Should drunk driving be a crime?

Great Debates
1

I’ve been having an argument about this in the flame section, and I’d like to move it here, where – I hope – people can be a little more logical and a lot less likely to dismiss my argument out of hand with an insult.

It is my position that if driving a car is legal, then driving drunk should, by the same rationale, also be legal. Note that I do not approve of driving drunk and harming someone. If you want to get all liquored up and weave across the road, drunk as a lord, so long as no one is harmed, there is nothing which should be punishable by law there.

Let me propose a thought experiment. Suppose I was to take a revolver with six chambers, put one bullet in the chamber, spin the chamber randomly, point the gun at you, and fire. Have I committed a crime, even if the gun does not fire? Most if not all of you will probably agree that I have committed a crime at this point.

What if the revolver has 100 chambers? I put one bullet in, spin the chamber, point at you, and fire. Have I still committed a crime? Probably.

How about 1000 chambers? 10,000 chambers?

In the United States, the odds that you will kill another person with your vehicle are approximately 1 in 10,000 per year. By simply turning the ignition on your car, you have effectively put a bullet in the chamber and spun it. Yet nearly everyone here probably believes that this is an acceptable risk.

I do not drive. I have never driven a vehicle. I am 40 years old, and I have managed to lead a very active life without ever needing even to learn how to drive. Driving is an antisocial behaviour. I am required to live at risk of death every single day because you lot think your convenience is more important than my life. Yet most of you would argue that a drunk driver – whose chances of killing me are not significantly greater than yours – should be punished by the whole weight of the law. In fact, some of the folks over in the Pit argued drunk drivers should die.

Your defence of driving is probably based on the fact that, while you are willfully endangering my life for the sake of your convenience, you do your best to minimize that risk. So what about the drunk driver who drives slowly and carefully, taking little-travelled back streets and creeping along so as not to unduly endanger others? Why is he any worse than you? Or rather, why are you any better than him?

Intelligent discussion only, please. If you want to call me names, do so in the Pit thread here.

2

Really? I mean really?

3

The odds of killing a person when you’re drunk behind the wheel are greater than if you’re sober. So, for you analogy, driving is the 10,000 chamber gun, but driving drunk is the the 1000 chamber gun (or even less). (And the one in 10,000 figure is skewed, since it includes drunk drivers. If you remove drunk drivers from calculating, then the odds go down.)

The problem with your “harming someone” rule is that you don’t know when the drunk driver might harm someone. At this moment, he’s not harming anyone, but who knows what will happen in five minutes? If you stop the drunk driver and – at the very least – keep him from continuing to drive that reduces the chances of an accident. If his car isn’t moving, he can’t hit anyone.

As for the punishment, cops can’t stop every car, and some drunk drivers may not drive in a way that would make it obvious they were drunk (until they hit someone). By making it against the law – with serious consequences – drunk drivers are kept off the road, either because they’re in jail, or because people don’t drink enough to have their reaction time affected. Even if the odds of killing someone while drunk were 1 in 10,000, the odds of killing someone with a car when you’re not driving it are considerably less.

4

Yes, drunk driving should be a crime.

And you are fooling nobody.

5

Nothing more to add than to agree with this.

Am I going to have to bring back my DNFTT signature?

6

I believe the term is called “negligence”:
Failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party.

7

Using your logic, nobody should have a problem with a car that lobs running chainsaws toward the sidewalk every time it shifts gears. The crime should be only if the chainsaw actually injures or kills someone.

The state has lots of crimes where the crime is at the point one is recklessly endangering others, not the point at which actual injury or death occurs, and I have no problem with that.

8

(bolding mine)

I think most arguers would dispute the bolded part, which is decidedly counter-intuitive. I would want to see a solid statistical study done, at a minimum, before accepting this assertion. Without such a study, I have to say that my casual observation is that drunk drivers tend to have more, and (importantly) more serious accidents than non-drunk drivers. Where I might get in a fender-bender, a drunk driver is more likely (again, my observation, not scientific) to smash things all to hell and kill people in the same circumstances.

On the other hand, I think you make a good point. There are, I believe, cases where people have been ticketed or indicted for drunk driving for just sitting in their cars while drunk. I think this is one of those cases where society has determined that preventive measures (making drunk driving itself against the law) are worth the inherent unfairness that you point out.
Roddy

9

I guess you’d be OK with pilots getting drunk and then flying airplanes too? And you wouldn’t mind being one of their passengers, right?

10

Statistics blow.

The odds of getting hit by lightning are around 400,000 to 1. However, what are the odds of being struck by lightning when you are holding a golf club in an open field in one of the worst electrical storms in the past decade?

So, fuck the odds of being hit by a drunk driver. What are the odds of being hit by a drunk driver when you are parked at a light and he/she is coming up behind you falling asleep at the wheel? MUCH FUCKING WORSE.

One concept that you will have to get through your head is that it is much much easier to draw a line of tolerance that comes down hard on the drunk driver than it is to draw a line of tolerance that comes down hard on the family of six sitting in the minivan at a red light.

There is nothing noble in defending your position. It’s impossible to calculate all the odds for every moment, so we cognitively err and come down hard on the fuck ups.

11

The odds go down to zero if driving is completely illegal. Driving is not mandatory, it’s not, to my knowledge a constitutional right anywhere on Earth, and it is not required for survival. It’s an optional activity in which people choose to engage because they value their convenience over the safety of others. Is this not exactly the same rationale used by drunk drivers? My argument is two-fold: either drunk driving should be legal, or all driving should be illegal.

This is the same argument used for racial profiling. Since a black person in the United States is considerably more likely than a white person to commit a crime, according to your argument we should intern all black people. They haven’t committed a crime YET… but they might! They’re more likely to do so than the general population. Why not make everyone else safer by pre-emptively arresting them?

In fact, “pre-emptive incarceration” is now something Obama is mulling over, according to the New York Times. We can see that the rationale used for arresting drunk drivers is not harmless.

To those of you whose contributions consist of calling me a troll: I’ve already indicated that if all you have to contribute is name-calling, please take it to the Pit.

12

Herman Kahn, is that you, you wacky fellow?

Stranger

13

You claim to be Canadian–why are you saying “we”? Get your story straight.

14

Using the gun analogy, I would say it doesn’t matter how many chambers are in the gun, if you knowingly fire the gun at someone and you know there is a chance of killing them.

If I were to pose the question I’d focus on the definition of “drunk.” Is it blood alcohol level or the way in which someone drives?

It used to be the way someone drives but that was deemed too subjective, hence the blood alcohol measure. But the same measurement could indicate very different levels of impairment in people.

15

Since this a poll and not a heated debate here is my answer, and my thoughts on the penalties won’t be given. Driving impaired by any drug should be a crime. Not being able to take an impaired person off the road before they commit a different driving infraction is not acceptable.

16

Let’s not lose the idea of rational argument, here.

While I agree drunk driving is something to be discouraged, there is at least some grey area. up for discussion.

Driving drunk with due care and attention may be acceptable. Taking alcohol out of the equation, a driver driving 10 MPH below the speed limit on empty streets and paying close attention to the road would be considered safe. Add alcohol and, certainly you drive up the risks, but I say that an argument could be made that there is no need to take that person off the road. There are far more dangerous drivers allowed on the road - speeders/tailgaters, the elderly, inexperienced drivers,etc every day.

Also, defining ‘drunk’ is problematic. Various ratios are used, but the change from ‘sober’ to ‘drunk’ is a subtle one. To charge someone with a crime when all they are doing is driving (in a safe manner) with a little more alcohol in their system than some law allows seems arbitrary. Also, drivers get more and more sober as time elapses and/or non-alcoholic substances are eaten or drunk (dilution). A driver may start a drive ‘drunk’ and end it ‘sober’.

I think a case could be made that poor driving should be charged, not the factors that influence that poor driving. If a person hits a car, they should be charged. If a person hits someone, they should be charged. What causes them to do those things should be irrelevant - including level of inebriation.

Of course, a society wishes to encourage people driving in a safe manner, so ‘due care and attention’ laws are in place, which attempt to prevent the above negative consequences. Things like putting on makeup, talking on a cell phone or just not paying attention and wandering out of your lane are all offences. In a society with these sorts of laws on the books, it seems appropriate to have laws against drunk driving.

17

<mod>

More of a Great Debate, I think.

Moved.

IMHO > GD

</mod>

18

He might be Andrew Nellis, per his profile. Or he could have appropriated that name…

19

That’s only one argument. There’s nothing “Two fold” about it. You’re presenting us with just one dillemma.

And it’s just senseless. Your position is that there’s no meaningful difference in risk between driving and drunken driving, but there objectively IS, in fact, an enormous difference.

Drunken driving accounts for one third of all traffic fatalities (in the USA and Canada) but obviously the number of drivers (or, if you prefer, miles driven) is not one third of all drivers or miles driven - in fact, it isn’t even a third of a third of a third of a third, since the vast majority of drivers at any given time are not drunk. Drunken driving is, conservatively, at least one hundred times more dangerous than driving sober. Possibly even more.

We distinguish between levels of risk all the time in terms of determining what is or is not a crime. What’s your beef with this particular instance?

First of all, you are again confused; people arrested for drunken driving are not being arresting because they might commit a crime, but because they HAVE committed a crime; the crime of driving while intoxicated. If in fact their drunken driving leads to something worse, they’re charged with a different crime.

Secondly, the reason we don’t just intern black people is because the difference in crime rate between black and white people is (a) not even remotely in the same ballpark as the difference in accident likelihood between a sober and drunk driver, and (b) has nothing to do with the colour of a person’s skin. Being black does not make you dangerous; that black people commit more crimes is a function of other factors, such as income, sociological factors, and so on. A person having dark skin does not present a reasonable danger to the public because she or he has dark skin. A person driving a car IS presenting a reasonable danger. In the case of drunken driving, the state of being drunk is, in fact, what makes you dangerous.

Third, discriminating against people based on their ethnicity has enormous, corrosive, destructive effects on society that would far outweigh the benefits (and in fact would likely have precisely the opposite effect intended.) Discriminating against people who commit crimes does not.

20

Part of the problem with your argument is that nobody’s going to believe drunk and sober drivers hurt people at the same rate without one hell of a cite. Because even you say the drunk driver is apt to weave across the road, and that is just plain way more dangerous for everybody, especially with the reduction in risk assessment and reaction time that is a documented effect of alcohol consumption.

The thing about a drunk driver driving slowly and carefully home, is this: who gets to judge what’s “slow and careful”? The drunk person, who has been taking in a substance that clouds judgment and thus makes their evaluation of slow and careful incredibly suspect? Do we set objective standards like “never goes faster than 10 miles under the speed limit”? That sounds like a mess to try and enforce, and it really doesn’t address things like clouded judgment about whether you can, say, beat that red light, or slower reflexes when you realize you can’t.

The real problem with the argument, though, is that there’s a fairly compelling argument for driving in general. You gotta have some way to move people and goods to and from places, so you at least have to drive to and from the nearest rail stations and airports. It increases risk over horses and wagons, yes, but it commensurately increases reward–you can move more stuff faster and easier and usually cheaper. Your argument that you get no benefit from driving is pretty much crap, btw; at some point you ride in someone else’s car or on a bus driven by someone, and all of your clothes and food get transported to where you buy them by truck.

There isn’t any compelling reason to drive drunk, though. It doesn’t increase utility for anyone. It’s cheaper for the drinker to do his drinking at home, both in terms of the alcohol and the gas. If you go out, it’s the same revenue for the bar if you carpool with a DD or take a cab or whatever. If you drive yourself home, it’s less revenue for the cab company. So you’ve got this increased risk (because drunk drivers are more likely to hurt and kill people, even if it’s only themselves) for no increased reward.

Drunk driving is illegal because it’s essentially reckless endangerment. You don’t get to do stuff that dramatically increases the risk of someone getting hurt without a goddamn good reason. No driving with your windows obscured or your headlights busted out. No shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. No firing guns up into the air for shits and giggles. No selling food you know has melamine in it. And no driving when you have been deliberately impairing your judgment and slowing your reflexes.