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People who drink and decide to get into a large metal and plastic rolling death machine get no sympathy from me. To me five grand isn't enough. If it were up to me he'd lose his freaking car.
And cops don't get bonuses for writing tickets or pulling in drunk drivers. Grow up.
Hurting or permanently disabling or killing an adult earns a get out of jail free card?
No, because in that case, there is a victim. What Memphis 1979 is correctly pointing out is that the act of driving while under the influence or intoxicated hurts nobody. Driving the vehicle into people, property or other vehicles is the act that hurts, not operating the vehicle under the influence.
Driving while drunk hurts nobody. Crashing into things while drunk, that is what hurts people.
Memphis1979 (and I as well, based on total agreement) is saying that there should be no penalty for operating the vehicle under the inlfuence, but if you cause harm to someone for any reason, including because you were drunk and driving, then the book should get tossed at you and the bars on your cell should be so thick that they stay cold in the summertime. But that should be true for any manner of knuckleheaded driving behavior that results in a fatality. If you kill someone with your car because you were drunk, sleepy, yelling at your kids in the backseat, jamming to tunes, skylarking at scenery, or just plain stupid....same penalty. Toss them all in an oubliette for all I care, because morons who drive cars poorly just pollute the gene pool, and won't be missed. But be consistent. Don't target one group of morons and leave an even bigger group of them safe from anything but a ticket.
As it stands, driving under the influence is a "crime of increased risk" or some dystopian sci-fi version of "future crime" like in Minority Report. The fact is, driving under the influence accounts for ~30% of traffic fatalities, so something else must account for the other 70%, right? That would be "distracted driving" which according to most studies from law enforcement is not all cell phones and texting. Various studies put "generally distracted" as the vast majority of all distracted driving (typically over 50% depending on study), with cell phone use (any) at ~10% of distratced accidents.
Now, generally distracted comes in tons of different behaviors. Talking with other occupants of the vehicle, adjusting media/climate controls, daydreaming, rubber necking, etc. These behaviors are twice as likely to cause a fatality as drunk driving is, yet none carry the same onerous penalties? Why? Because:
Nobody has spent decades lobbying to make turning around to talk to your kids a felony
You cannot measure what I call "driving like an idiot" like you can measure BAC
The crying female, angry parent, or head in the clouds rock /n/ roller jamming tunes driver doesn't make as convenient a villain as the drunk driver
A society increasingly atheistic is apparently all too happy to continue legislating morality, and drinking the fruit of the vine is wicked...wicked I tell you!
It is hypocritical nonsense and nothing more than a source of revenue for tyranny to make one risky behavior a felony, and all others that are even riskier little more than additional fines on a traffic ticket.
Yes. We've beaten "drunk driving" to so hard that lives are being ruined even though nobody is getting physically hurt. We will NEVER eliminate this 100%, you can make the penalty for smelling like beer 10 years in jail but it's not going to prevent drunks from driving. But you will have hundreds of thousands of new criminals in prison and families ruined...with no victims.
I have an issue with this as well. I understand the need for safety, but how we're going about it isn't the best imo. I'm ok with cops pulling over clearly impaired drivers, or a traffic violation that leads to them discovering the driver is impaired, but road blocks and DUI Checkpoints should absolutely be outlawed as they violate your Civil Rights and have proven to be less effective than actual patrolling.
If that were the case why have police depts at all just hike every ones taxes to make the money the cops were supposedly bringing in.
DUI punishments should be immediate impounding of the car,$10'000 fine, a month in the county jail and drivers license suspended for a year,,Second offense gets tougher. Some countries really take it seriously= DUI Penalties Elsewhere
Have you researched the issue of drunk driving? I'm not saying its ok (I know personally how it can impact your life) but the people we should really be afraid of are the alcoholics and those who are way over the limit. I'll have to look back up the stat, but a vast majority of alcohol related accidents occur when the driver is heavily intoxicated. Not after a few drinks.
Friend of mine got nailed for Driving Under The Influence lae last year.8 Yr old guy, no priors, just had a bad night and got nailed. Wished he would have called me before he made that decision but whatever.
Long story short he paid a lawyer 2 grand to get it knocked down to a recklass driving ticket, is this right?
The system still got thier 5 Grand payoff, thats all they were concerned about as far as i saw.Guess my question is, are DUI's a moneymaker to the cops, or do the seriously care about the public"s safety?
I do know cops get bonuses for every drunk they drag in, no secrect there.
If your issue is with the fees, then the easy way not to have to pay them would be to not drive under the influence.
Let him watch an autopsy of someone who died because of a drunk driver. Let him be in the room so he can smell the dead bodies, too. Then, have him attend the funeral...
Let him watch an autopsy of someone who died because of a drunk driver. Let him be in the room so he can smell the dead bodies, too. Then, have him attend the funeral...
The argument that he/she has not killed or injured anyone YET is absolutely the lamest thing I've ever heard.
The Founder of MADD, the reason we have these strict laws, has publicly distanced herself from the group. You should listen to some of her reasoning on the issue. She personally lost a daughter to a drunk driver, I'd say her opinion holds a lot of weight.
The National Transportation Safety Board voted earlier this month to encourage states to lower their current legal blood alcohol content limits for drivers from .08 to .05 percent, saying the change would save lives.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving founder Candace Lightner, who led the successful national campaign in the 1980s to crack down on drunk driving after her daughter was killed in an alcohol-induced accident, doesn't support the proposal.
"I don't believe it is a practical long-term solution," Lightner told U.S. News. "You could go to 0.0 and that would save lives. You could go to a 40 mph speed limit and that would save lives, but you have to look at what's realistic."
After leaving MADD, Lightner became critical of the group she helped build into a national activist organization, referring to it as "neo-prohibitionist," But she now says that disagreement is over. "I believe they're off that kick," Lightner said. "It was a long, long time ago. Unfortunately the Internet has a habit of keeping old comments alive."
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