I know that Mike Hunt, Dave Hackensack, and others have suggested that there shouldn’t be any laws against drunk driving. Well, your cause has a champion!
When first tipped to the video, I thought that I might actually agree with him because he was against some new DUI law and I think we already have enough on the books (unless we’re talking about a new law to differentiate between buzzed driving and drunk driving). I don’t typically respond to political stuff on Facebook (or I try not to) anyway, but it’s sometimes after a fair amount of kvetching over what, if anything, I would say in disagreement with the Facebook Friend. I find it interesting that in this case, there was simply no way that I was going to say anything even though I thought I might agree with the video in question. The stigma against “defending drunk drivers” is really that great.
In any event, the law in question is actually a new law I can support. They want to extend prior act consideration from five years to ten. Apparently, Montana’s law currently says that a judge can consider previous offenses in the last five years and this would extend that to ten. I think that extending it to ten is probably a good idea. Caught once and you might have just been unlucky. Caught twice and there’s a good chance that you do it with alarming regularity. I can’t remember the exact statistic, but something like two-thirds of single-DUI arrestees meet the definition for being an alcoholic and when it comes to people twice caught, the number is north of 90%. Those really are the people that we need to be worried about.
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2 Responses to The Drunk Man’s Rep
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The problem with your analysis there is timeframe. I actually think that 10 years is a bit much.
Do I think DUI laws should be eliminated entirely? No. Do I think sometimes, they go too far? Possibly. There is something to be said for the idea that as things get more restricted, people who do partake tend to do so in excess. A number of states who dropped from the old .10 to .08 saw the rates of serious crashes increase dramatically, and those who were involved tended to have a BAC of .15% or higher. Why? The theory goes that by dropping the rate from .10 to .08, a substantial number of drivers went from the mentality of “I stop at two beers because that keeps me under .10” to “Fuck it, two beers is .08, might as well keep going.”
As I said in the post, if you’re caught drinking and driving, well… anyone that’s done it can get caught once. But if you’re caught twice, even over a rather long period of time, it’s indicative of a problem and worth flagging. Especially considering the very small number of drunk drivers that are ever pulled over.
I would like to see a citation on the increase of accidents since automobile accidents (serious and otherwise) have been on the decline for a couple of decades now. Regardless, though, I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere that lowering the BAC to .08 was a mistake. I think that .08 probably should be illegal, but from .08 to .12 it should be little more than a traffic citation unless you’re caught repeatedly.