A Sober Look At Drunk Driving Stats

[knothead]

How dare this woman try to confuse us with the facts.
She must be a conservative.



A Sober Look At Drunk Driving Stats

[sailaway21]

An excellent article, Knotty. Those facts have been out there for a long time but are not PC because we have a "crisis" on our hands. The second comment to the article was particularly interesting. It's a serious matter to discuss but the question, formerly on the driver's license renewal in my state, of what percentage of accidents involve alcohol? (50% being the "correct" answer) just begs the question, what's the other 50%'s excuse?

[erps]

The article was absolutely right about the situation where a sober person runs into a person who has been drinking the "alcohol involved" box gets checked on the accident report. (at least here in Washington State)

We've been tough on drunk drivers for the past ten years or so. About the same number of people get arrested for drunk driving each night in our county as before the crack down. I really thought the numbers would have gone down and it puzzles me why so many people still drive impaired. I arrested one guy twice in one night. Arrested him, impounded his car, processed him at the station house then called him a cab to go home. The knuckle head took the cab to the impound yard, paid the fee and left. The impound yard called dispatch to let them know the guy picked his car up and I stopped him ten minutes later. So, off to the jail after the second arrest. There are a hard core group of drinkers who are not going to stop driving home after tying one on.

[danjarch]

I read recently that the mother who started MADD quit in protest. She had started it to get states to eforce they're DUI laws and the beef up a few states that were ridiculously easy on DUI. She found her organisation increasingly overan by mother and fathers who were pussing draconian punishment more for revenge then as deterents.

These days a first DUI is a real nasty affair. My personal opinion is that a basic DUI takes away 3 to 5 years of a persons ard work and efforts. Between the mutible thousands of dollars, Lost pay from jail time and lost promotions, demotions or even losing they're job when they lose they're lisence.

In construction, a single DUI will easily put you back years in promotions. A second is a death sentce for your longterm career. No promotions to foreman, no chance for project supervisor.

There has never been any real attempt to provide alternative transportation scemes or figure out what is going to be the amount of law breaker who will continue to break the law no matter what the punishment. These continue to be ignored in favor of more penalties.

[sailaway21]

In my opinion, it's really quite simple. Our goal cannot be to get every driver off the road who has indulged in a drink or two and is piloting the vehicle in normal fashion down the road. What we want to eliminate are the hard drinkers who habitually drink to excess and then drive. And they are out there because one of the symptoms of alcoholism is the denial of a problem.

Instead, we have taken the nearest thing to a zero tolerance policy while still making alcohol and driving legal. Don't bother with the notion that you should not drive after consuming any alcohol at all. Alcohol is a social drug and other use than socially is deemed troubling. So by it's very nature many people are going to drink while not at home. And then they're going to need to get home. Transportation, in other that what they drove, is not readily available in most parts of the country. They're going to drive.

Our approach, in most states, has been to steadily lower the BAC to the point where a couple of drinks is going to get you into a heap of trouble should you slide off the road in the winter. You can be in the ditch with five other completely sober drivers, who will get towed out, but you're going to jail. As mentioned, this has serious conseqeunces for those who depend on a driver's license for their work. Anyone want to guess waht percentage of the populous that includes?

The solution is to raise the drinking limit back up to a more reasonable level that is truly indicative of impairment. As it is now, the guy with two beers in him is driving far better, if illegally, than the woman on the cellphone behind him. We also need to make the DUI scale more progressive. It is currently weighted to repeat offenders regardless of level of intoxication. A person who gets pulled over twice in two years with a BAC of .08 is not the same threat that the person who gets pulled over once with a BAC of .2 percent. Yet the former is treated much more harshly than the latter. And, btw, if a person is piloting a vehicle down the road at .2 percent you can presume they've got a problem and are just the type driver we wish to get off the road and into treatment; it's indicative of a high alcohol tolerance and you don't get that tolerance by social drinking.

The advent of breathalyzers in cars, coupled with ignition locks, may provide ample evidence for which drivers we wish to restore to full driving privileges and which we wish to sanction further. If the states were inclined to use such evidence other than following the politically expedient recourse of just saying any amount is too much.

The current trend in DUI lawmaking is producing a nation of law violators without addressing the core of whatt is really the problem. We tried the same thing with the speed limit years ago and we ended up with half the nation in the insurance pool of assigned risk for driving on an interstate designed for 80 mph at speeds exceeding 55 mph.

The number of offenses is meaningless without reference to the level of offense. Repeat offenses at a high level of intoxication should be our concern, not only to get them off the road but into treatment before the rest of their life follows their driving record into the ditch.

[Rockter]

In Europe, some wish to make the legal alcohol limit zero.
80 mg/100 ml seems to have worked very well so far in the UK.
Making it zero will mean endless driving bans.

Yes, beware of revenge. A while back, some bereaved mother wanted a campaign to ban all motorcycle pillion riders under the age of 16. Her boy had died in a smash, as a pillionist, and an ill-fitting crash helmet contributed, apparently.
She was told, politely, that though her grief is understandable, it's best not extended to other motorcyclists' lives that have nothing to do with her.
The campaign failed.

[ebs001]

In Canada DUI is part of the Criminal Code with a legal limit of .08 BAC and recently new and more Draconian punishment came into effect. In Ontario if you have between .05 and .08 BAC you can have your licence suspended for 24 hours. Despite the ever escaling punishments little has been accomplished in the number of traffic deaths as a result of drinking and driving. The perception of most drunk drivers is that they won't get caught and for the most part they are correct. I agree with SA, surprise surprise, that the first step is to redefine what constitutes impaired. No matter what that level(s) is determined to be, we must somehow get it across that if you drive impaired you will be caught. Our focus should be on catching impaired drivers - truly impaired.

[sailingdog]

SWAy-

the problem is that BAC levels don't really indicate impairment. Some people are less affected by alcohol than others. What we need to do is institute some form of social sanction other than imprisonment and revocation of driving privileges. It is pretty clear that revoking a drunk driver's license does little to prevent him from driving again. It is also pretty clear that the drunk driver's inability to drive sober shouldn't put the burden on the taxpayer.

A good solution would be to make the laws such that an ignition interlock was required in the vehicle of a drunk driver, with very stiff penalties for tampering with them. Requiring marking of their vehicle, with some obvious and visible means, that indicates the vehicle is owned by a convicted drunk driver would also be useful IMHO as a warning to drivers and pedestrians around their vehicle.

Another problem is that many of the people who are caught driving drunk are often fairly young, usually right around the legal drinking age. This is probably due to the fact that they're not used to alcohol and don't understand how it affects them, and believe that they can still drive safely after getting sloshed. If we made the drinking age lower, say 16 or so, and raised the age you can get a license at to say 21 years old, I think much of this type of "drunk driver" would go away. By the time they got their license, they would hopefully have a clear understanding of how badly alcohol affects them and it would help prevent them from driving drunk.

BTW, as ignition interlocks go, I'm not a big fan of breathalzyer type ones, as they're unnecessarily complicated and expensive and actually have no real way of distinguishing the level of impairment of the driver. There are electro-mechanical ignition interlocks that will detect the actual level of hand-eye coordination impairment. These would be far better IMHO, since they will prevent any impaired driver from starting the vehicle—regardless of the cause of the impairment—whether it is because they are too tired, on prescription medication, drunk, angry, etc.

Drunk drivers are a danger. I know, as my twin was killed by one two decades ago. The guy didn't serve a day in jail as he was sentenced to 90 days suspended and probation.

[camaraderie]

I've been reading this thread with some incredulity as my own experience is that drunks who ACTUALLY DO hurt others when driving are typically dealt with, without jail time...much as Dawg reports. I see MULTIPLE alchohol convictions with HIGH readings dealt with with slaps on the wrist. Even if their license had been previously suspended and they are driving without one. It takes a LOT of damage or a LOT of repeat times to actually serve time in this state.
Until we ENFORCE the penalties on the books INTELLIGENTLY for the drunk offense at hand....those wise to the system will work it so that only the innocent pay with their lives.
Technology can indeed help...but justice must be done.

[erps]

In Washington, we started doing mandatory car impounds at the time of arrest for DUI and driving while suspended. That began to have an effect IMO, but it got challenged in court, court said we couldn't do it if there were reasonable alternatives so that put the kabosh on part of the solution. But what I saw on the street is that during that time period, the drunks biggest fear was car impound, not going to jail. They knew they would be out the next day, but their car might sit there for awhile and run up a big fee to get out.