Perhaps it hasn’t been clear, but my point about the list isn’t to actually advocate for execution or exceptionally harsh penalties for this stuff.
My point is this: there is no driver, at all, who hasn’t weighed the decision to drive against some level of degraded performance, however small. If you have driven when even just a little bit tired, then you have decided that your convenience is worth more than the safety of others. If you have done *anything *in your car that isn’t driving–fiddling with the radio, eating, even just speaking with a passenger–then you have put your own convenience above the safety of others. If you have driven with degraded senses, such as slowed reaction time or with poor night vision, then you have put your convenience above the safety of others.
All of these decisions are fundamentally the same as when someone decides to drive drunk, just at varying scales. Some of them are relatively innocuous and considered acceptable, such as talking with a passenger. Some of them are as bad as driving drunk and yet for some reason considered acceptable, such as driving while being extremely underslept.
I am also not saying we should treat drunk driving any less harshly than we already are. Just that we are doing ourselves a disservice by not putting all of these things on a spectrum. Demonizing drunk driving in particular feels less productive than it should be because it ignores all sorts of other degraded driving. It’s one of the worst forms, certainly, but there are many other things close to it on the spectrum.
Texting and driving gets some attention, but the penalties for that should be as harsh as a DUI, and as far as I know that’s not generally the case. It still doesn’t feel like there is a coherent, general approach to fighting degraded driving. I hope true self-driving comes sooner rather than later since I don’t really expect a seismic shift in attitudes here.
I don’t know about other states, but in California distracted driving is already an offense. The cops used it to ticket cellphone drivers before the laws went into effect.
The difference between drunk driving (and texting) and the others is that they have such a high probability of causing unsafe driving that you don’t need to wait until the unsafe driving happens. In California, by the way, you are not allowed to hold a phone or even touch it except to initiate something like the GPS. Not that people pay attention to the law.
As I said above, cars should be able to detect unsafe driving long before they are ready to drive themselves.
The penalties are so small that they are effectively zero: $20 for the first violation, $50 for the second, and no points on the license. Compare to DUIs, that cost thousands and can result in jailtime for multiple offenses, no to mention their effect on insurance. If the penalties were based solely on their effect on driving, one would expect them to be similar. From looking around, it appears that most states only impose token penalties for texting and driving.
Is it because it’s easier to generate moral outrage against drunks than teens that can’t put down their phones? Maybe–if so, that’s actually encouraging to some extent, because the outrage against drunk driving did ramp up over time, so maybe the same can be true of other forms of distracted driving. But it took decades. It would be nice if we could just skip to the end and generate outrage in actual proportion to the level of distractedness.
You may well be right about cars detecting distracted driving. It’s easy to detect repeated drifting out of one’s lane, slow reaction to braking, etc. A few false positives aren’t a disaster here, though one can imagine some people getting unlucky under unusual circumstances. I’d rather not my car call 911 on me just because I drove through a construction zone and the car thought I couldn’t stay in my lane.
That’s patently wrong. Officially in California it’s $20 but it winds up being around $150 on first offense due to massive court fees and add-ons they get you with on the bill. Plus you do get points if it’s your third offense.
I know this because I got dinged with one. There was an accident on a nearby roadway and while I was stuck in traffic that hadn’t moved in a fewl minutes I decided to look at my phone while everything was dead-stopped and my car was in park. Then a cop on a motorcycle deliberately drove straight down the line between all the stopped cars and looked down to see who was looking at their phones while stopped. Then afterwards he flagged those cars and about me and four other cars got pulled over immediately when traffic started moving again and presumably all of us got the same ticket for using a phone “while driving”.
Apparently looking it up now you can actually fight it if you claim your vehicle wasn’t moving since it only applies to vehicles in motion but the fact the cop knowingly went down the line flagging people to pull over means that’s a tactic they all use and will claim the vehicle was in motion if you fight it.
Distracted driving is dangerous and should have penalties. But normal drivers can look at the radio for a second or two and look back at the road. Drunks won’t sober up in a few seconds.
I think** Disheavel **is right. There is no excuse for driving drunk. The problem is that penalties for impaired driving aren’t strong enough deterrents and too many people are willing to listen to sob stories from drunks instead of pleas for justice from the victims.
Significant discussion today. A kid from NE Indiana drove drunk Friday night and crashed into an Amish buggy. Three children have died.
No, they can’t. During those couple of seconds, the distracted driver is worse than any drunk. You can go from an apparently clear lane to initiating a fatal accident in two seconds. The only difference is the duration of exposure. A person that spends 5 minutes over the course of a 4-hour drive messing with their radio is worse (in terms of their impact on public safety) than a drunk going on a 5-minute drive from the bar to home.
That’s still a token amount compared to DUI penalties. Distracted drivers kill thousands per year. The penalties should commensurate, if not higher (because societal trends appear to be in favor of distracted driving and against drunk driving).
I voted no. IMO it’s similar to criminal negligence causing death or manslaughter. The driver did not intend to kill someone, but they committed an action that any reasonable person knew could kill someone.
I don’t think that warrants the death penalty. I think it warrants a long time in prison, permanent loss of license, and restitution… with the first two applying even if nobody got hurt.
I remember people bitching about seatbelt laws when they came out, but it looks like the vast, vast majority wear them now.
According to this company, they’re pretty easy. I also don’t see why they can’t be modified to only require a breath before starting & not during driving when it’s a new car OEM. My state requires an annual safety inspection, it would just be one more thing on that list.
Just like a bartender can be criminally charged with serving an obviously drunk patron who then gets into an accident, I’d think that employee would have legal liability if the boss crashes.
My father was killed by a distracted driver, The guy took his eyes away from driving to put a CD in the player, then, when he looked up again, my dad was there on his motorcycle, and got sandwiched between the asshole who struck him, and the truck in front. There were no charges my family was told about, maybe he got a ticket, and hopefully his insurance was badly dinged, or cancelled. I will never forgive him. Hope the music was worth it… Should have been manslaughter at the least, if not murder.
I’m not here to tell anyone what their attitudes toward drunk driving or distracted driving should be. Just that they should be similar. Every time you do something that’s not driving, you should think: “Would I drive drunk? No? Then I probably shouldn’t be doing this, either.” When your eyes or attention aren’t on the road, it’s worse than driving drunk. That you aren’t doing it 100% of the time isn’t even close to a valid excuse.
I need a third choice; it depends. No record at all and its the first recorded time you have driven drunk and maybe say 5-10 years? You are a repeat offender, you have several DUIs on record, a couple accidents, and your license is currently revoked and you are fleeing the police; fry them.
But in the interest of full disclosure I am in general fine with the death penalty.
I’d probably fall into the “It Depends” category too. I am not opposed to the death penalty, I believe some crimes are so egregious that one should pay with one’s life. But I also acknowledge the injustice in our justice system and the unfair application of death penalty sentences. But if I take that out of the equation, if you are drunk per the legal blood alcohol limit, and you choose to drive and as a result of that decision you cause an accident that takes the life of an innocent person then the death penalty should be a sentencing option depending upon circumstances - at minimum life in prison with no parole. I do not know if legally this is pre-meditated murder or not, nor what classification this should apply to that includes the death penalty as an option. Not terribly interested in the legal definitions here. To me it is simply the fact that in 2019 there is zero-absolutely-no-one who is not aware that drunk driving is illegal and has not seen in either the news or heard from others that when drunk driving you are impaired and may kill an innocent person(s). You knew it and the consequences, you did it anyway, now you pay for it. I won’t weep if the sentence imposed is the death penalty*.
*Assuming a fair justice system and application of the law.
They should face manslaughter charges, with the same potential penalties as any other form of manslaughter would garner. For the first offense, anyway. I’d say for multiple offenses (at later dates, not just more charges for wiping out more people in a single “accident”), it should go up to a murder charge, and again, face similar penalties. If the jurisdiction has the death penalty, then sure.
I think that California has gotten it right, a thing that I have recently learned. Upon being convicted of DUI, offenders sign the Watson advisement, which states:
(bolding mine)
That seems fair. You get one warning and then it’s murder if you do it again and kill someone. California doesn’t have the death penalty, so I guess that makes it a life sentence at most, which I’m OK with.
Those in favor of murder charges being brought against drunk-drivers who knowingly drive drunk and ultimately kill someone as a result, tell me what the difference(s) is between that and a sleep-deprived person doing the exact same thing resulting in the exact same outcome? Should the sleep-deprived driver who knowingly got behind the wheel, well aware that his/her driving abilities may be negatively impacted, who ends up killing an innocent person, be put in prison for the rest of their lives? Why or why not?
(If this has already been asked, please just ignore)
Are there any objective criteria for sleep deprivation?
I rarely get 8 hrs of sleep in a night. What if you’re in bed for 8 hrs but don’t get a good night’s sleep? Worried about something, too hot/cold, snoring roommate, unusual surroundings/other than your own bed/hotel room? How do they factor into it? What about driving fatigue (driving too long) vs. true sleep deprivation?
With DUI there is both a BAC concentration & field sobriety tests.
Would a tired person fail field ‘sleep depriviation’ tests, or would the shot of adrenaline that most people get from a traffic stop be enough to wake them up so that they can balance on one foot or walk heel-to-toe, etc.?
In my hypothetical, BAC and field sobriety tests (unfortunately) never enter into the picture. The drunk driver gets behind the wheel despite knowing they shouldn’t and they kill someone. The sleep-deprived driver gets behind the wheel despite knowing they shouldn’t and they kill someone. Are these people guilty of the same or very similar crimes? Why or why not?
This happened with the guy who killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart 10 years ago. It was his 2nd or 3rd DUI and they charged (and convicted) him with 2nd degree murder. He’s doing 51 years to life. That seems about right to me.
Mythbusters did an episode several years ago comparing the effects of sleep deprivation vs the effects of alcohol on driving performace. Guess which one caused them to drive the worst?
I am not sure if people are equally informed about the dangers of sleep-deprived driving. Like I see DUI warnings plastered everywhere.
And… my god, if I had called into work sleepy every time my kids had a colicky night, I’d have been fired 10 times over. Or when I had to get up way too early to attend morning formation in the military. Right or wrong, society encourages sleep deprivation, and until that changes we’re not gonna execute people for doing it.