing to tell you because they don’t trust the other members of society to protect them from litigation. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/26 "2009-10-29T20:49:40Z")
Man, I’m glad I don’t live in one of these places I keep hearing about where drunk driving is apparently socially acceptable. Drunk driving is wrong, everyone knows that it’s wrong, it’s wrong even if you don’t get caught, and it’s perfectly reasonable and proper for the police to enforce the laws against it so far as they’re able. No, they won’t catch each and every drunk driver, but that’s not hypocrisy, that’s real life, and if you don’t like that, the solution is to lobby for the police to have more resources to better fight the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/27 "2009-10-30T21:44:12Z")
I think it’s hypocritical if you accept that society speaks with a single voice. That voice says it’s OK to entertain yourself in a bar and then go out to their parking lot, get in your car, and drive home. That voice also says that if you get caught and measured above a certain level you are in big trouble, and if you hurt or kill somebody in this condition you’re in even more. But there are many competing voices. I think it is reasonable and sensible to eliminate parking lots at bars, or to require breath tests for people to drive out of the lot. But then I’m not a drinker and don’t own a bar. Plenty of people who are or do would speak up against these ideas. We expect consistency in our world. If they rewrote all the laws every day, nobody could keep track of them, so the default position for tomorrow’s laws is that they match today’s, and today’s laws could have any twisted or obscure history you can imagine. When they want to make some incremental change, like changing the laws for drinking and driving, those proposed changes have to make some kind of sense considering present and prior conditions, but the whole system doesn’t have to make sense as if it were conceived and designed all at once in a consistent way. I guess that means that the laws are hypocritical but still a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![zenith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zenith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zenith)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272/28 "2009-11-06T14:24:14Z")
The big hypocrisy is the pre-trial diversion racket that prosecutors run. A first-offender with $2K and plenty of time for AA meetings, urine analyses at which seemingly 1/2 of everyone shows up for “cattle call” at once ( a 10 a.m. appointment to pee could take until 2 p.m.), one-on ones with counselors who berate and bully more than they counsel, and LOTS of community service can get the slate wiped clean at the end. Poor folks who don’t have a spare $2K lying around (they always want cash;not checks or credit cards–and forget a payment plan, even if you’re willing to give 'em a lien on your house), and/or work 2 or more low-paid jobs such that they just don’t have the time for all the bullshit get license suspensions, ratted-on to their insurance cos. and credit bureaus, and lifetime criminal records. I know of the diversion program in my county because an ex-supervisor of mine had to go through it and warned the rest of us of what would be in store for us if caught DUI in this county. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-and-driving-is-enforcement-hypocritical/515272.md?page=1)