The perp had 12 DUI convictions over the past 30 years. That’s one conviction every 2.5 years - but I’m guessing he actually drove drunk far more often that that, and was only caught once in a while.
Question:
is there any data out there that estimates how many drunk-driving events are actually represented by a single DUI arrest/conviction? E.g. a survey of convicts that asks, “on how many separate occasions did you actually drive drunk before you were finally arrested for it?”
I suppose there might be estimates out there, but I would expect any such data to be very inaccurate and unreliable. It would rely on memory and estimation. Also, how do you define “drive drunk”? Even one drink, enough to feel buzzed, enough to feel loaded, or high enough to be over 0.08 BAL?
I don’t have any hard data, but the two friends of mine who have been charged with DUIs were more or less habitual drunk drivers. Not snot-slinging drunk drivers, but they routinely went out a couple days a week and every Friday and Saturday and would drink enough to be buzzed and/or legally drunk pretty much every time.
Despite that, each of them only got nabbed once. I have a feeling that there’s not a good way to know, as I doubt most drinkers have anything close to an idea of when exactly they’ve crossed that not-clear-to-drive blood alcohol level. Yes, you can track what you’ve had versus time, but there’s also a huge amount of ambiguity introduced by whether you ate beforehand, whether the bartender has a heavy hand, whether one beer or wine’s ABV is the same as another, what you actually weigh, etc…
So with the people I know, I pretty much firmly believe that neither of them believed they were actually drunk. One even said that outright when he was telling me about the experience- “I didn’t have any idea that I was that loaded until I saw the cop’s dash-cam footage.”
Therefore, I suspect for the average DUI arrest, it’s probably the tip of an iceberg.
You know, I read of a interesting sentencing idea. First offense- entirely up to the judge.
2nd offense within 5 years= Mandatory jail (30 days?), confiscation of vehicle, no more driving for 5 years, or less than that after 1 year sober from AA.
The idea is that anyone can make a mistake, have two glasses of wine at dinner, etc.
But if you do it twice, you are a danger to the public safety.
How that asshole kept driving after 12 DUI shows a issue with Michigan enforcement.
My state has mandatory jail for a 2nd offense within 5 years, 10 days minimum up to 6 months at the discretion of the court. We used to have a 3rd offense felony, but DUI law changed recently to allow for a more lenient approach for first offenses, and moved the felony to a fourth conviction, I think. I don’t defend dui cases because I haven’t studied up on the new law yet.
Get caught once in the UK and you are pretty well stuffed. You will lose your licence for 12 months minimum (more if really over the limit) which is bad enough, but you will have a hard time getting insurance when you do get your licence back.
15+ years ago, just under 3000 people were killed by terrorists on one day; this country responded by spending billions of dollars & sending the military to Iraq & Afghanistan. Yet that year, & every year since over 10,000 people have been killed by a different form of terrorist, just in ones & twos.
Now, think of all the mandatory safety features in your car: seat belts, air bags, backup cameras. People gripe about them at first but now most people wear a seat belt w/of issue.
If MADD really had cojones, we’d have blown tube in every new car & not just an after-market install of those convicted of DUI. Making them required equipment in new cars would take away the whole DUI issue within a few years, nor would it be a subject of embarrassment when a guest gets in your car.
I’m not saying your idea is completely without merit, but the DUI landscape has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Drunk driving was pretty much accepted when I was young; no longer. Just ask bar owners how much less business they see due to DUI laws.
It used to be when I saw someone driving erratic (swerving, changing speeds, etc.), I assumed they were drunk. Now, I assume they are texting or using their cell phone. If I can get a glimpse into their vehicle, I am most often correct. Frankly, I consider cell phone use - mostly texting and looking at the screen - as the most important driver safety issue, even more than DUI.
Sounds like Michigan legislators need to be made personally responsible for extracting the bodies from drunk-driving fatality scenes and taking them to the morgue. And then required to inform the families. Seems fair, since they are responsible for the conditions in their jurisdiction. After a few months of this they can give some thought to what kind of drunk-driving legislation they think might be appropriate for their state.
I recall something similar happened in the province I lived in - at which point the newspapers dug up that 3 years after a DUI conviction, a second DUI was considered a “first offense” again. So some fellow eventually killed someone only to have it come out that he’d managed to have a “first DUI offense” every 3 or 4 years for several decades. They changed the rule after that.
Also had a guy in our company newsletter who was “walking to work to get fit”. Article did not mention that his wife had told him - “You were an idiot, don’t expect me to drive you to and from work”. he’d been out in cottage country at the bar in his brand new truck, tried to drive home, and hit a tree… in front of the police station. And of course, insurance did not pay for his truck due to DUI, so he couldn’t afford another one, even when he eventually got his license back.
Shouldn’t it be the drunk driver who has to do these things? Legislators may make the laws but the person who drank and drove is ultimately responsible.
[QUOTE=orwell]
It used to be when I saw someone driving erratic (swerving, changing speeds, etc.), I assumed they were drunk. Now, I assume they are texting or using their cell phone. If I can get a glimpse into their vehicle, I am most often correct. Frankly, I consider cell phone use - mostly texting and looking at the screen - as the most important driver safety issue, even more than DUI.
[/QUOTE]
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Yep. I’ve said dozens of times; I’d rather be on the road with *buzzed drivers than people who are talking / texting.
*Buzzed being somewhat over the limit; not drooling and passing out at the wheel.
No, riled-up emotion isn’t a good basis for decision-making, but neither is rampant ignorance or self-serving political pandering to ignorance. I wouldn’t refer to paramedics or other first responders who routinely deal with highway carnage caused by drunk drivers as some kind of zealots in the throes of riled-up emotion. Quite the opposite – you get emotionally desensitized to it after a while. What remains is the objective knowledge of what can happen. Something about which the Michigan legislators, if the story is accurate, seem to be totally clueless and downright irresponsible.
Here is how Ontario treats drunk driving. There is a separate table of what happens if you’re in the “warn” range of 0.05 to less than 0.08 BAC. The link is what happens at 0.08 and over.
The penalties are tough, and I agree with them. The balanced non-emotional perspective here is that I don’t agree with going overboard and requiring, say, a breathalyzer interlock in all new cars as suggested upthread. This is pointless overkill. IMHO, as much as I support reason-based clampdowns on drunk drivers, the problem here is that MADD (the only organization AFAIK that advocates this nonsense) is a typical example of a bureaucracy that has served its purpose in many jurisdictions that now have strong laws and enforcement, and is continuing to lobby for measures that are becoming ridiculous simply because of the self-perpetuating nature of bureaucracy. But meanwhile, there are too many other jurisdictions that seem to regard drunk driving with a wink and a nod as nothing more than some minor mischief.
According to the article linked by OP, the guy has been driving on a revoked license since 1990. Michigan law apparently says that a 3rd offense within 7 years is a felony, punishable by up to five years in jail, so I would submit the problem isn’t the law itself, and since he’s been caught twelve times, law enforcement has been doing their job. His inmate record says this isn’t his first stay at the Big House, so the prison system has tried to deal with him as well. (The state record doesn’t show how much time he’s spent in local jails either, and I’m not going to pay for the records to see how much he’s been fined over the years.)
They took away his license and threw him in jail. He got out and went right back to the sauce. They threw him in jail again. He got out and went right back to the sauce. They threw him in jail again … lather, rinse, repeat.
At some point, there’s gotta be a different way to handle him, but I’m not sure what that would be.
ETA: **wolfpup: **how do the penalties in Ontario differ from what Michigan has already tried with him?
ISTM that the phrase “the person who drank and drove” and the adjective “responsible” don’t belong in the same sentence. Yes, I know you mean he is accountable for the consequences, but the absence of sufficient deterrent sends a message that it’s pretty much OK to do this. Such as the example where this lunatic apparently repeatedly drove drunk again and again – if he got caught a dozen times, one can only imagine how many times he actually did it, putting many innocent people at risk each and every time.
I don’t particularly have a problem with “talking”, but that’s a whole different discussion. Texting while driving is potentially very dangerous. Whether more or less dangerous than being impaired depends on the circumstances, but both should be subject to appropriate penalties. One being potentially even more dangerous than the other doesn’t make either one OK.
Not just that. Distracted driving in general. We tend to hyperfocus on a couple of aspects of safety at a time without thinking it through in the general case.
Is drunk driving bad? Yes. But that’s just something that’s easy to enforce. The same people who will call you a terrorist or murderer for driving drunk today will eat a big mac and fries while fiddling with the radio in their car tomorrow. And if they get pulled over for swerving, after determining that they aren’t drunk, the cop will say “Just be more careful next time, okay?”
My apologies, I was reacting to the posts I was seeing and the knowledge that some states have relatively lenient DUI laws and didn’t read the linked OP first. The penalties in Ontario look to be a bit tougher, but I agree, that would make no difference given the circumstances you describe. All you can do is have some appropriate combination of rapidly escalating jail sentences combined with mandatory treatment programs. Kind of a moot point now as it looks like he won’t be with us for 27 years or so. But perhaps stronger deterrence and medical intervention could have caught this earlier and saved the girl’s life.
To be fair, that 10,000 includes mostly the drunk drivers, themselves.
If you just look at the innocent people killed (passengers, other non-drunk drivers), it was more like 3,000 in 2001.
So, there haven’t been three 9/11’s every year because of drunk drivers. Only one. Each Year. (Well, the numbers, like all highway deaths, are going down. Cars are actually getting safer)
So totally different, and completely makes sense to spend billions of dollars, thousands of US Soldiers’ lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and fundamental loss of civil liberty in fighting the thing that happened once in 2001, and almost nothing on the thing the same size that happens almost every year.