Okay, well I didn’t know that one=plenty. I see that now, it makes perfect sense. Ban all cyclists, I shall melt down my mtn. bike.
Honestly though, to the OP, there are also laws here that make public intoxication illegal… yes thats right, you can be drunk on your bicycle or drunk walking down the street and be thrown in jail.
About as much as the OPer did…
So yes, “plenty” of people are killed by cyclists. Extrapolating the “2 people” over ten years for Australia alone (or just for Victoria, its not immediately clear from the link), your get a figure of dozens or hundreds for the whole world, since the invention of the bycycle. Which is “plenty” in my book. But the point still holds even if that one person was the only person ever to be killed by a bike.
I see his argument makes perfect sense also! The car is going to the crusher immediately!
I agree that that DUI should not be a crime. Especially 5 May past.
Other than that: NAIL SOME SENSE INTO THEM!
(I’ve never had a DUI and I like Monty Python.)
I doubt it…for one thing I’ve never said everyone that everyone that doesn’t agree with me has an arrested development problem. Anything else?
In looking through their website, I don’t see how this is not their cause. I’m not sure what specifically you mean by zero-tolerance stance, but I can’t say that their stated goals reflect that. Just because she says it does, doesn’t really convince me. Yes, they have expanded their mission. No, they don’t represent their mission as reinstituting alcohol prohibition.
See, and this is where I’m lost on the math. From the previously linked site.
Bolding mine. This appears contradictory to me. If “almost half” of fatally injured drunk drivers have a BAC of 0.16 or higher, then it seems logical that *more *than half have a BAC of 0.15 or lower. How does that reconcile “the majority of crashes occur with high blood-alcohol levels”?
The thing is if MADD is about preventing fatality and injury resulting from drunk driving, it stands to reason they’ll want to prevent even the lesser alcohol-impaired drivers from running the statistics up as well (you know the “more than half” part of the statistic). Even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that impairment begins as low as 0.02% and significantly contributes to performance degradation at 0.04%. It seems to me that someone has determined that BACs of 0.08% - 0.10% contribute to an unacceptable risk of injury and fatality.
Well, I never said ‘single’ drink, but she didn’t pluralize either. But, I’m not saying it. MADD’s critics are:
Again, my bolding. Kinda looks like he’s implying even one drink, no? Now, this is not Candy Lightner talking, but my point is that when MADD critics say “prohibitionist” they don’t mean “drinking in moderation and not driving while alcohol-impaired.”
Let’s see: you were talking about his gall in suggesting as much of other people.
I said maybe it’s from the line of reasoning that goes “takes one to know one”, which would indicate I was speaking about the person in question. How you took that to be directed at you is beyond me.
He is already committing a citable offence at overloaded even if its with food for starving orphans.
Overload tickets are some of the most expensive tickets you will ever see.
Yeah, but if his truck doesn’t careen out-of-control into a school bus full of children, what difference does it make if he’s carrying too heavy a load? That weight limit law is seriously just crimping his personal freedom to drive a big trailer full of explosives very fast down the highway.
Their stated opinions can go fuck themselves. No, they don’t declare in their mission statement that they’re a bunch of teetotaling prohibitionists, but every time a story pops up about someone getting a DUI for sleeping in an immobile vehicle, or a gang of housewives tries to shut down happy hour, there’s inevitably a comment from a MADD spokesperson saying, “Fuck yeah!”
There’s been a lot of zero tolerance commentary from MADD representatives, so even if it’s not explicitly stated on their website, which seems to be the only thing you’re going by, they’ve made themselves clear:
“Forget limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive, period” - Former MADD President, Wendy Hamilton.
"There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.” - Former MADD President, Katherine Prescott
A huge problem with MADD is they’re a clan of Drys hiding behind what ostensibly is a noble cause. Who’s going to start Mothers For Drunk Driving? (Maybe the OP.) We already have laws against drunk driving, and the penalties are not pretty, but that’s not enough. They were instrumental in lowering the legal BAC from 0.10 to 0.08, and MADD Canad(i)a is calling to have it lowered to 0.05. They keep inching closer to their One Glass of Wine at a Dinner Party and Your Ass in Jail™ agenda, and then ultimately, to ban drinking altogether.
You know, I was dicking around on their website and saw the following little tidbits:
Practices Which Encourage Excessive Alcohol Consumption (Happy Hours)
MADD calls upon the hospitality industry to voluntarily end all practices associated with excessive alcohol consumption. MADD also supports state agencies and legislatures which pass clear and comprehensive guidelines which prohibit such practices in all fifty states.
Don’t like Happy Hour? Then stay the fuck out of bars, MADD. What the hell are you trying to pull with legislation prohibiting drink specials? Focus on drunk drivers, not drunk people in bars.
And this:
Uniform Bar Closing
MADD advocates setting uniform statewide cut off limits on the sale of alcoholic beverages in order to end the practice of “barhopping” to find establishments with later closing hours for “one last drink” with the likelihood of impaired driving as a result.
What? Bars will close whenever they want to, and I will have my “one last drink” when I goddamn please, because I am a grown up who drinks responsibly. So their excuse for advocating this type of crazy bullshit is that any time someone is drunk, that person is going to get into a car and kill a bunch of people. Of course, I see it now. Having another drink will increase my likelihood of impaired driving, so I’m not allowed to have one, even though I don’t drive to the bars. Let’s close the bars earlier so nobody can have fun – I mean, in order to save lives. Sounds like a bunch of prohibitionist claptrap to me. Some of us walk or call cabs. Why does it matter what time I have a drink?
Among their list of things alcohol advertising shouldn’t do:
*Depict sports, rock concerts, or other events with strong appeal to youth
Depict revelry or hint at the possibility of inebriation *
Depict revelry? I was actually going to go on about the rock concert thing, but revelry. Hahaha. People have to look very angry and distraught in alcohol advertisements.
Well I would consider 0.15 to be high BAC. I don’t know the breakdown of everything between 0.08 and 0.15, but I don’t think it would be unreasonable to assume that the bulk of it was not closer to the 0.08 end, so I’m not seeing an issue. Anyway, if you want to argue with the math of it all, take it up with Candie Lightner. My point about that was she does not want, and did not intend for MADD when she founded it, to start harassing everyone with a .02 BAC.
Yeah, it does look like that, which a lot of people (MADD’s founder included) take issue with.
I have a strong suspicion that this post is simply an attempt by the OP to create a large platform in which to spout off various ideas. I note that the OP first started off by pushing an anti-driving agenda and then expanded it into an attention-grabbing attempt to drop anarchist BS into the thread. Since more or less the first post he hasn’t responded meaningfully to any of the multiple serious arguments people have made. His responses have essentially been the sort of juvenile quoting you’d expect from a teenager who just learned about the existence of anarchism in a history textbook and discovered that using the power of Google you can attempt to appear intelligent to the ignorant by copy and pasting quotes you probably barely understand and certainly have no concept as to the original context.
While I think that there were some merits to this debate, that is only amongst the various posters who have come after the OP. I feel the OP is bankrupt from an intellectual standpoint on this issue due to repeatedly ignoring the debate made in his own thread.
Outside the BBQ Pit, do not accuse other posters of trolling.
[ /Moderating ]
As much as I obviously disagree with SmashtheState’s point of view, the easy-pickings view of Somalia is more complicated than you’d think (PDF).
By way of background, from 1960, when Somalia gained its independence, until 1991, it was ruled by a socialist (though, officially, he later abandoned socialism) dictator named Mohamed Siad Barre. Barre’s policies and behavior looked a lot like the wealth-destroying, wildly corrupt, and highly predatory policies and behavior we observe in many other Sub-Saharan African countries today.
In 1991 a coup d’etat tumbled Barre’s regime. Unlike most coups, which replace one predatory government with another, this one replaced the old regime with nothing. Although there have been a few failed attempts at resurrecting government in Somalia, including the most recent one by the international community-backed “Transitional Federal Government,” for the last fifteen- plus years Somalia has been stateless.
Driving is pretty mandatory for a lot of people. How do you get the groceries home for a family of 6 when the nearest supermarket is 3 miles away? How do those groceries get to the supermarket? How do you get to work if you don’t live within walking distance of your job or mass transportation?
I don’t know if this is a good analogy but coal mining is a pretty dangerous occupation but we make people wear hardhats and we force companies to do all sorts of things to reduce the risk of injury. Drunk driving is more than just going into a coal mine without a hardhat, its going into a coal mine and chain smoking.
Wow, you are actually equating being black to being a drunk driver. There is nothing about dark skin pigmentation that makes you more likely to commit a crime (its not like there is somthing about melanin that makes you want to go out and rob people), there is in fact something about being drunk that makes you significantly more likely to have a car accident.
Should be. Period.
I’d rather the current BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) stipulations be applied to drugs than alcohol in relation to driving an automobile. I think you’d find road tolls drop considerably if mildly stoned drivers replaced the soused ones on our roads. Especially in the high risk, hubris and hormone fraught, late-teens to early-20s demographic.
Alcohol is far more (un)inhibiting when behind the wheel than many other drugs puritan society arbitrarily considers illegal/dangerous. It’s only for the copious amounts of tax grog rakes in that it’s accepted as a substance one can be under the influence of (to a degree) and still be deemed fit to drive a potentially lethal weapon. Even in the face of all the contrary statistics.
Well, I guess it wouldn’t be an alcohol thread without the Cannabis Quislings showing up.
It hardly seems likely that the nanny-staters and evangelicals of the world are going to say “Ohh, our goal is to rid the world of Demon Rum…but since it’s safer, let’s go ahead and legalize marijuana!” Who do you think is more on your side…the drinkers of the world, or the teetotalers?
Anyway, back to my point. Drunk driving HAS to be considered in terms of degrees, unless you consider .08 the same physical impairment as .15 or .2 .
Personally, I don’t even consider them morally the same; .081 is an honest mistake (can anyone honestly tell the difference in 2-thousandths of a point in BAC?) while there is no way that someone cannot tell that they are well beyond the line and dangerous at 0.15 . Some states seem to tier their laws such that they are not treated the same, yet in others they receive the exact same penalties.
Incidentally, how is lowering the BAC going to help the matter? There are going to be plenty of 0.04 - 0.05 drivers out there in the world. Is tying up police resources catching the social drinker going to do anything to get insanely impaired drivers off of the road? Likely, it will let them slip through the cracks even more than they already do.
I have a feeling that the only goal of continuous lowering of BAC is a slow but slippery slope to a de facto Prohibition.
There was a case here in Phoenix where a guy shot at a speed trap van, accidently hitting a man that he didn’t know was in the van. His excuse was basically, “Oops! It awas an accident”.
There are certain actions where you lose the right to say oops: shooting a gun in the city, driving 130 mph, driving drunk, etc. Interestingly enough, these are also felonies and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. ANY action that places the general populous at a SIGNIFICANT risk should be a crime - even if no one gets hurt. Think of it this way, is it ok to drive on the sidewalk even if no one is there? Does it magically become a crime when someone step out of a building and I hit them OR is driving on the sidewalk never a crime and only hitting someone is?
Drunk driving is not a crime! You are not hurting anyone! How can you be punished for something that might happen?
What should be punished? BAD DRIVING!
Would you feel better if your loved one was killed by a driver who was talking on their cell phone or applying makeup? Should this person be punished less than a drunk driver?
Of course the drunk driving laws reduce car accidents and death. So would reducing the speed limit to 20 mph. Should we do that?
Solution: Make it more difficult to acquire a driver license! Stiffen the penalties for bad driving!
Seatbelts save lives. Give me a break! Give me my freedom!
you should be punished for your actions regardless of the alcohol content of your blood. If someone runs over my daughter because they were not paying attention, there is no oops for that either. I don’t care if they messed up because they were eating or texting or changing the cd in the dashboard. Their negligence caused someone’s death. Bottom line.