I think people with numerous DUIs are just as likely to have a serious disease as have some moral failing resulting in them being a 'scumbag.' To me, choice is a major differentiator rather than 'obviously this person has a history of x actions' in the abstract.
Pretty much, yeah. I'm acknowledging that it is possible the person with numerous DUIs is an alcoholic and that, once drunk, the intent necessary for a knowing crime is no longer really there. The logic of 'chose to get drunk so chose the consequences' doesn't work if the person has a disease causing them to continuously drink.
You give far too little credit to pure recklessness. It takes a hundred practiced bad decisions to eventually decide it is okay to drive drunk. At that point you are essentially gambling with people's lives.
If someone habitually rolls a die where a six gets someone killed, and they eventually roll a six, you got to ask why they were rolling the die so many times to begin with. In a very real sense the consequence is premeditated.
In my mind, DUI "accidents" are not actually accidents. Someone deliberately made a choice to drive under the influence of drugs, and that choice is tantamount to murder in my mind.
My friend who was killed by a repeated drunk driver might have argued otherwise. If you can't drive responsibly, it's in society's interest to make sure you never do.
If you have multiple DUIs, you should absolutely not be allowed to drive until you’ve been proven sober for a long time (many years). And honestly, even one DUI is enough to remove your driving privileges for years in my opinion. There’s no excuse for driving once you’ve had alcohol. You can just choose not do it, it’s not like you can accidentally drive after having too much alcohol.
We should have significantly better public transit, to make this more humane. But so many people drive dangerously and cause huge amounts of deaths. I think a better long-term fix is to have good public transit so that people have better options and don’t feel like they need to drive everywhere.
something I've always been curious about and honestly not trying to be edgy. Why is it that with the choice of drunk driving, it is 100% rationally made and bears the full consequence of his actions, but when alcohol is involved in sexual relations, then it is perfectly fine to argue the inability to make sound judgement?
Someone driving under influence who has an accident is committing an attempt of a murder, or a murder if there are victims.
There are all kind of possible accidents, DUI is the kind where someone decides that they take the risk of other lives. Similar to the recent accident in Italy where a ski lift was purposely not maintained to avoid stopping it. They knew that they are risking someone's life.
With this said there are two cases:
- the one when someone drives under DUI and I have to kill him to avoid a possible direct accident towards me or my family (by pushing his car from a cliff or something). I would nit hesitate.
- after the accident. I am for a death sentence for specific cases where it is a matter of getting rid of human trash (rapes, murders with premeditation, paedophilia, ...). In that case it is a matter of social hygiene. In the case of DUI I am at the edge, with the possibility of someone to spend years helping the society to try to redeem
Once again, the actions of a few are hurting everyone else. Why not target the few?
There's a solid connection between DUI enforcement and reduction in deaths. We've all heard of crashes involving someone with multiple DUI arrests. These offenders need identifying, help, supervision, and maybe removing their driving privileges.
> My little thought experiment supposes a person who is drunk evaluates, before deciding to get in the car, the potential outcomes of drunk drive, while entirely convinced they won't harm someone.
And just that last clause makes it clear that, at least at that time and place, that person is not going to be deterred by reasonable incentives against reckless behavior, because their judgment is impaired.
Basically, your solution (which is also, as you point out, the solution in place in our current society), is to put unreasonable incentives in place--unreasonable from the point of view of the person, because, in your hypothetical, they're 100% convinced they won't harm anyone, so to them this whole "don't drive drunk" thing seems like an unreasonable restriction. It might be reasonable from the point of view of society, but that very view of "society" is not really compatible with a free society of free and responsible adults. More on that below.
> I gather you think reaction is morally preferable to prevention in such cases. Is that a fair assertion?
The only moral principle I have stated is that one should not impose punishments on people who have not caused actual harm. But I did imply a corresponding moral responsibility for the people themselves: that they should exercise reasonable judgment when making choices. People who either will not or cannot take on that responsibility are not going to be deterrable by the kinds of reasonable incentives I am proposing.
Your position seems to be, basically, that in our current society, most people fall into the latter category: they either will not or cannot take responsibility for exercising reasonable judgment--for example, by making it an ironclad rule for themselves that if they are going to go someplace where they might get drunk, they have a plan in place in advance to get home without having to drive. If most citizens of our supposedly free society can't meet that standard, we have a much worse problem than drunk driving.
> Since it's a situation drunk drivers make for themselves I'm happy to punish it.
I don't disagree that being in a situation where you "need" to drive drunk is self-inflicted; I basically said the same thing just above. My point is broader: that our society seems to assume that most adult citizens, if not prevented by various nanny-state laws, will make such errors of judgment frequently enough for it to be a problem. Either that assumption is false, in which case our society is imposing huge restrictions on people that are not justified; or, even worse, that assumption is true, in which case I think our society is doomed.
tbh, I'm in favor of treating DUI more as a liability thing (ie, automatic fault in the case of an accident and multiplied damages) rather than a crime itself, but that's a pretty controversial position that I didn't want to bring into the debate. plus it has its own issues; liability is not much of a deterrent for someone with minimal assets and/or income.
I agree for repeat offenders. Drunk driving, though, is a particularly tough thing to stop. It's not typically sober "joe" that decides to drive. The decision is usually made by someone not in a great state to make it.
I don't want to have to be sober to drive my car on public roadways, and yet, here I am, acknowledging that I have some basic responsibility for the safety of people around me.
This approach is incredibly selfish. Would you pursue it if you were held responsible for consequences of that behaviour, as drunk drivers are?
Driving drunk doesn’t imply violating driver’s own bodily integrity against their choice. A drunk driver risks other people’s lives and it’s a punishable crime.
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