Convicted NY Drunk Drivers Need Ignition Interlocks 911
pickens writes "Starting yesterday in New York state, anyone sentenced for felony or misdemeanor DWI, whether a first-time or repeat offender, will have to install an ignition interlock in any vehicle they own or operate. The interlock contains a breath-checking unit that keeps the car from starting if the offender's blood-alcohol level registers 0.025 or higher, a little less than one-third of the legal limit. 'The addition of ignition interlocks will save lives in New York state,' says State Probation Director Robert Maccarone, who led the team that wrote the regulation. 'It's been proven in other states. New Mexico realized a 37 percent reduction in DWI recidivism.' Whether that will be enough to persuade more people to take a cab or find a designated driver is unknown. 'It's one more thing to make people think, it may help — it may keep a few people from getting behind the wheel,' says Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh."
About Time (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one area the government needs to interfere in.
The expense of the interlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
is one thing that bothers me. $70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate. Given that drunk driving convictions skew to lower income, this has real potential to put even first-time offenders into bankruptcy.
The fact that it triggers on as little as 1/3 of the legal limit is also troubling. Maybe they should trigger at slightly below the legal limit, but 1/3? They couldn't get convicted of a DWI at that number, and yet you're going to shut off their car?
I'm just waiting for the day when the "reenact prohibition" assholes get enough power to try to make these things mandatory in all cars. After all, if it "saves lives", why not make everyone blow into the damn box to start the car, and at random times?
Insert obligatory "won't someone think of the children" bullcrap here too.
So you start drinking .. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate
Yeah, that is pretty outrageously expensive. I bet it'd be cheaper to call a cab.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm just waiting for the day when the "reenact prohibition" assholes get enough power to try to make these things mandatory in all cars. After all, if it "saves lives", why not make everyone blow into the damn box to start the car, and at random times?
Because that would be stupidly expensive, unfeasible, and would punish the innocent as well as the guilty. But then you knew that already and are fully aware that nobody is suggesting that every single vehicle be equipped with one. You did know that, didn't you?
Insert obligatory "won't someone think of the children" bullcrap here too.
I see your "won't someone think of the children" bullcrap and raise you the obligatory "we don't need big brother taking away our personal freedoms and I'll drive on public roads and put peoples' lives at risk because it's my God-given right! Freedom! America!" bullcrap.
Re:Couldn't you (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, and the law against murder doesn't stop bullets from killing people either. Lets not enforce that, it doesn't work.
It doesn't need to be 100% effective, it needs to be effective enough to seriously reduce the recidivism rate by enough to be worth the cost. And statistics say that it does.
Re:1/3rd the limit? (Score:3, Insightful)
First step: get this put in for "DWI convicted" people.
Second step: get them made mandatory in all cars.
First step: jail convicted criminals.
Second step: jail everyone!
Hm, something's amiss...
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the penalty you get for endangering other people's lives. I don't mind some idiot having to waste his time after he's tried to kill my family or others on the road.
Re:1/3rd the limit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly why can't you drive a vehicle in situations when it would be entirely legal to operate it? If you have a dui, is the legal limit for driving lowered for some reason that I'm not aware of.
Because the driver has a proven history of Driving Under the Influence. Its not hard to have undetectable blood alcohol. I do it all the time.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:4, Insightful)
But then you knew that already and are fully aware that nobody is suggesting that every single vehicle be equipped with one.
You forgot the word "yet." The counterargument from these religious fundie assholes - and yes I HAVE heard them discussing this - is "well if you build them into every car, it'll be cheaper by economy of scale" and "it's just like requiring a seat belt and that's a safety device too."
These fuckers would love - just LOVE - to have the damn things loaded into every single car, and required to be checked up and maintenanced when you get your car emissions-tested.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:1, Insightful)
If the convicted DWIer doesn't like the expense, they can always GO TO JAIL. It'd be stupid to require everyone to have one (back to treating innocent people as criminals) but here we're treating a criminal as a criminal...
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate
Yeah, that is pretty outrageously expensive. I bet it'd be cheaper to call a cab.
If only people were able to do this kind of deductive reasoning while they were drunk, we'd be able to completely eliminate drunk driving.
Uhhh...what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the opposite is usually true. Here in BC the legal limit will be dropping from
In the end, I don't really care either - I'm just a little miffed MADD continues to push the laws towards their prohibitionist ideals and there's nothing you can do about it without looking like a drunk.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
. where do we draw the line?
Every time you get into a car drunk and endanger other innocent people on the road. Exactly how many times am I supposed to let your old girlfriend try to kill me and/or my family before we crack down?
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
#1 first offense doesn't mean the first time the person did it, only the first time they got caught
#2 you can still kill somebody the first time you drink and drive, it's not like the first time you do there's a magical force field protecting you/the pedestrian or something
#3 it's not that hard: if you drink YOU DO NOT DRIVE, period. take a cab, take transit, have a designated driver, you name it, risking other people's lives because you are too cheap to take a cab is ridiculous, you had the money to buy drinks, you should have the money to get home without endangering others.
From my perspective there is no line to draw, first time 5 years w/o a license, second time lose your license forever, period.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:1, Insightful)
But your first offense with a DUI ... where do we draw the line?
If you've demonstrated a profound lack of judgement in the operation of 2 tons of hurtling metal I think you should consider yourself lucky that you're still allowed to drive at all.
Re:Universally stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for "someone else blowing in it for you", if you're a sober passenger in a car with a convicted drunk driver, and you'd rather help them fake out the analyzer rather than taking the wheel yourself, you deserve to die in a car crash, and you deserve a manslaughter conviction if someone else dies.
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the driver fails to comply? Will the interlock kill the engine? Or will it just keep "ordering the driver to pull over and restart the car"? I can picture a disembodied electronic voice repeating, "STOP! OR I SHALL TELL YOU TO STOP AGAIN!"
The former is probably just as dangerous as someone driving drunk. (No engine = no power steering, no ABS, &c.) The latter is irritating, but comically ineffective, unless it notifies the police as it's doing so.
I made prediction 10 years ago. 10 years from now (Score:4, Insightful)
10 years ago I typed somewhere on the net, and I could probably find it if I tried really hard, that the way things were going, pretty soon someone would require a breathalizer wired into the ignition of a car to make it start after have a DWI. Lots of folks told me I was full of sh*t and it would never happen. Our culture has changed so much in the last decade that now having an interlock seems like a good thing to do to lots of people. Hardly anyone can remember that only 10 years ago almost no one at all would have supported this.
Now my new prediction. In 10 years ALL cars will require breath testing before it will start. I'll try to remember that I put it on slashdot... but will I still be able to search for anonymous postings then? Probably not. I guess that's my second prediction for the next 10 years.
Re:Wait... (Score:1, Insightful)
The car doesn't just shut down, it just orders him to do it. His failure to comply will be recorded and he can then explain it to the police.
Re:1/3rd the limit? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you have a dui, is the legal limit for driving lowered for some reason that I'm not aware of.
Most DUI and DWI offenders are on monitored sobriety, so technically any BAC is against the law. IANAL but in Colorado failing on the interlock system gets you in as much trouble as blowing a hot breathalyzer.
Amen (Score:3, Insightful)
MADD is a quintessential example of an organization that has completed all of its original goals, but continues to exist simply for its own sake.
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:1, Insightful)
Examples: copyright law, dictatorships seizing control, credit card debt ('but it's only a small monthly payment!'), the establishment of monopolies, change in social taboos, the slow gaining of rights for non-whites, surveillance and data collection... I could go on all day
The slippery slope argument can be a fallacy, but so can everything else if misused. To say it is a fallacy out of hand is, well... a fallacy.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:3, Insightful)
is one thing that bothers me. $70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate. Given that drunk driving convictions skew to lower income, this has real potential to put even first-time offenders into bankruptcy.
The fact that it triggers on as little as 1/3 of the legal limit is also troubling. Maybe they should trigger at slightly below the legal limit, but 1/3? They couldn't get convicted of a DWI at that number, and yet you're going to shut off their car?
I'm just waiting for the day when the "reenact prohibition" assholes get enough power to try to make these things mandatory in all cars. After all, if it "saves lives", why not make everyone blow into the damn box to start the car, and at random times?
Insert obligatory "won't someone think of the children" bullcrap here too.
That's $70-$125 a month to rent the device, plus $100 to install, plus $100 to remove. That's highway robbery. I guess the company that makes these things has a good lobbyist. We'll ignore the fact that this has been a dismal FAILURE in New Mexico as less than half of the people that would normally be required to have one, avoided it by simply telling the judge they don't drive or don't own a car.
I'd much rather focus on the idiots driving with the cell phones glued to their ear. Statistics show they cause far more accidents. Some moron next to me at the lite yesterday was yaking away on the phone. When the lane next to him started up, he hit the gas and pulled out into the intersection. Only problem is that it was the turn lane that started and he still had a red light. Even after nearly getting creamed, he still didn't put the phone down. He just gave that little ooopsie-my-bad wave. To bad Darwin was asleep that day or we could have cleaned the gene pool a bit.
That the machine does randomly prompt for a retest to me is a safety hazard all by itself.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike being tired, or having low blood sugar, having an alcoholic drink is 100% avoidable and voluntary in *every single case*. Choosing to drink and drive is choosing to needlessly endanger other people on the road.
These people have already provably shown that they lack the judgement to make good decisions about their safety and those around them. So it seems proportionate to me to require them, and only them, to demonstrate that they have changed their behavior for some reasonable period of time.
This isn't a civil liberties thing, it's using technology to do something that demonstrably benefits society: not punishing, but changing antisocial behavior.
Re:Amen (Score:3, Insightful)
Is drunk driving 0? Even close to it? Then it hasn't accomplished all of its goals. Its goal has always been to eliminate drunk driving. Getting ti treated as a serious crime was step 1, not the end.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know what's really gone unchecked? Texting while driving is as bad or worse than drinking and driving [cnbc.com].
And therefore we should be softer on drunk drivers.
Yes, that logic is truly brilliant. Well done!
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, just when they are drunk. Thus avoiding this device being placed in their automobile.
wait for them to say that (Score:2, Insightful)
and then react to their bullshit, AFTER they propose that
but when you posit your worst fear before it happens, and then react to it like it already happened, you are losing your grip on rational thought. you are instead engaged in hysterical thinking, which is what religious demagogues depend on as a motivating psychological factor in those who follow their words
so congratulations: you think like the people you dislike
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, that'll just work great on the 10-lane freeway at 80MPH.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:3, Insightful)
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate
Yeah, that is pretty outrageously expensive. I bet it'd be cheaper to call a cab.
That would be a great idea... if only the small, tiny fact that you can still blow a positive on those tests the morning after. [vancouversun.com] You've slept it off, but your breath will still hold enough traces to show your loaded to hell and back again.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
I think perhaps fixing the issue with non-poverty requiring driving should be more important than interlocks. If we had decent public transit there would be far less DUI.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahahahahahahahaha this is hilarious.
I mean, honestly, I hate the draconian nature of this, and would rather live with the consequences of not having these than have police-state laws like this, but...
Two of my idiot friends got their second DWIs recently. One of them recently enough that he's almost certainly going to have to put one of these things in, and I hope the other one as well. The less recent one rear-ended a stopped car at a traffic light--no one was injured, but he's still driving around his brand new car (brand new because he had a girl drive drunk while he was drunk and she smashed into a telephone pole... that one was new too) with a smashed up front end. He's probably been sentenced already, although tbh I don't talk to him much anymore because he's self-destructing in other spectacular ways that I don't want to be around. The more recent one went off the road and broke both his arms, almost died. He put off his court date for a month, GOD I hope he has to put this thing in.
So, as much as I don't like them ... people will drive drunk. Over and over again, for no fucking reason. I was out with one of the two a couple months before all this, at a bar. I drove down with the plan to leave the car in the public lot and get a $10 ticket, then take a cab back home and a friend would drive me to my car in the morning. Well, closing time came around and this moron asked me to drive because it was kind of cold and he didn't want to wait a half hour for the cab to get there. I said no, so he, already with one DWI and drunk (but not drunk enough that he should have that poor of decision making ability), offered to drive my car. I said fuck no, and we waited, but the whole time he hounded me about it. It's just unfathomable how stupid people get about this, and they make the decisions drunk or sober. For instance, I drove down, but only because I know myself well enough to know that I'm not going to do something stupid once I get a buzz on. Other people, as you can see by reading this thread, will do anything they can to drive drunk, like leaving their cars running outside a bar. It's fucking insane, like straight up some kind of mental imbalance. Hell, I've stopped going to bars more than once every few months because it's such a pain in the ass and I can't see any reasonable explanation for anyone doing otherwise short of being broken in the head somehow.
So yeah, it sucks, but you won't hear me bitching about the law. No, I'll be laughing as these dipshits blow their car started at the order of some beeping box, and watching with interest to see what kind of backflips they'll do to fuck their own and other people's lives up even more, for NO REASON. Addicted to alcohol? Go to the grocery store, and drink for a quarter of the price! Throw a party at your house, sleep over at others' houses when you drink there, get a motel room if you're out of town and have nowhere else to sleep. D-d-d-don't drink so fucking much! It's the sober guy that gets laid at the after-party anyway. Jesus.
Re:Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
NATO is probably a better example ;)
Re:Driving Privilege (Score:4, Insightful)
its interesting how so many US folks are happy to have this, to mitigate the danger for cars, but are simply unable to comprehend that allowing the average idiot to own a gun is a bad thing.
As far as I am concerned driving is a right, and I would copntinue to do so regarless of what the legal system says licence or not.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't the general public you know. We're talking about convicted criminals who actually drove on public roads while actually drunk. Likely more than once, since they're only convicted if they're caught.
I'm all for liberty and etc, but I have exactly zero patience for letting anyone that's been anywhere near alcohol drive next to me at 70mph. Driving isn't something to mess around with, you can go out to get some milk one day and never come back.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1, Insightful)
Lets take a moment to consider the following. a person makes a mistake in their past, we won't debate on why or how but they are convicted of DWI. No they are forced to have this device on their vehicle. Lets stay there is an emergency and it requires this person to drive someone to the hospital, all the while being completely sober. The hospital takes some time to get to for what ever reason yet this device will force the vehicle to shut down and delay the arrival to the hospital. On top of that you will be greeted by some lovely police officers that night or the next day for not following said rule. Now on a side not, here where I live you can be convicted of DWI/DUI for riding a bicycle, a non-motorized vehicle. Also as I know the person very well, I had a friend lose their license for going to sleep in the back seat of their vehicle as they had been drinking and choose not to take a cab or drive home. The next morning he was awoke by police and arrested for DWI because he had his keys on him. The same can also be done if you merely sit in the drivers seat with no intention of driving. Now granted these may be various degrees of DWI but they could all warrant this device and cause undue burden on potentially innocent and safe people.
Re:no, the slippery slope is bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope you realize that actually is, for the most part, this world. It is up to debate if people are too stupid to realize the differences or simply do not want to, but does it matter? It's likely a mix of both and in the end it only matters that we have to live with the consequences.
As I said, though, it can be misapplied, like any argument. Arguments against gay marriage imply that such a marriage is somehow less so than one between a man and a woman: if it is not so, then it is not a step in any direction to legalize it. If it isn't a step towards something, then it can't possibly be the start of a slippery slope. The idea gay marriage is inferior is a flawed premise which makes that specific argument invalid - but the larger idea of a slippery slope is still often valid.
Think of it as the old "garbage in, garbage out": I can say prolonged martial law is a step towards tyranny OR I can say that eating colorful jellybeans might encourage someone to get addicted to meth. One of these arguments is more reasonable than the other and it is not because of the process used in making it.
Keep telling yourself that. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I on the other hand will let the evidence speak for itself.
That's a mighty tall horse you've got there... (Score:4, Insightful)
What will happen when you have one drink, get popped, and you discover that the limits are now so low that YOU are the one having to install one of these? Will you be so high and mighty then? Why not just set the limits to zero and be done with it? Drinking and driving is bad mmkay? But at some point we're going to hit bottom in this little political race to outdo one another and realize that it's a bit insane.
How about this, lets just install them in ALL cars? That will stop this problem cold won't it? See how that flies at the local bar and grill or winery why don't you. If the device detects any alcohol in your system it won't start. You okay with that? Family will be safe right? If you say no then are you advocating drinking and driving?
Re:Amen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like DUIers should avoid those roads then.
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:4, Insightful)
This includes first-time MISDEMEANOR DUIs. In other words, a "convicted criminal" in the same sense as a first-time conviction for shoplifting candy bars.
In my honest opinion, this law is the real crime.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
How about canned air rigged to a tube slipped over the moth piece. Every time it beeps just press the trigger on the canned air. Or do these things somehow know the difference between compressed air, canned air (fluorocarbons) and human breath?
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time you drive, you endanger other people's lives - it's a matter of degree. Life just isn't supposed to be safe. Yes, yes, you can go too far, and reckless endangerment should be stopped, but not at any cost. We have a shocking tendency in America recently to give up any liberty asked for in return for the slightest sense of security. Does this law go too far? I'm not sure. But if you can't admit it's possible to go too far, you're helping invent the new safety-based fascism we seem destined for.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd RTFA, you'd find out that the device is part of their "conditional discharge" (i.e. probation) (you'd also find an answer to your bankruptcy concern). Don't want to use the device because you feel it infringes too much on your personal liberties? Fine. Stay locked up.
People with money can get out of jail and people without have to stay in?
Doesn't sound like equal treatment under the law to me.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:4, Insightful)
#3 it's not that hard: if you drink YOU DO NOT DRIVE, period.
And then what happens when every bar and restaurant outside of a major city goes out of business due to a complete loss of alcohol sales? No problem there, right? This is MADD's true agenda: back-door prohibition.
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus distracting the driver and increasing the possibility that he will cause an accident. At least, that's the argument that's going to be made in court any time any car with an interlock is involved in an accident. The manufacturers probably want to avoid this liability to avoid being accused of "encouraging distracted driving".
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that people go to the bar, drink themselves sloppy, and crawl to the car amidst warnings not to drive, then zig-zag down the road (yeah, some are that bad, most aren't).
The problem is someone who has a couple drinks talks for a while, feels fine and ends up one hundredth over the limit 15 minutes later and they would be just under the limit. Had the machine been calibrated perfectly they might have been under. Truthfully, they probably were fine to drive (and better fit for it than some other people on the road) and wouldn't have been pulled over except for the roadblock, but the law is the law (and no, I have never gotten a DUI). With the legal limit creeping downward, that scenario becomes more common.
Zero tolerance is almost inevitably the wrong answer.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1/3rd the limit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Driving while intox is much, much lower than it was back 30 years ago. The big issue these days in law enforcement isn't the drunks, it's the people smeared on drugs. There's been a huge jump in crashes relating to people either smeared on prescrip meds, or smeared out on stuff like LSD, coke or heroin.
Re:To Answer Logistic Questions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's a mighty tall horse you've got there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh...what? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you admit you're already off your peak performance at the times you normally drive, and use that to justify why dulling your senses even more is no big deal?
"I'm already only 70% effective, and that's pretty much the same as 50% effective, so what's the point?"
Somebody on Slashdot fails at math.
"Leandra’s Law" (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the problem with this, right there. When you introduce legislation as "Precious Little Snowflake's Law", you get a free pass on the whole unpleasantness of having to appeal to people's rationale. Instead, you get unfettered access to their "OH MY GOD MY BABY!!!!" instinct. It's a fail-safe strategy (how many "Whosit's Law" measures have failed to be ratified?). Simply brilliant.
This is a HUGE problem with our legal system across the board. What should be important when we pass a law is the statistical validity of cause and effect -- not the one-off tragedy that one family experienced, no matter how great.
Whether this particular drunk-driving law is prudent or not is hardly even relevant. The real issue is that it should be illegal to include any victim's (or other person's) name in the title, text, summary or advertising of a proposed bill. The "Brady Bill", "Megan's Law", "Leandra's Law", etc., etc., etc. should be required to pass muster on their merits (which they may possess, and that's fine as long as there's rational analysis and critical reasoning involved) instead of getting rubber-stamped on an emotional tear jerk.
Re:That's a mighty tall horse you've got there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because I should be able to have a glass of wine with dinner when I dine out and drive home after wards. I completely disagree with your implied message that the average person is a hazard to themselves or others under conditions like these. Even considering the fact that you're driving a vehicle that's more dangerous to the operator then a car, 12 hours is just crazy unless you just got smashed the evening before.
Re:Wait... (Score:1, Insightful)
"Or do you HONESTLY think a 200 pound American is actually drunk on...what? A half a beer or whatever it takes to hit that tiny number?"
An average male can stay under .05 by not exceeding 2 standard drinks in the first hour, and 1 standard drink every hour thereafter.
The problem is that many people binge drink and think this is normal behaviour.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that people who give up liberty for little (general immeasurable amount of) safety need to fuck off and die. That isn't the issue here. If you get hit with a DUI, you committed a criminal act. It wasn't your own life you were endangering. This isn't a victim less drug law. You were doing something horribly dangerous to the people around you. You should damn well be punished, and punished harshly enough so that you don't do it again. A DUI isn't a victim less crime. I am all for drunkenness, just not while you are plowing around with enough kinetic energy to tear a family surrounded by a steel cage apart.
So now we come to punishment. We could toss a DUI's ass in jail, and I am all for that for repeat offenders or people who were grossly negligent. A lesser punishment than having your liberty completely stripped with jail time is to have to get one of these things put into your car. Eh, this isn't a liberty thing. Your liberty is already fucked once you get nailed with a DUI. The question is just how much liberty is going to be stripped. An annoying breathalyser is a much lesser punishment than sitting in a jail cell. I am a no holds bar, drugs for everyone, fuck worrying about terrorist, screw the children, smok'em if you get 'em, have sex often, drink and be merry sort of guy, but I am still all for these things for convicted DUIs.
Re:The expense of the interlock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
>Well sure, if you consider a lifelong punitive impediment for a misdemeanour's offence to be sensible.
Most of us do not consider the idea of making drunk driving a misdemeanor to be sensible. Personally I think we made a mistake to ever make a separate law for it. Drunk driver = reckless endangerment as much as firing a gun into the air in an urban center or deliberately not insulating an electrical wire or any other thing we do for convenience or to save costs that tends to kill people.
A helluva lot of innocent people die from drunk driving related accidents every single day. If a drunk driver actually kills somebody then we send him to jail for a very, very long time. Well there's no difference in punishment between murder and attempted murder.
There is no sensible reason to make reckless endangerment a lesser crime than manslaughter. In the case of drunken driving the dangers are so well publicized and known that it is always and without exception WILLFULL reckless endangerment of the public. I'd say 10 years in jail, first offense.
End of problem for ever.
PS. yes I like to drink - no I NEVER drive if I've had even ONE drink. I take a bloody cab, and if you can afford to drink outside the house then you can damnwell afford a cab too. In fact, If I am going to anywhere that will be serving alcohol (be it a party or a bar) I take a cab THERE - so I will have no choice but to take one back. Anything else is deliberately and irresponsibly risking the lives of innocent people for absolutely no good reason.
To call that liberty is to grossly misunderstand the most fundamental thing about freedom: your freedom ends where mine begins. There is no way you can POSSIBLY have the right to get on a road used by other people if you've got any kind of mind-altering substance in your blood. Have your drink, smoke your joint whatever I don't care - but stay the fuck off the roads after you do.
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm far more inclined to observe how much money is made off of DUI convictions - "you did a horrible, dangerous, unacceptable thing! To protect society from your intolerable recklessness... I'm sentencing you to pay $2,500 in fines and attend a weekend 'rehab' program you'll also have to pay for."
I can't be the only one who sees that disconnect. If it really is a tenth as dangerous as they say, we'd be locking up DUI offenders for years and/or revoking driver's licenses on offense one. Of course, we're not, because its true purpose is just a massive money-grab.
It (drunk driving legislation) has already devoled to the point that it's just unabashed, unashamed, and undisguised profiteering by the government. Pay x thousand dollars, or go to jail for 6 months, period.
The fact that so many people (majority, probably) still, somehow manage to delude themselves into thinking this is about public safety, or anything other than the bottom line... is just further proof that human civilization is no smarter or better than a bacterial cultural.
Re:Amen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About Time (Score:1, Insightful)
Because you're a dumbass wingnut spouting dumbass wingnut memes.
Re:That's an easy one! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's a "convicted criminal"? This includes first-time MISDEMEANOR DUIs. In other words, a "convicted criminal" in the same sense as a first-time conviction for shoplifting candy bars. In my honest opinion, this law is the real crime.
That's a pretty big leap. Stealing a candy bar isn't quite the same as risking the lives of everyone you encounter on the road. And then there's the argument "he wasn't THAT drunk." Come on. You don't need to drink. You don't need to drive after you drink. It's not that hard to just be responsible, and if you can't handle the responsibility, you don't get to drive without the lock.
People who use guns too irresponsibly don't get to keep guns. People who treat children too irresponsibly don't get to keep children. People who drive too irresponsibly don't get to drive. An interlock system is a way to allow people that need to drive the ability to do so while decreasing the likelihood of them killing someone.
Re:That's a mighty tall horse you've got there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because (within the aforementioned context of a glass of wine with a meal) it's imposing an inconvenience for a negligible return in public safety.