This is going to sound maybe insensitive but I've noticed driving drunk is a cultural thing. I've been with certain groups of people and pretty much it seems everyone and their cousin has a DUI and no one regarded it as a major crime.
It sounds crazy but I bet if you were born 40 years earlier, you wouldn't care. Drunk driving wasn't even a thing until Mothers Against Drunk Driving made it a thing in the 80s.
I don't support drunk driving at all but it seems our views on right and wrong are just products of society, lol.
Why would you expect that when drunk driving gets practically no attention at all? It's even socially acceptable and joked about within certain cultural circles.
People who are driving drunk are doing so at a time when their judgment is impaired. Driving drunk can get the driver killed, so if that's not enough of a deterrent it seems like the chance of getting caught and sent to prison isn't going to work either.
People drive drunk because they drink to socialize, and access to other humans is almost always mediated by roads. This is not going to get solved separately from car dependence.
I'm not saying you don't have big issues if you drive drunk but that statement is obvious and does nothing to solve the problem. No one is going to start accepting drunk drivers as good people. But maybe we can understand why people drive drunk and can fix that underlying cause. After all, all I want is for fewer people to drive drunk.
I can't stop everyone else from driving drunk but I sure can exhibit self control and not speed or drive dangerously as to endanger others just because I want to have some fun.
Just because you're not a drunk doesn't mean your actions are justifiable.
If you can't make clear judgement while drunk, such as not driving, then maybe you shouldn't be getting drunk in the first place. Driving is a privilege you kill someone while drunk and you should NEVER be allowed to drive again.
That's the reasoning, but to me it just proves that drunk driving shouldn't be a crime separate from poor driving. (I guess it would be OK as an aggravating factor for other traffic crimes.) Someone who drives acceptably while drunk drives acceptably, period.
You can have an accident if you drive while being drunk. The fact that most of the time there is no accident doesn't mean that it's not dangerous. Sometimes it looks like we take economic and political decisions similarly.
Because the drunk driver's lack of consent isn't the problem with drunk driving: it's the lack of consent from everyone else on the road.
The issue with consent while drunk isn't about what you do to yourself while drunk: it is about hurting other people. You have the right to get drunk to the point of passing out in front of the stereo with The Cure's worst album at full blast, the dishes undone, leftovers on the stove and that still doesn't give anyone the right to steal your stereo, sharpie your face or fuck you (even if they shake you hard enough to get some vague affirmatory groan out of your body).
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