Tuesday, January 11, 2011

"...public safety laws need to be clear, enforceable, and should actually achieve their intended purpose." - Our drunk driving laws are stupid.

"...the average BAC in alcohol-related fatal accidents was 0.17, and two-thirds of such accidents involved drivers with BACs of 0.14 or higher. In fact, drivers with BACs between 0.01 and 0.03 were involved in more fatal accidents than drivers with BACs between 0.08 and 0.10."
More on Abolishing Drunk Driving Laws - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:
"...The fact that people between .08 and .10 aren't impaired enough to make the sorts of mistakes clearly impaired drivers make necessitates the need for the roadblocks. Which in addition to being constitutionally suspect, are more revenue generators than highway safety endeavors.

E.G.'s argument seems to be that because BAC is some way of measuring alcohol impairment, we should go ahead and use it, even if it isn't a particularly accurate method of measurement, and even if the cutoff point we choose is mostly arbitrary. It's really an argument against consuming any alcohol before driving. Maybe that's what he wants. I'm convinced that's what MADD wants. But let's then at least be up front about that.

... But I'm not arguing in favor of a freedom to drive while obliterated, or that there's some right to drive drunk that outweighs the safety of other motorists and pedestrians. I'm arguing that public safety laws need to be clear, enforceable, and should actually achieve their intended purpose. I'm not sure our current DWI laws meet any of those criteria. (It's just a small sample from one city, but see this recent article from Nashville, where DWI arrests are down by a third due to budgetary woes—to no effect on actual DWI fatalities.)"

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