There was a study done that showed (and I’m going from memory here, so bear with me) that the rate of alcoholism among first time offenders wasn’t too much higher than the general population, but among repeat offenders it rose sharply. I think Qadgop the Mercotan linked to it in a thread once, I’ll see if I can find it in a bit.
What if you have a Purple Heart and a DUI? Do they forbid you from having a Purple Heart plate on your car? The Purple Heart plate is free in, I think, all 50 states. Will they make you pay for your DUI plate even if you qualify for a free Purple Heart plate?
We have to be careful with making the punishments for drunk driving harsher, or it might make the police and courts less willing to charge or convict someone of drunk driving. I think something like public shaming of drunk drivers is especially likely to have that kind of effect.
The proposed bill in the linked article wouldn’t make this a permanent thing. You would only have the DUI license plate for a year after you got your driving privileges back. That makes it less bad, at least. I don’t know if the DUI license plates are temporary in the other states that use them.
I agree. I really doubt many drunk drivers thought “what if I get a DUI?” before getting behind the wheel. Anyone who could and did exercise that kind of long-term thinking would probably have designated a driver, limited their alcohol consumption, or done their drinking at a place and time where they wouldn’t have to drive afterward.
Requiring special license plates for drunken drivers is a bad idea in my opinion, but it’s not as bad an idea as special plates for individuals convicted of sex crimes (i.e. child molestation). At least people are not likely to vandalize or firebomb cars of those with DUI plates.
The whole trend sounds like politically motivated feel-good maneuvering to me, and I don’t think it will make anyone safer.
I would be open to a revival of the practice of putting offenders in the stocks on public display for certain offenses (profiteering on gasoline prices during emergencies, spreading antivaccination lies etc.).
My Swedish friends told me (some years ago) that their drunk drivers lose driving privileges for life. That sounds good to me.
It sounds good on paper, but when actually implemented it creates a lot of problems. Europe in general has very good public transportation; compared to most of the U.S., very very good. In the two years I lived in Prague I only drove a car once, when I drove my boss’s car around the block to park it. I didn’t really need a car and didn’t really miss it. In the U.S. public transportation is usually much less convenient, or in some areas close to nonexistant.
Most people would probably say boo hoo, poor drunk drivers being inconvenienced, but the problem is this: here in Texas we’ve recently implemented a rather whopping surcharge to regain and keep your driver’s license after you get a DWI, $1000 a year for three years paid to the Department of Public Safety on top of all the fines, court costs, attorney’s fees, occupational license fees, and everything else they’ve paid. If they don’t pay their license is suspended, and the costs are so high a good some of them will never be able to get their license back. Unfortunately, a sizable percentage of them have figured out that you can get in a car without a driver’s license and the car will still start right on up anyway. It’s a crime if they get caught, but they figure, hey, I’ll never get my license back if I don’t get to work, right?
So prosecutors are are tearing their hair out because the number of arrests and prosecutions for driving on a suspended license have skyrocketed, wasting their manpower to the degree that they have to set aside an whole day out of every week just for the suspended license cases, and any money to be made on the program is being sent to DPS in Austin. Lots of DA’s offices are even offering pretrial diversions programs for first time DWI’s so they can dismiss their cases just to decrease their workload. Law of unintended consequences and all that.
I’ve just been reading Mark Twain, and he suggested (tongue in cheek, I suspect) a similar punishment for speeding – at each offense, the numbers on the plate would become progressively larger. His reasoning was that it was hard to read the numbers on a rapidly-retreating car, so it was necessary to make the numbers bigger for speeders so that they would still be readable, even if the driver was far away.
I could see the same thing for drunk drivers. At present, you have no way of telling. drunk drivers are repeat offenders because, even if they lose their licenses, many continue to drive. But if they had a distinctive plate, people would be aware of potential problems (and could avoid, if necessary) and there’d be a built-in method of signalling possible violations (you car keeps the plates for a certain period, even if you lose your license), and there’s also the embarassment factor.
It wouldn’t be fun to be a family member of a drunk driver, but the plate itself carries no penalty.
I can see the “red flag” argument. It tells other drivers, “Be careful–the driver of this car may be drunk.” But there are so many negatives that I think it’s a bad idea overall.
Why?
I don’t know any current bus schedules, but I imagine that they shut down at midnight. In order to make them palatable to the bar binge crowd, they’d have to run till 3. You could still leave your house at 11 and be back by 12 (for example) without running into more drunk people than you do now. There are a couple other scenarios I’m imagining, but neither make sense.
I thought about that, but if you’re close enough to see the license plate and the driver isn’t doing anything stupid, I would guess he is probably sober. And if he’s obviously drunk you probably don’t need the plates.
The last bus from the supermarket leaves around 1 AM. There is a bar across the street, and some of the more savvy drinkers there use the bus to get home. I can deal with one or two drunk idiots (and by the time they’ve had that much to drink, they’re all idiots.) but more than that, I’d be screaming to be let out of my skin.
I’m borderline misanthropic at the best of times, which is one reason I like shopping as close to three AM as I can manage. Dealing with people at their most ‘exuberant’ would be trial for me.
One more reason why I don’t actually advocate public policy based on my personal preferences. I know it’s highly out of whack.
I don’t like it at all. It’s not doing anything to lower the rate of DUIs. Look, a severely impaired driver is not going to stop and think about those license plates. He or she is going to hop in the car and drive anyway. So, what has having the license plate solved? Nothing.
Has taking their driver licenses away worked? No, it has not. We are constantly reading about repeat offenders with revoked licenses wrecking yet another person’s life due to the drunk’s irresponsibility.
I think it’s a waste of money and a waste of our legislators’ time.
I’m more in favor of some sort of interlock device.
Exactly. Just like lowering the legal limit from .10 to .08 . Who does that punish? Not the chronic drunk driver, who almost always blows a much higher BAC. It only catches those between .08 and .10, a group presenting a much lower threat than a chronic drunk driver. But it makes the ‘get tough’ crowd feel better, since punishing more people obviously correlates with preventing alcohol related injury and damage.