Unfair DUI Laws

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Quoting Baz744

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My question for GoIllini at this point is: is there ever a point at which you'd agree that a 10 year or longer suspension of driving privileges is appropriate? If so, where? 4th offense? 5th offense? 10th?

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I think they should be consecutive and run at LEAST two or three years. I'm not convinced that ten is appropriate. If you get caught driving drunk on a suspended license, we should tack three years onto your suspension. So if you get caught drunk driving on a suspended license on your fourth offense, you will probably hit that 10-year threshold (though some time without a license will have been spent in the past) and probably also go to jail for a number of additional months- both for drunk driving and driving on a suspended license. If a license suspension alone doesn't deter drunk driving, then obviously a reasonable stay in jail is in order- given that a drunk driver is much less likely to kill someone than a drug dealer or even someone who buys cigarettes for minors, we should never be talking more than a handful of months assuming nobody is injured. The good news is that most states have already gotten to this point; the bad news is that many states have gone way past it.

But the notion that drunk driving on your tenth offense is somehow more harmful or offensive than your second or third offense doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe we cut you a bit of a break on the first offense, but my punishment is harsher than you're making it out to be- if someone is convicted of drunk driving ten times, they could wind up with thirty years without a license.

How many of you debaters have had a loved one injured or killed by a drunk driver?

In a departure from my usual norm, I am asking this in all manner of seriousness!



{note: no smilies!}

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Quoting Halfajap

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So, overall, it's not the sobriety (or "the how") of the person that causes the accidents so much as it is "the what" they do behind the wheel. Isn't that what you are saying?

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Well, you have two extrema of sobriety: sober on the one end, and drunk on the other. Of course, there's a continuum all along the way, but I don't take anyone here to be advocating that someone who had a glass of wine and then drives an hour later with a BAC of around .04 to be the class of people we're talking about. So, we've been impliedly discussing those who are drunk, or completely sober.

So, given that this is the case, we have to see if there's an actual difference between driving drunk and driving sober. Now, about a third of fatal collisions are directly attributable to drunk drivers. This means that about two thirds of fatal collisions are attributable to something else. So, we in turn look at this something else to see if it's a single thing, or if it's an aggregate of various other things. In this case, it would seem that it's an aggregate of other things - speeding isn't responsible, running red lights isn't, cell phones aren't, putting on makeup isn't and so on. So, we have on the one hand the case that most fatal collisions are not caused by drunk drivers; they're caused by sober drivers.

But that is completely immaterial because in none of the remaining cases can it be said that the proximate cause of the collision is the fact that the driver was in a non-alcohol state of mind. It's that the person was sober but otherwise deficient in attention, or that some catastrophic mechanical failure happened or some such. But it would make utterly no sense to claim that the sobriety itself was the proximate cause. This is why no one has ever in earnest heard the phrase "Oh, another fatal crash, huh? I just know the driver was sober; you know how they are" uttered by anyone.

Then you have to turn your inquiry to what it is that drivers do while driving: drunk and sober drivers alike speed, run traffic control devices, pass in no passing zones, take corners too fast, eat cheeseburgers while driving. All of those are traits in common with all drivers at some point or another. But what isn't common is that any of those activities shared by the entire population of drivers has a disproportionately high representation in killing other motorists and pedestrians. Drunk drivers, while still possessing all of the traits common to the rest of the driving population, have a peculiar added identifier: they do all of those less well than non-drunk drivers.

When they speed, the danger is greater because they simply lack the mental abilities to as quickly respond to any change in situation as well as most non-drunk drivers. They take corners too fast, but because their ability to properly assess the radius of the curve is somehow impaired, they tend to lose control more often. Of course no one is arguing that it's impossible for a drunk driver to negotiate a given curve ever. The argument is that on the whole, they are in every conceivable manner less able to do so with the precision and control that a sober driver will be able to do it. Because the one thing differentiating them from sober drivers is their ability to react, perceive and adapt to the divided attention situation that driving is, they are necessarily as an inherent, inescapable likelier to fail at some critical moment beyond which a collision can no longer be avoided. And when drunk drivers collide with the things, the collisions tend to be much more eccentric than not.

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All of those reasons factor into the drunk person's driving as well. Given those stats, it just seems to me that more accidents are caused by sober people speeding, talking on the cell phone, putting on makeup, running traffic lights, not watching where they were going, over-driving their headlights, fleeing from scenes of crimes they'd committed, and intentionally running down people they hated, then there are of drunk people - in which those same situations would apply. You can't argue that it's their ability to drive and not their state of sobriety just because they happen to be sober. Those same standards should be applicable to drunk drivers as well.

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Yes, I can argue that there is a difference. To suggest that drunk drivers and sober drivers are equally situated to drive is the kind of stupidity one should think the human race long ago outgrew.

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I just think it's funny to include stats like that which work against the point you are trying to make. Because according to those stats, I should be more concerned with the sober driver than the drunk one. That's all I was getting at.

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I think it's funny when someone who clearly is completely ignorant of statistics and what they do and don't say, completely ignorant of logical predicates and subjects, who because of those two shining examples of a lack of mental aptitude wants to then argue that his ignorance - his outright stupidity - is somehow a positive claim discrediting both logic and statistics. This simply won't do.

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Quoting GoIllini

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But the notion that drunk driving on your tenth offense is somehow more harmful or offensive than your second or third offense doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe we cut you a bit of a break on the first offense, but my punishment is harsher than you're making it out to be- if someone is convicted of drunk driving ten times, they could wind up with thirty years without a license.

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Consider playing Russian Roulette for a moment. There are two ways this can play out mathematically based on only the knowledge of how many chambers there are in the revolver, and whether an actual live bullet is in one.

So, you know there are five chambers in the cylinder. And you know there is a live bullet in one of them.

So you put it up to your head and fire once, nothing happens. There was a 1/5 chance that you could have been shot.

Now, you're asked to do it again, so you do. Nothing happens. Your chance for just that attempt, was of course, 1/5. But that only holds if you ignore what you already knew - that the previous chamber in the cylinder was also empty, meaning that the bullet must be in one of the four remaining chambers. So, your actual probability of shooting yourself that attempt was 2/5.

So, you do this again with the individual chance of the bullet being in that chamber - assuming you knew nothing else - is 1/5. Except that we can discount the first two chambers meaning your actual chance of being shot is 1/3, if you knew only that there were three chambers, one of which had a bullet. But you don't know that only; you know that there are five chambers, two of which must be empty. So your odds of shooting yourself in the head are 3/5.

Now you do it again, with an actual probability of shooting yourself of 4/5. You live, again.

So, you're at the last chamber. Now you'll have to argue that doing it the fifth time is just as safe as doing it the first then pull the trigger. Of course, this time you're dead.

It is not the case that doing an activity with x risk of death is just as safe to do the umpteenth time as it is the first time. Fortunately, the law writing people are mildly aware of this.

The individual chance of a selected drunk driver killing someone on a selected trip of drunk driving isn't that high. But we aren't dealing in a world where there's just this one guy running around doing consecutive trials. We live in a world where there are thousands of drunk drivers doing simultaneous trials; some of them are going to kill someone. A little over 30 times a day this event which isn't highly likely considering only one drunk driver happens. Of course, we're only talking about those collisions in which someone is killed; this says nothing of the tens of thousands of more people a year who are forever handicapped by drunk drivers.

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Quoting souperdave

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How many of you debaters have had a loved one injured or killed by a drunk driver?

In a departure from my usual norm, I am asking this in all manner of seriousness!



{note: no smilies!}

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I had a distant uncle who was killed in one, and my brother's father died in one on my father's birthday. So, that made for happy celebration around the homestead.

Before leaving law enforcement, my area was collision investigation; I handled all fatal collisions (along with the rest of the major accident investigation team) in our jurisdiction. It was never surprising to find that one of the drivers had been drinking, and was the one who lived.

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Quoting souperdave

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How many of you debaters have had a loved one injured or killed by a drunk driver?

In a departure from my usual norm, I am asking this in all manner of seriousness!



{note: no smilies!}

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Not me, and in fact, the vast majority of the people in this country haven't. Many of us are asking ourselves why our legal system is being hijacked by emotional arguments (generally- not just with drunk driving) - we thought it was supposed to be based on reason and the principal of eye-for-an-eye. If there's a 1 in 5000 chance that you'll kill someone from drunk driving, it doesn't make sense for us to send you to jail for 1/50th of your lifetime.

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Consider playing Russian Roulette for a moment. There are two ways this can play out mathematically based on only the knowledge of how many chambers there are in the revolver, and whether an actual live bullet is in one.

So, you know there are five chambers in the cylinder. And you know there is a live bullet in one of them.

So you put it up to your head and fire once, nothing happens. There was a 1/5 chance that you could have been shot.

Now, you're asked to do it again, so you do. Nothing happens. Your chance for just that attempt, was of course, 1/5. But that only holds if you ignore what you already knew - that the previous chamber in the cylinder was also empty, meaning that the bullet must be in one of the four remaining chambers. So, your actual probability of shooting yourself that attempt was 2/5.

So, you do this again with the individual chance of the bullet being in that chamber - assuming you knew nothing else - is 1/5. Except that we can discount the first two chambers meaning your actual chance of being shot is 1/3, if you knew only that there were three chambers, one of which had a bullet. But you don't know that only; you know that there are five chambers, two of which must be empty. So your odds of shooting yourself in the head are 3/5.

Now you do it again, with an actual probability of shooting yourself of 4/5. You live, again.

So, you're at the last chamber. Now you'll have to argue that doing it the fifth time is just as safe as doing it the first then pull the trigger. Of course, this time you're dead.

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So your assertion is that drunk driver is three times as likely to hit someone his third time drunk behind the wheel than his first time and guaranteed to hit someone his sixth?

The fact is that we don't have any information or evidence to support this. And if we assume that each driver has a different but individually constant risk of hitting someone while driving drunk- at least between the ages of 30 and 60- as I think most people would find more sensible, we've actually got a different situation at play. Based on Bayes' law and those assumptions, a guy who's never hit anyone driving drunk but is convicted of his 100,000th drunk driving offense is actually a much SAFER drunk driver than someone convicted of his third.

So yes, it's possible that it's like Russian Roulette. Or it might be like a different game where we are taking bullets out of the gun as drivers get more "experience". Or it might be like the scenario suggested above where a guy who has a long history of drunk driving but has never hit anyone might be safer given the information that we have than the guy who has no history. Barring any evidence of a Russian Roulette-type situation, however, most reasonable people will say that the the risk of a drunk driver hitting his first victim is like a geometric random distribution (like an earthquake) where each individual drunken drive poses exactly the same risk no matter who makes it, no matter what their history with drunk driving is.

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It is not the case that doing an activity with x risk of death is just as safe to do the umpteenth time as it is the first time. Fortunately, the law writing people are mildly aware of this.

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So again, let's take this out to an extreme. Are you saying that after a certain number of drunk drives, a drunk driver is *guaranteed* to hit someone every single time he gets behind the wheel? In other words, there is a point at which if he drives back from the bar the next six Saturdays, he is guaranteed to hit six people?

Other people might argue that the risk decreases with "experience" driving drunk, or that certain drunk drivers are more dangerous than others and that, again, according to Bayes' law, we can infer that a drunk driver convicted of X number of offenses without hurting anyone might actually be less dangerous for each drunken drive than a drunk driver convicted of his first or second offense.

The fact is that nobody really knows what the situation is- you're just throwing out Russian Roulette and I'm just throwing out the notion that some drunk drivers could get safer with "experience". Given that nobody has any hard data, most of the quants and other mathematicians I work with would assume a flat distribution and say that everybody has the SAME risk per drive. If we find that EVERY drunk driver starts injuring people on their xth drive, we may want to consider using your example of Russian roulette; if we find that there is a group of very similar drunk drivers who have been convicted hundreds of times but hit others very rarely, we might switch to the situation I proposed of different levels of risk that stay constant for each driver. If we find that ALL drunk drivers are much safer on their 100th drunk drive, then we might have to go with the situation of bullets getting taken out of the gun as drivers get more "experienced". Since we don't have any hard evidence of any of these situations, the reasonable thing to do is assume a flat distribution, a constant risk to society for each individual drunk driving conviction that doesn't involve injuries, and sentencing/suspension guidelines that reflect that assumed constant risk.

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The individual chance of a selected drunk driver killing someone on a selected trip of drunk driving isn't that high. But we aren't dealing in a world where there's just this one guy running around doing consecutive trials. We live in a world where there are thousands of drunk drivers doing simultaneous trials; some of them are going to kill someone. A little over 30 times a day this event which isn't highly likely considering only one drunk driver happens. Of course, we're only talking about those collisions in which someone is killed; this says nothing of the tens of thousands of more people a year who are forever handicapped by drunk drivers.

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That's true, but in the aggregate, drunk drivers will probably spend more than thirty lifetimes in prison because of sentences handed down today alone- though I am basing this off of NY State laws. (I would argue that if 5-10 people killed were drunk drivers themselves, they should be spending closer to 25 lifetimes in prison).

So yes, drunk drivers do kill a lot of people in the aggregate, and in the aggregate they do the time for it. The question is whether we need harsher sentences, whether we should jail people for running on sidewalks, and whether we should draw and quarter people involved in barroom brawls because there was a risk they could have killed someone. Deterrence needs to be tempered by fairness, and the historical principal for fairness in sentencing has often been an eye-for-an-eye. I hope you'll agree that 30 lifetimes worth of sentences for drunk drivers handed down today is fair and reasonable.

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Quoting GoIllini

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But the notion that drunk driving on your tenth offense is somehow more harmful or offensive than your second or third offense doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

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So again, let's take this out to an extreme. Are you saying that after a certain number of drunk drives, a drunk driver is *guaranteed* to hit someone every single time he gets behind the wheel? In other words, there is a point at which if he drives back from the bar the next six Saturdays, he is guaranteed to hit six people?

Other people might argue that the risk decreases with "experience" driving drunk, or that certain drunk drivers are more dangerous than others and that, again, according to Bayes' law, we can infer that a drunk driver convicted of X number of offenses without hurting anyone might actually be less dangerous for each drunken drive than a drunk driver convicted of his first or second offense.

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I like your overall approach. But the reason a 10th drunk driving offense is more "offensive" than a first, second or third is because it shows you're dealing with an individual who either cannot or will not stop putting other drivers at unjustified risk. Someone who is actually driving drunk on a suspended or revoked license has shown that he cannot be stopped by way of license suspension. Increasingly severe punishments, like jail time or large fines, are therefore necessary to accomplish the basic objective of drunk driving bans, which is to keep drunk drivers off the road.

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Quoting Baz744

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I like your overall approach. But the reason a 10th drunk driving offense is more "offensive" than a first, second or third is because it shows you're dealing with an individual who either cannot or will not stop putting other drivers at unjustified risk. Someone who is actually driving drunk on a suspended or revoked license has shown that he cannot be stopped by way of license suspension.

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You've got an interesting point. And that person needs to spend some time in jail to reflect the lives he is putting at risk. That said, we shouldn't be punishing much more than an-eye-for-an-eye no matter how stupid and irresponsible or even evil the person is. Naturally, we also shouldn't be cutting that person any breaks, either, and *maybe* we can even reflect the fact that the person got previous breaks that we take back in later sentences. But punishing more than an eye for an eye doesn't make a lot of sense for a democracy, and there's a lot of consolation for folks who are worried about repeat re-offenders in this system (see below).

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Increasingly severe punishments, like jail time or large fines, are therefore necessary to accomplish the basic objective of drunk driving bans, which is to keep drunk drivers off the road.

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But the question is where should we stop increasing them? My view is that we should stop increasing them once we are fully punishing the drunk driver for his cost to society. If a drunken drive carries a 1/10,000 risk of killing someone else, a one or two year jail sentence for that may not make that much sense whether it is the driver's first offense or fiftieth. Otherwise, we will get waaay more sentencing mileage out of repeat drunk-driving offenders per person killed than murderers per person killed. I'd rather spend my (limited) tax dollars keeping murderers, attempted murderers, and kidnappers off the streets than criminally reckless drivers. The drunk drivers might be stupid, criminally irresponsible, and dangerous, but I can sleep well at night knowing that they're not DELIBERATELY plotting to kill me. And if the drunk drivers keep re-offending, we can take comfort in the fact that they will spend much of their lives in jail even with sentences that are measured in months rather than years. Obviously, if they injure or kill someone, they will be completely off the streets for a few decades.

I understand the need to protect society- and six month jail sentences definitely help out with that- but if I am a horrendous driver and keep hitting parked cars, would it be fair for me to be required to pay the guy I hit four times the cost of his car (assuming I left a note) after my third accident? Should our fourth speeding ticket in 30 years carry quadruple the fine- just for the deterrence and the heck of it? The criminal needs to be able to understand how his punishment is tied to the damage he is doing to society. Otherwise you don't get the full opportunity to (hopefully) correct that person's behavior.

On July 22, 1980 I was following a friend to another's when he was stopped in the middle of a divided 4-lane highway waiting to make a left.......I had not yet entered the intersection as the light was soon to turn yellow......I watched from 30' away as a drunk 10-ton dumptruck driver sailed past me in the thru lane and struck him, dragging he and his Harley a total of 278'.......I still see that occur when the nightmare comes calling!

I had the privilege of serving on his Honor Guard.

We were going to my (day early) birthday party.......aside from my Friend, the only other injury was to the trucker.....after I saw the condition of my Friend I hospitalized the trucker!!! Yes I was charged, and YES, I was acquitted.

Actually, the D.A. dropped the charges before the trial took place.

Soooooooo, my opinion of those that choose to drive impaired is lock 'em all up and throw away the f**kin' key!!!!!!!!!

Build extra jails if we need to! Unfortunately THAT will never happen!

Before you ask, the answer is NO! I have never been foolish enough, or stupid enough, to drive drunk or impaired!

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Quoting souperdave

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Soooooooo, my opinion of those that choose to drive impaired is lock 'em all up and throw away the f**kin' key!!!!!!!!!

Build extra jails if we need to! Unfortunately THAT will never happen!

Before you ask, the answer is NO! I have never been foolish enough, or stupid enough, to drive drunk or impaired!

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I'm very sorry for your loss.

That said, the legal system is supposed to be based on reason rather than emotion. We need to have a rational justification for punishments for drunk driving based on the risk they cause society. Life sentences for drunk driving (if nobody is hurt or killed) are also unpragmatic because the drunk driver might be tempted to elude police or even take action against the police officer to avoid detection or arrest. We obviously want to keep our roads safe from not just drunk drivers but also from drunken car chases and drunks running over police officers. Meanwhile, those drunk drivers will take up space in prison that could be filled by murderers, kidnappers, rapists, arsonists, and armed robbers, and in a state like California, there's no room left in prison, no money left to build more prisons, and no room to raise taxes.

As for drunk drivers who injure or kill someone, I completely agree that they're as guilty as someone who committed involuntary manslaughter and need a lengthy jail sentence.

One quick question:

Do you ever:

-Eat while driving?
-Change the radio station while driving?
-Drive sleepy?
-Talk on the cell phone or text while driving?
-Drink coffee while driving?

If so, you've driven impaired to some extent, too. Over the course of a few years, all those distractions might add up to a few miles of drunken driving. Drunk driving is a serious problem, but we would do well to lose the attitude that we would never drive "impaired." Therefore, it's in everyone's best interests to keep the punishments reasonable- so we can make sure eating a cheeseburger while driving won't carry a felony in the future.

I ride motorcycles, too- and drunk drivers are something I worry a great deal about- but if we want to stay a libertarian country, we have to make sure the punishment is on the same order as the damage to society. Somebody else right now is saying the same thing about accidentally carrying a concealed weapon into NJ without an NJ-specific permit. And yet another person is arguing that someone who gets an abortion but accidentally does not have a 24 hour waiting period should be charged with murder. Other people are saying similar things about prescription drugs, parking in front of fire hydrants, people who don't wear seat-belts or helmets, and being a landlord who doesn't check his smoke detectors twice a year. Many of these people also have compelling emotional arguments, but if everyone gets their way, we could wind up with a much bigger state with more complicated laws and draconian punishments and many more people (maybe even you) in jail.

The right approach is to look at every crime with an eye towards its damage to society and make sure the punishment is in the same ballpark as that damage.

If the legal system was based completely upon reason and not emotion, judgments could be handed down by a computer and zero tolerance would be the law of the land for every crime.

Drunk driving is wrong... even the first time... not for any other reason than it means the driver takes a cavalier attitude with the lives and property of others.

Yes, many times no one is hurt. I refuse to reward a drunk driver just because they didn't kill anyone.

Say what you like about penalty. Is there anyone that hasn't heard the messages and warnings about drunk driving? Is there anyone that can honestly say that they thought drunk driving was acceptable behavior?

Basically, if you ask yourself "I wonder if I am okay to drive", the answer is no.

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Quoting GoIllini

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I'm very sorry for your loss.

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Thanx for the sentiment! Almost 30 years eases the pain some........

.......but the nightmare still visits from time to time...........

I think that emotion does belong in law-making. But that does not lend itself to being logical.

And logic should be integral! If we made laws based on emotion a lot of us would be outlaws!!!:eek:

Like.........stupid would be a crime!!!:D:D:D