Driving under influence Home || Blog || Projects || Google Hacks || Artificial Life || Search || About 24 Jul 2004 Driving under influence God may be dead and there is not truth out there, but everybody agrees that driving under influence is Very Bad, right? But is it, or is it just one of those things we tell each other and we never question, because it involves sin (drinking) and death? Let's think about this for a bit if for nothing else then to question our believes. The statistics seem bad enough. In the Netherlands about a thousand people get killed in traffic every year, with estimates as high as half of those accidents being alcohol related. Stop people from drinking and cut the amount of people dying in traffic in half. How could anybody think driving under influence is not bad? Ah, but statistics are a tricky thing. According to NHTSA , the american government organisation researching these things, you have a 300 times higher chance of dying in a car crash if you have an alcohol level of 0.15 BAC. Again, a scary number, but if you don't really know how good your chances are while driving sober, it is not saying much. For comparision, 0.15 is what you get after you take nine alcoholic consumptions in two hours, assuming your a guy of about my size and is three times the amount legal in the Netherlands. Normally you have a chance of dying in car accident of about 7 in a billion per kilometer, so now it will be 210 in a billion. Does this sound scary, or not meaning any thing? Let's put it into perspective, most trips back from the bar are not that long, so your total chance getting killed is 2 in a million, which is similar to the chance of an airplane crashing (1 in a million, but usually a airplane trip is two legged) and will decrease your life expectancy by about half an hour, which is similar to the decrease in life expectancy you get by smoking three cigarettes, which is about the same amount of smoke you inhale when you don't smoke but stay in a bar for the night where people smoke. Before you stop me and tell me my assumptions are wrong, realize that that is not the point. The point is, we tend not to think about these things at all, we just assume they drinking and driving is bad, because it kills people. But risk is part of life and taking risk is unavoidable. Getting killed vs killing by Bram Interesting thought and good point to raise about questioning your believes. You say it yourself: statistics are a tricky thing. You only quote stats about *getting* killed. However, the chances of *killing* also rise (my assumption). I think that the deaths of innnocent people at the hands of drunk drivers bring emotions into the equation, probably too much of 'em to apply the reason in the way you do. It'll make your good point a hard sell on most people I fear. Re: Getting Killed vs Killing by Douwe Osinga Yes, that is a difference, though the same could be argued for secondary smoke. But the question how much I can endanger the lives of others is very hard to answer. Driving 600 km while sober endangers others as much as driving 2 km drunk, but if you visit a friend in an other country on a surprise trip, people usually don't go, but think of all the innocent people you've endangered, while if you take the same friend to a bar for a drink and drive home drunk, they will. Risk by Anyhoo, You say <I>risk is part of life and taking risk is unavoidable</I>, but surely the point is to manage the risks and so minimise them? You seem to argue that it is an individual's right to take risks, and to a certain extent, I think most people would agree. However, if an individual taking risks causes greater risk to those around that person (and thus endanger their individual rights, including of taking risks), then should society's nominees be allowed to restrain such a reckless individual? Should society be able, through laws and campaigns, to reduce acts which negatively impact the lives of others? As for the example in your comment, it's a matter of where to position the threshold. It depends entirely on the definitions for a reasonable quality of life, what one means by freedom [and what constitutes a negative impact]. Should smoking be required? Permitted? Banned in some places? Banned in many places? Banned everywhere bar the home? Banned in the presence of any human? Banned in the presence of any respiring animal? Banned everywhere? Is there a right to harm, or a right to self-harm? As an aside: Is it worse to drink-drive for 2 km in a congested city or a barren desert? Morally or legally? What about the impact on humans, or the environment? Sorry if I seem to be playing devil's advocate, though I suspect you are as well. And now for the sucking up and ending on a positive note bit: Great blog - been reading for a while, please keep going, and don't worry about infrequent posting. Risk and statistics by zurn I agree with the points made in the comments above about risk management and statistics. Something to keep in mind is your judgement is impaired, even slightly, after your first glass of alcohol. Considering how dangerous and traumatic a car collision can be, is it acceptable to knowingly increase that risk and personally impair the driver of the vehicle, yourself? Also, keep in mind that you may not cause any fatalities, but you may still cripple someone, or incapacitate them for a while. Those are not reflected in fatality statistics. I can see what you're trying to say about driving long distances, and the per/km risk, but thinking in terms of such global statistics isn't always that helpful in real life. What a long drive increases the risk of is your encountering odd traffic situations or high-risk events such as other bad/careless/drunk drivers or bad weather/roads. It is in these situations that your full, un-impaired judgement may be required to avert inconvenience, injury, or death. These are the situations I think of when I consider drinking and driving, not simply driving a straight line down an empty road. Flying is a bit different, since you are not in control of the plane, and the rules are stricter. But you know that there are extremely strict rules regulating the behaviour of commercial pilots, such as no drinking at all 12 hours or so before the flight, and that the qualifications needed for such jobs are very high as well (and the penalties for trangressions equally high). I step onto a plane knowing that the risk to myself and others are been reduced as much as possible. This is not true of a car driven by a drunk driver. How would you feel if the pilot had a beer and thought it would be OK to fly? Smoking is another big issue as well. The risk from smoking is huge. In 2000 in the US, tobacco is cited as the actual cause of death in %18 of the deaths ( http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/factsheets/death_causes2000.htm ). Only poor diet/physical inactivity comes even close, %16.6 in second. Motor-vehicles are 6th, at %1.8. Since smoking is such a huge health problem, the government has had to step in (under public pressure of course) and mitigate this risk, since it's causing so many deaths. It's not just the statistical value of the risk to one person, it's also about how many people that risk is attached to, and with tobacco it's a lot of people. That's why in Canada smoking is banned in public places. In several Canadian cities the ban is far more extensive; for example, in Toronto it extends to all bars, restaurants, pool halls, bingo halls, casinos and racetracks. These measures wouldn't be taken if only a small number of people had smoked. One final point about smoking "taking X hours" off your life. I don't know exactly how they come up with these numbers, but I figure it's a result of averaging the lowered age of death of all past smokers. The reality is smokers, and those around them, aren't taking hours or minutes off their life; they're *potentially* taking decades off. That might give people more pause, if health is an issue with them. Interesting blog, I've been reading for several months. flippy statistics by chaizzilla most car collision fatalities in the usa are dui-related. driving drunk is rarely about taking those o so romantic risks life is alllll about as much as simply being a lazy dick. it eats up a lot of resources: emergency services, district attorneys, courtrooms, various people who didn't actively suck but got run over by a slobbering twit anyway, etc. the liability issue gets pressed eventually, civil society weighs the cost/benefit ratio, and the right to drink and drive loses. unless of course you're in the moneyed class; throw enough money at a dui conviction and you'd have to have killed seven mother teresas and then bragged about it to the press to not get the charge written off. unless you're famous &/or someone with more money &/or lots of PR muscle has it in for you. then you can go down in sacrifical goat flames for the sake of public sensibilities like martha stewart over ken lay's pocket change. true life story from austin, texas: you can run through a line of flares & cones around a dui crash from earlier in the evening and kill a cop fresh out of cop school unfortunate enough to have been working the scene, and still manage to go free for years while you drag the case out, costing the taxpayers a small fortune above and beyond the immediate damage. on the bright side i think this woman was one of the most hated people in the region; whenever her picture showed in the newspaper people taped it to dartboards. have you read any flannery o'connor? she's great. why bother by jw it is not that hard to understand. We like our live's and want to protect ourselfs and our family. that is why we mourn about the ones we've loved but lost. All the other (unkown persons) are not interesting enough to mourn about. In a way they are. One person know's everybody in the entire world. And if one person is hurt we feel the same, because we can relate. BUT, kill a sheep, kill a deer, kill a bear, kill a fly and nobody will give a cry. You can kill literaly EVERYTHING but a human, why ? No idee, because we feel related ? Maybee, but i think it is because we don't want it to happen to us, personally. Eliminate the rist by forbitten, like a lot of other things we're not allowed to do. My opinion. People who drink and drive do the cleaning in our society. Somebody got to do it. Why the fuck do we always think we are the lucky basterd to live our entire life. Finding the drunk on your path is part of the risk. If you want to get out, get out but don't moan if you get hit. And, it always takes two to tango. I understand, it's a pitty if it is a relative, but be realistic, if you don't now the driver nor the fellow he hit, you'll hardly read it in the paper, let alone realise it. I dare to state that we need accidents, they happen for a reason, same like virussus and plages. and douwe, geweldige leuke discussie, de onder buur man statistics, injury vs. death, sobriety by michael i think your statistics can be massaged a little bit more. let's say your probability of a fatal driving accident is P/km sober, and 300*P/km when fairly impaired. consider N 1km bar trips (or, really, N km worth of bar trips). your probability of *not* having a fatal accident is (1-P)^N versus (1-300*P)^N. with your claim that P is 7/1,000,000,000, we can compare these for a few values of N: N = 50: sober, 0.99999965 => 3.5 in 10 million impaired, 0.99989501 => 1.05 in 10000 N = 100: sober, 0.9999993 => 7 in 10 million impaired, 0.99979 => 2 in 10000 admittedly this may be stretching things a bit, but either of those might be a decent yearly number, and the "impaired" probabilities are no longer unthinkably small (and the sober numbers are). again, one might not be very impaired every time he leaves the bar, etc. -- but if one begins to think that drunk driving is only a tiny risk, and thus takes that risk more often, the numbers become more tangible a lot faster. really, though, a better statistic would show how your risk as a sober driver increases with the density of impaired drivers on the road. finally i must agree with the previous poster that fatality statistics don't tell the whole story. in my opinion many serious injuries might be worse. Re: statistics, injury vs. death, sobriety by Douwe Osinga Well, you are of course right. Taking the risk of one drunken drive back from a bar is probably not that bad; however, if you make it into a weekly ritual it starts to add up. weighing the punishment to the crime by tax paying citizen with rights in having been in the system for dui now i have to ask the people who back the current laws for dui a few things and point out a few others. how can it be fair that i can be classified a felon for having done the same crime i did 12 years ago that was then classified a misdermeanor.if i was to be charged on any other crime 20 years or 100 years ago and did that crime again today it is what it is it doesnt make me all of a sudden quilty of a more dangerous crime. in fact in proving guilt for intoxication say the level of intoxication is substatially lower on a felony as opposed to the misdermeanor arent we saying who cares how drunk you were and danerous to lives you were. example first offense bac.level .22 felony charge bac.level .o81 so i ask who is and should be considered the real felon in these example. i pose this question the the people who claim these laws save lives tell me who is more likely to kill or even be in a crash.im sure your mad statistics can find something. and since its in your best interest to make the highways safer for all how about speeders who do 80 or 90 down the highways causing crashes and deaths daily and on a much larger scale than that of a guy who blew a .081 or the person entering traffic with a cell in hand attempting to merge without even one thought of on coming traffic causing major injuries and deaths. well i guess a traffic ticket is ok in those situations huh. Post a comment archive (c) Douwe Osinga 2001-2005, douwe.webfeedback@gmail.com Vertaling Nederlands Duits?
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Intoxicated driving is incompatible Drunk Drivers - The Hardcore Facts Drunk Drivers -- The Hardcore Facts by HM1 Alvin Grant, USN Hardcore drunk drivers can be defined as individuals who drive with high blood alcohol concentrations (BAC's) of .15 or above. They do so repeatedly, as demonstrated by having more than one drunk driving arrest, and are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, despite previous sanctions, jail, treatment, education or disciplinary efforts. Terms like "subsequent offender," "problem drinker/driver" and "unfit/unsafe driver" are definitions used to alter the true perception of the drunk. A drunk under the influence never becomes a felon without involving some fatal or serious injury. They know the law, because to manipulate any system, you must understand how it works. Intoxicated driving is incompatible with the maintenance of high standards of performance, military discipline, personnel reliability, and readiness. Any person who engages in intoxicated driving, regardless of the geographic location of the incident, has demonstrated a serious disregard for the safety of themselves and others. There are approximately 3.3 million licensed drivers and the average BAC level of offenders arrested is approximately .17, well above the national BAC limit of .08. A Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) is the percentage by weight, of alcohol in a person's blood as determined by blood, urine, or breath analysis. Percent of weight by volume of alcohol in the blood is based on grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. Suspension of driving privileges is mandatory based upon an arrest report or other official documentation of the circumstances of an apprehension for intoxicated driving. On government installations the legal BAC limit is .05. However, keep in mind, there is zero tolerance for alcohol abuse at all times. If an individual refuses to submit to a lawfully requested BAC test, when there has been a conviction, nonjudicial punishment, or civilian revocation or suspension of driving privileges for intoxicated driving, regardless of any prior administrative determination; suspension of base driving privileges for one year is mandatory. Did you know that it is your responsibility to notify your command of any DUI or DWI within 24 hours? This is in your best interest. We are here to assist in education and to help get the free medical treatment you require for your level of abuse. For those individuals who have received multiple DUI/DWI citations and or convictions, your original one-year suspension may be increased by two years after a hearing. Exceptions to the mandatory suspension provisions may be granted under regulations concerned on a case-by-case basis. Such exceptions may be granted only on the basis of mission requirements, unusual personal or family hardship or with respect to a person who has no reasonably available alternate means of transportation to officially assigned duties. A limited exception shall be granted for the sole purpose of driving directly to and from such duties. This does not authorize the person to drive on a military installation, but allows for exceptional situations where public transportation, carpool, and taxi services are unavailable. There are several enforcement techniques used to detect and apprehend drunk drivers, but some drunk or drugged drivers may appear to never get caught. Sobriety checkpoints, blanket patrols, enforcement blitzes with media campaigns, standardized field sobriety testing, and mobile video-taping all provide the sooner or later apprehension of all drunk or drugged drivers. One way is the sharing of information across state lines so that out-of-state offenses are included in an offender's driving history. Uniformly this is not being done. It has a direct impact on the identification of the hardcore offender who, without cross-state record keeping, can easily move his license to another state to avoid being identified as a multiple or repeat offender. The Driver License Compact (DLC), an agreement among 47 states, is another attempt to prevent offenders from skirting the law. It's one driver license and one driver record concept, which requires the surrender of an out-of-state driver's license when applying for a new one and requirement that complete driving records be maintained in the driver's state of residence for 10 years to determine driving eligibility. This would include cross state reporting of all traffic violations, convictions, license suspensions and revocations to the home state licensing agency and treatment of offenses committed in other states as though they have been committed in the members home state. Or would you prefer the loss of your friend or family member? << Return to Self-help Main
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