Surely there are worse things than a DUI charge?

HOLY FUCK!

Officers located the individual, and although initially non-responsive, the person was able to be roused by officers, according to UR Security.

The individual, who was identified as an undergraduate, then began

Officers were called to SBA on Jan. 23 at 3:15 a.m. to investigate the report of an individual passing out in the kitchen with his face lying in a pool of vomit.

Officers located the individual, and although initially non-responsive, the person was able to be roused by officers, according to UR Security.

The individual, who was identified as an undergraduate, then began eating his vomit and became verbally abusive, according to Mauldin.

An ambulance was summoned, and upon realizing this, the student became irrational and combative, according to UR Security.

The student was then transported to Strong Memorial Hospital for evaluation and treatment for intoxication, according to UR Security.

GG LIVES!

What do you guys think of a guy getting off after killing a woman because he was drunk behind the wheel? An acquaintance of mine no longer has a daughter because this guy killed a woman while driving drunk. It barely made the papers and the media said it wasn't as serious because the woman who died was drunk too. As if that makes the loss of a life less bad. Also, there wasn't even any proof that the woman who died was drunk. Letting the guy off is like saying the woman's life wasn't worth anything.

yeah bullshit, he should go to prison.

he should go to prison regardless of whether or not he killed anybody. severe, severe penalties for regular DUIs - like, say, immediatelly losing your license - might actually have an impact. but on a certain level there is a certain acceptance of drunk driving in our culture. people gonna drink alcohol, only way to get around is in a car, what are you gonna do?

most car-related deaths aren't due to drunk driving as much as poor driving - those drivers don't end up with serious penalties either. in a lot of ways focusing *only* on drunk driving allows us to ignore the biggest form of preventable death in this country. this doesn't necessarily require kicking people out of their cars; making it very difficult to get a license (my gf didn't even have to drive out of a parking lot to get hers) and lower speed limits would save thousands of lives.

If you make people better drivers, the speed limits become much less of a factor. Also, unless you accordingly ramp up the penalties for breaking the speed limits, lowering them will have negligible effect.

unless you enforce any of it, nothing changes

iatee, I agree, I see agressive and selfish and ignorant driving every day, a lot of people on the roads have this ego hangup where it is "naive" to go less than 10 mph over the speed limit, or where basic courtesy and stuff that is in the rules of the road is not "aggressive" enough. People often drive with their egos and think this is "correct" driving and that what they teach you in driver's ed is "naive" and worthless.

What is scary is that these people are breaking no law at all except for the rules of the road which don't get enforced 90% of the time!

What happens to me a lot is someone honking at me from behind when I am doing nothing wrong at all, obeying the law and they are honking at me because I won't break the law for them!

In any case, you are right, there is a lot of bad and dangerous driving out there that has nothing to do with being drunk.

However I still think that the courts essentially decided that this woman's life didn't mean anything "because she was drunk" (allegedly). It is sick that our court system makes statements about the value of a person's life.

oh no I totally agree on that

unless you enforce any of it, nothing changes

and this

If you make people better drivers, the speed limits become much less of a factor.

sorta, but unfortunate accidents happen even w/ safer drivers, and lower speed limits can make a life/death difference in these cases

I don't disagree with that in principle, although the back of my mind is likely misremembering some statistic about the trauma incurred in accidents where the effective speed was 30 mph that is leading me to the baseline assumption that unless you lower the speed limit to the point where it becomes virtually ineffective to drive anywhere, the difference you are making isn't as large as you would assume.

But, like I said, I don't really disagree.

anyone who is caught driving recklessly or driving drunk should have a much stiffer penalty w/r/t fines and their ability to have a license. considering what i see around los angeles every day, i'm inclined to suggest that they should have their vehicles impounded and licenses taken away for a couple of years.

I have to say though that I have been in and seen accidents where the problem is with bad or damaged signs, bad visibility, dangerous intersections, etc. And the attitude when you have a collision then is you're 100% responsible, I mean I believe in keeping your eyes on the road but some conditions make safe driving more difficult.

My favorite thing is when you nearly collide into someone and it's their fault but they flip you off and yell at you about how stupid you are.

I admit that I am biased in this discussion because I speed on highways, but aside from that I do not drive recklessly; I do not tailgate, I always use my signals, I do not weave through traffic or cut people off, I do not pass on the right as a rule, etc. If the road is sparsely populated and driving conditions are good, I'm going to be like Speed Racer, but if it's raining or snowing or icy, or there is a moderate to heavy amount of traffic, I am going to drive appropriately. I do not use my phone while my car is in motion; I might if I am at a stoplight, but only if traffic is heavy and amenable to my admittedly diminished reaction time.

I think a most people don't have any real conception of how dangerous driving is and think it's analogous to walking really fast, so they allow all of these other distractions to creep into their driving habits when they should really be watching the damn road and processing and reacting to the traffic patterns around themselves.

I don't disagree with that in principle, although the back of my mind is likely misremembering some statistic about the trauma incurred in accidents where the effective speed was 30 mph that is leading me to the baseline assumption that unless you lower the speed limit to the point where it becomes virtually ineffective to drive anywhere, the difference you are making isn't as large as you would assume.

in nyc there's a pr campaign going on right now w/ a pretty straightforward statistic: "Hit someone at 40, there’s a 70 percent chance they’ll die. Hit someone at 30, there’s an 80 percent chance they’ll live. That’s why it’s 30." I don't have a better stat off the top of my head, and I don't think that city speed limits from 20-30 mph are particularly draconian.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/10/21/dot-launches-speed-limit-psas-nypd-to-target-speeding-failure-to-yield/

course, instead of spending money on these ads they could be making better ads that said "hey guess what we're going to actually enforce this speed limit." those ads would pay for themselves pretty quickly.

and dan I'm sure you're not the problem.

I think a most people don't have any real conception of how dangerous driving is and think it's analogous to walking really fast

totally and it's amazing how this conception persists despite the fact that most of us know multiple people who have died in car accidents.

of course, the corollary to "ppl think driving is analogous to walking really fast" is demonstrated by the shocking number of people who sort of blithely wander into traffic and then get mad when drivers panic and swerve to avoid hitting them, or even better the people who hang their BABY CARRIAGES off the curb while waiting for a light

ultimately it's amazing we as a species/society don't literally accidentally shoot ourselves in the face every day

i got hit by a car going about 30, fucked up my leg and back pretty good.

anyone who is caught driving recklessly or driving drunk should have a much stiffer penalty w/r/t fines and their ability to have a license

Nah, I agree with iatee that these people should do jail time. Confiscate licenses, and people just drive without them. You'd probably be surprised at the number of people in any good-sized city driving with suspended licenses.

actually i think for particularly serious offenders w/r/t reckless driving (speeding through traffic, weaving in and out, driving on the shoulder, etc) go ahead and stick them in jail for 30 days imo.

also hate: people who turn left real quick ahead of cars coming in the other direction when the light turns green because they don't want to have to wait (these people never look for pedestrians who may be crossing, ime.)

I'm learning to drive (13 years after the legal driving age, having given it a go 7 years ago and not got on with it) and this thread is adding to my conviction that I don't like driving and don't trust myself to be safe at it, and my irritation at all the people who talk like being able to drive is something that every grown adult should want and be able to do and why haven't I done it yet

pretty sure the same people who tell me "learning to drive is an essential skill for an adult! everyone should do it!" also get mad at least once per drive about people who shouldn't be allowed on the road, so, which is it again?

Knowing how to drive is a very useful skill in the example of, say, being chased by an axe-wielding madman in a post-apocalyptic world with no public transit and finding a gassed-up running car you could use to make your getaway

Most of the time though, if you don't live in an urban area in the US you probably don't NEED to drive; it makes life a bazillion times easier but isn't really necessary. Living in a truly suburban or rural area is what makes driving necessary as there's no public or private infrastructure available that you can readily use unless you're rich enough to pay for a driver.

driving turns everyone into kind of an asshole when they're behind the wheel, we can probably blame car commercials w/smug pricks driving at 80 mph on empty streets or through well-lit tunnels.

In the UK, it is not unusual for motorists who kill pedestrians/cyclists to get v slight penalties, this angers me considerably, and not just because of my own personal story, it bums me out a lot to read of a driver killing someone and getting off in the USA too.

The news story in the OP in this thread! Urgh.

where the hell do you live where the driver isn't punished because he was drunk?

I'm less interested in harsher penalties for drunk drivers than in working to make people less likely to drive drunk. I live in a city of 350k that has no mass transit. Fort Worth's is essentially useless, and while Dallas is a little better, AFAIK it doesn't run near last call. Taxis are a pain and ridiculously expensive.

That's a recipe for having drunk drivers on the road. Are harsher penalties for the 1% who get caught going to discourage the other 99% from doing it (and that percentage is ridiculously generous)? I don't know. Available mass transit, fewer zoning restrictions on where to place bars (so that there are neighborhood bars in walking/biking distance), encouragement of taxi use, etc. are going to do more IMO.

Biking while drunk is a DUI in Florida!

jetpack drunkard

That's a recipe for having drunk drivers on the road. Are harsher penalties for the 1% who get caught going to discourage the other 99% from doing it (and that percentage is ridiculously generous)?

if the penalties are harsh enough, I think perhaps. if you can lose your car or go to jail for a first time offense, that might affect the 99%. if it's just a bigger fine, prob not.

I don't know. Available mass transit, fewer zoning restrictions on where to place bars (so that there are neighborhood bars in walking/biking distance), encouragement of taxi use, etc. are going to do more IMO.

again I don't think that alcohol is the only real problem here - alcohol's only one factor in unsafe driving, but some people after 5 beers might be safer drivers than a sober 90 year old. and texting while driving is exactly as dangerous, and more and more omnipresent. but yeah, other than that this is otm - people drive drunk because they don't have any other transit option, not because they love drunk driving.

Biking while drunk is a DUI a lot of places!

The sheer number of drunk drivers is mind-blowing. And I'm only referring to the number who are caught -- I don't even want to guess how many there are actually out there.

What it boils down to, to me:
1. We have transportation problems. In the most urban areas of the US, it's not an issue, but for an overwhelming majority of the country, reasonable public transportation (or even available private transportation like cabs or emergency lines) is a rarity.
2. Motor vehicles are mind-boggling dangerous compared to about everything else someone does in a day, but there's no easy way to make that understandable. It's the most democratized, nearly universally-used dangerous thing in our society. I mean, guns have NOTHING on motor vehicles.
3. Responsible recognition of drinking and its effects are still virtually nil. Among the regularly-drinking portion of the population, it's just such a way of life that the danger is only visible at the macro level and not the daily level. Denial is another large part of this. Remember the safe sex rationale where youth say, "Oh, we're not really having sex, so why would I buy condoms, have a need to use condoms, etc." and suddenly teen pregnancies "just happen."

I'm not really the most lucid person today so I won't go into detail on this, but I've confessed on ILX before that at the end of 2009, I was arrested for drunk driving and went through the entire process for a first-time offender in my state.

I could go into the entire rigmarole explaining my extenuating circumstances and why I was a special case, but really, just look at the three points I laid out above. No matter how you got to the position where you may drive drunk, there's no reason that it should ever happen. Then again, the number of two or three time offenders I met was astonishing.

I can't believe the number of people I know who drive when they're drunk. I never do - if I get drunk on accident, I leave my car at the bar/party/whatever and take a cab home.

I thank you.

1. We have transportation problems. In the most urban areas of the US, it's not an issue

not really! even most urban areas have pretty shitty transit compared to asia/europe

true, I think by "the most urban" I probably mean like 20 square blocks in the US, total, combined between all states

haha yeah i was gonna say too

iatee has been otm

bump

I am curious what the stats are w/r/t DUIs and class, w/ the other variables isolated.

cause it's not like rich people don't get DUIs, and when it comes to fines/lawyers/etc. it's generally going to be less of a burden for them. (which is why fines should be adjusted to income.)

― iatee, Friday, March 4, 2011 5:04 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

gonna try to look this up later

bump

No thanks, but I'll take a drink.