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Because drunk driving, speeding, reckless driving are ok as long as there is no damage? Because of LUCK? I believe the idea is to try to keep people off the road before they do damage, not after.
The most rational way to prosecute DWIs would be to ignore unfortunate outcomes of specific unlucky cases (such as injury, loss of life, and property damage). Instead, you'd treat each DWI defendant as if they're responsible for the loss of .002 lives and damage to .01 light fixtures/mailboxes/etc or whatever the case may be (taking our best estimate of total incidents of driving while intoxicated (whether caught or undetected by law enforcement) and dividing injurious/fatal cases + property damage incidents into that pool of total events). You'd likely have to adjust the probabilities according to the specific BAC that a given drunk driver possessed. It'd be a bit of work but not beyond actuarial abilities. The bigger issue is that it'd be far too rational for the average outcome-driven citizen, and has roughly zero chance of ever being enacted. People who kill others while behind the wheel are guilty of bad luck more than anything else (excepting those few very rare cases where alcohol produces murderous intent in some vengeful driver)
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 04-07-2024 at 09:54 AM..
Right there along with the fact it's perfectly legal to put a gun in their hands and send them off halfway around the world to shoot/kill other people at the age of 18 and vote in varying elections. Both actions would indicate in general the belief is 18-year-olds can handle the responsibilities in question but somehow cannot regulate self-control when drinking alcoholic beverages.
Meanwhile in tandem we have people of all stripes above age 18 running around with unregistered automatic and semi-automatic weapons with no limits/very few limits on how much ammunition they can purchase.
So yes, let's ponder the alcohol debate instead because that'll be constructive.
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Originally Posted by Lodestar
Actually it is constructive as approximately 50% of homicides are committed under the influence of alcohol.
QUOTE=Matt Marcinkiewicz;66617855] Plenty of countries that consume more alcohol per capita than the US have much, much lower homicide rates than the US. Most if not all European countries fall into this category. The most relevant factors with regards to violent crime rates are gun availability/access and 'underclass inclinations/culture'. Anecdotally, I've been under the influence to some degree probably 2,500-3,000 times in my life and I've never started a fight with anyone while under such conditions (though others have started fights with me, or outright attacked me in a couple cases)
It's clearly a US societal issue that falls back on parenting and education. Instead of attacking the tools we need to address the methodology in question that enables the behavior.
Prohibition was a dismal failure. It fueled organized crime. And people continued to drink.
Rich people formed clubs, like the one I am a member of, which was formed in to circumvent prohibition. Yes, there is tennis and golf, but everyone drinks.
Poor people drank bathtub gin, moonshine and suffered the consequences.
When prohibition ended, organized crime stayed.
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