[sub]Of course, it would have been funnier if it had said Japan defines DUI passengers as accessories, like I originally read it.[/sub]
I know lots of people, including myself, who do not present “obvious” signs of impairment at .08 - it all depends on your tolerance. I also know people who are utterly trashed at .08 - it’s a measure of your BAC, not your impairment.
To me, this sort of thing is just a lot of noise. If we really wanted to cut down on drunk driving, we wouldn’t wait until you killed someone before handing out truly harsh penalties - you’d get a one year jail term for your 1st offense, not your 5th. Start slapping 1st timers with a year in jail and you’ll see the rate decrease.
Blaming the passenger is a cop out. It’s handing out a couple of minor punishments instead of one major punishment to the guy who actually did something wrong.
Well Strange Biller, DUI laws are different all over. I don’t know what they are here in Mass because I don’t drink and drive, so I’ve never had to worry about it. For all I care they take your car a license on the first offense permanently. But I think you’re wrong to say they are blaming the passanger.
I’m an off-and-on drinker. I enjoy a good drunk now and again, maybe every other month or so (“and so” meaning maybe every three months). But I find it wildly inacceptable to be in such a situation that one is drinking and driving.
To tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind closing down all places of public consumption and further increasing the DUI punishment, but that’s a little tangential here. I think CarnalK is on the right track, 100%.
Start? Heh. It is bad judgment to drink and drive. What, you think the only people that get DUIs were in accidents? Heck no, we hold them responsible for a bad judgment call. 
Boooooooooo! Get off the stage!
John Mace says…
I can understand how this could become a mess if it’s not implemented correctly, but why would it be unconstitutional? There’s no Constitutional right to behave in any manner you please on a public highway. The government’s entitled to restrict your behaviour when you’re using roads belonging to the people and administered by the government.
The maximum fine was raised to 500,000 yens last year.
There are two categories of DUI in Japan. “Drunken driving” is defined as showing clear signs of intoxication, namely difficulty in speaking, balancing, and walking straight. The penalty is up to 500,000 yens or up to 3 years in prison. “Driving under the influence” is defined as 0.15mg or more alcohol per 1 liter of breath, but without clear signs of intoxication. This can be penalized with up to 300,000 yens or 1 year.
As far as I can tell, just being a passenger with a drunk driver is not a crime. Officially, it’s only a problem if you encourage or order the driver to drink and drive, or if you lend a car knowing the driver is drunk. In reality, if the police finds a group of drunk people in a car they can claim that the passengers encouraged or knowingly allowed the driver to drive drunk, and it’d be virtually impossible to fight this charge in court. But it’s not quite as extreme as the OP seems to imply.
I didn’t know one pluralized “yen”.
Hmm, apparently one does not. Thanks for the correction. (But “dollar” is pluralized, isn’t it? 
)
Yeah, dollar is. Actually, my phrasing of “I didn’t know one pluralized yen” was a safe bet for me: if I was wrong, I could say that I really didn’t know, though now that I think about it, if I was right it would sound like I was being a smart-ass. 
Well, dems da breaks.
But I was pretty sure I was right, though not being a smart-ass intentionally.
erislover, there are two problems with CarnalK’s idea of the onus being on the prosecution.
-
We already have those laws on the books - as it has been pointed out, we already have the ability (existing laws) to punish a bartender or homeowner who serves a person to the point of intoxication and then lets them drive.
-
If we started expanding this law to cover passengers, HUGE amounts of resources would be wasted investigating whether or not a passenger knew the driver was drunk. And how do the police decide when to charge passengers and let the DA have a shot at it? Do they ticket every passenger in every DUI and make the DA’s office have to investigate each and every one of them?
Arguments about charging and then prosecuting with no evidence aside, this seems like a giant waste of law enforcement resources, to me. Especially when all we need to do is punish drunk drivers with harsher penalties if we want to reduce drunk driving.
Well, in a world where cops and prosecuters attempted to ticket, fine, and jail every offense they come across to the fullest extent theoretically possible I’d agree. In this world, I would imagine that only in cases of obvious intoxication (for example, an inability to walk might clue one in) would the passenger be charged, and in short, it would act much as every other crime: it is always the burden of the state to prove a citizen is guilty.
I would suspect that a video recording from the cop’s car demonstrating the condition of the driver upon exiting the vehicle would be enough, don’t you?
Not really - not unless you want to administer a test to potential passengers showing that they can competently identify drunken behavior.
And what about people who are not smart, mentally ill or otherwise unable to determine a person has been drinking - are they exempt? And if so, where is the line? When a person has an IQ of 60 they don’t need to be sure their driver is sober, but if they have an IQ of 61 they are now responsible?
How about young people? Is a 14 year old responsible for his drunk father driving him home? How about a 14 year old and his drunk 17 year old friend?
I stand by my assertion that this is missing the point. If you want to cut down on drunk driving, come down harder on the drunk drivers - don’t start looking for other people to blame.
Are you kidding? I want to ask a question of any cop, lawyer, or people of such ilk: am I completely batshit that, were this charge to become available, it wouldn’t be used unless it was beyond any shadow of doubt that a person would know such a thing (smell, stumbling, inability to speak, etc)? Or should I really fear the ol’ “Well they had a BAC of 0.08% and so the passenger must have known about it”? I don’t have a lot of faith in our justice system, but I have plenty more than that.
What about them now?! I mean, come on, this is nitpicking big time. The determination of responsibility is itself going to be in question for any law ever on the books, not just passengers involved in a DUI.
No one is necessarily blaming them, but rather, they have a positive responsibility as a good citizen—and possibly a friend!—to apply peer pressure to behave appropriately. Look, DUI is a crime, as is robbing a bank. If you followed a bank robber into the bank, twiddled your thumbs while he took the money, then casually strolled out with him, do you suppose you are not able to be charged with anything? “Oh, gee, officer, I wasn’t an accomplice, I was just hanging out with him. You know, along for the ride.” Any lawyers care to comment on how far I could get with that or what I might be charged with?
Avoiding this penalty is as easy as making a more or less sensible decision. The justification for passing a law like this might be specific, but the precident for such laws governing responsible behavior are myriad. Seat belts? DUIs without damage to property or life? Traffic laws? Hmmm… well gosh, we do expect people to behave responsibly. Pretty much our entire legislated lives are based on behaving responsibly.
WOW the tone of that post is all wrong. I’m sorry, ** Strange Biller**, I didn’t intend it to be so snarky. 
Of course we hold people who drink and drive responsible. But why extend that responsibility to the passengers? The threatened or actual harm only comes from the driver. What harm has the passenger committed by being a passenger?
Sounds like more nanny-state laws, like seatbelts or helmets. Even anti-smoking laws are based on the “harm” caused by second-hand smoke (usually in a workplace), not out of any concern for the harm the smoker is doing to himself.
What’s next, a law against sleeping with your boyfriend’s sister? Bad judgement and all, but a law against it?
Why would you suggest this be a law?
Because the passengers are responsible for being there? Really, there are plenty of ways to risk your life without endangering others, you are free to partake in those.
We do not want drinking and driving to be a socially acceptable behavior. Can you not perhaps see how being a passenger in such a case is implicit or tacit approval of breaking the law and endangering other lives? The passenger cannot even make the apathetic claim, “hey it ain’t my life”.
If I walk into a gun shop and suggest to the clerk that I am going to commit a crime with the weapon I am asking him to sell me, what do you suppose is going to happen? If we hold him partly responsible for any crimes the man commits, are we just passing a nanny law?
Eris, I don’t understand your argument that this isn’t “blaming” the passenger. If you’re going to charge them with a crime, how is that not “blame?”
Bottom line, this would have no effect on actual drunk driving (because odds are if you are willing to drive drunk with me in the car you are willing to do it alone), so why waste resources pursuing it? Why not spend those resources having heavier fines/jail sentences for the people actually endangering lives?
Hell, there are a few people I don’t get into a car because I dont trust them to DRIVE responsibly
as for DUI accessories, what about car poolers whose driver was drinking the night before, but is still over the limit? What about people on a bus? the Subway?
If you are sober, and your passenger is drunk, and he leans out a window and punches someone in the face, are you an accessory to assault?
I don’t know how much more clear I can make it.
If you rob a bank, that’s your repsonsibility, and you are blamed. If I knowingly follow you in, that’s my responsibility, and I am blamed. Again, try to think of the gun clerk. A customer makes his intent to use the weapon to break the law clear. The gun clerk is not responsible for the crime; it should still be a crime to sell the gun to this man.
I get the feeling that people are thinking I am holding the passenger responsible for the DUI; I’m not.
Because I think see that a passenger knowingly riding with a drunk driver amounts to tacit approval of the behavior.
The closest I’ve come to this situation was one time in college when I had a dinner party. One of the guests drank a lot, and so my friends and I told her that she wasn’t driving home, that her housemate (who was sober) was going to drive. She freaked out at us, but after about half an hour of us out-stubborning her, she agreed.
Once she got outside, she asked her housemate for the keys so she could put something in the trunk. The housemate tossed the keys to her. She hopped in the car and drove off as the housemate watched in horror.
I came real close to calling the police that night and giving them a description of her car and her route home. I didn’t, for what I imagine are the obvious reasons. But if she’d hurt somebody because I didn’t make that call, I would’ve been torn apart by guilt.
I think this proposed law is a fine idea. Design it with safeguards to protect the ignorant, but also make it clear that it’s not okay to drive along with someone who’s wasted.
Daniel