After Latest Deaths, Austin Asks: How Can We Stop Drunk Driving?

[scm53]

Originally Posted by hillcountryheart

Because they have decent transit systems, DUH. Taxis, night bus service, late subway service, and much more denser housing for *all income levels*. Not just the richest, everyone. I'm assuming you're talking about NW Europe and Canada (as well as other places) here.

For you smug folk, you may as well close all the downtown bars, because I guarantee you that most of the people who drink there - drove there. A woman can become impaired after just two drinks. So should there be a two-drink limit? For the record, I wouldn't and don't drive drunk, but dang, see the options that people in the places I've mentioned have to avoid drink driving as it's called in the UK.

There is an enormous difference in the social construct between at least the US, and Germany (which I know well, having lived there and continuing to do business there). The Germans have a very strict public consensus about the difference between public and private behavior. Public drunkenness is shameful conduct, and by extension so is drunk driving - as their laws reflect. Everybody here wants to point to the externalities as a reason for the lower drunk driving deaths there - they are just as rare in the rural areas where none of those things exist. Because the Germans have no compunction about labeling anti-social behavior as such (heck, even your child's name has to be approved by a government office!).

We have lost the sense of public shame - in no place more so than Austin. Many of the posts here reflect just that. It is always someone else's fault. If that is your approach to life, then fine. The laws will reflect the shared sense of the line between right and wrong - just as they do in Germany. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that the externalities are the cause of their lower drunk driving deaths. It is the shared psyche - not the late night taxis.

[hillcountryheart]

Originally Posted by scm53

Public drunkenness is shameful conduct, and by extension so is drunk driving - as their laws reflect. Everybody here wants to point to the externalities as a reason for the lower drunk driving deaths there - they are just as rare in the rural areas where none of those things exist. Because the Germans have no compunction about labeling anti-social behavior as such (heck, even your child's name has to be approved by a government office!).

But please don't make the mistake of thinking that the externalities are the cause of their lower drunk driving deaths. It is the shared psyche - not the late night taxis.

I agree - my country of comparison is the Netherlands and the locals (not the drug tourists) share this same disapproval. The worst-behaved people in Amsterdam all speak English with British accents.

Can't help but feel that we're wound so tight here - so stressed, due to not enough vacation time - that our main relief is to get blind drunk. There's simply not this stress level in Europe, either.

Taking a hiking vacation is much more healthy than getting wasted every weekend.

[petro]

Nice to see the City of Austin making some great steps in the right direction:

City of Austin announces no more weekend towing from popular downtown parking lot