Legalize Drunk Driving

reply to post by Hefficide


Yeah, those "residual markers" can and do result in DUI convictions.

Except in the land of denial.

reply to post by poet1b


Source to a case where residual markers in the blood, for a legitimately prescribed medication, resulted in a conviction for DUI, or DWI please? A case where the drug has surpassed it's half life, in the blood stream, and still prosecution was sought and secured?

~Heff

reply to post by mnemeth1


Considering that 99% of people driving drunk never get caught, it practically **is** legal.

reply to post by Hefficide


Sure, $400 an hour for legal research. U2 me and I will give you instructions on how to send a 10k retainer.


But you will never believe anything that you don't want to believe.

The laws referenced in the OP are complete and utter hogwash. Prohibition doesn't work, has never worked and will never work. If you want to actually deter a crime, you need a steep enough penalty. Yo dummy, you want to get tanked up and barrel down the road, fine. However, be aware, if you kill my kid in the process you're going to die as well. And certainly not some nice quaint little put you to sleep shot either. Punishment by torturous, televised execution by being shredded or something fun like that. The laws aren't the deterrent, the punishment is supposed to be the deterrent. You know, the whole if you get caught stealing they chop of your hand schtick. Quit tenderfooting around crimes you actually want to prevent. The system we have in place now is nothing short of a money maker for the .gov. Take the financial incentive out of it and the .gov will quickly come up with laws that actually deal with the problems.

Originally posted by LearnToSw1m.

If the wrong person gets convicted, are you going to lend him your hand if his got chopped off?

I'm surprised that people can't view the OP as a point for discussion on it's own merit without adding all this macho bluster!

As he says, Driving with a level of alcohol in your bloodstream above that allowed by the law does not make you a murderer, doesn't mean you will drive recklessly and being guilty of this crime does not mean there is a victim.

I'm pretty sure people would want to shred any driver who kills one of their kids, whether they have been drinking or not.

The worrying thing is that anyone who drinks and also dives can find themselves acting responsibly on the night and taking a cab, but might fall foul the next day by driving and still being over the limit.

Originally posted by poet1b
Sure, $400 an hour for legal research. U2 me and I will give you instructions on how to send a 10k retainer.
But you will never believe anything that you don't want to believe.

Ahhh... The old "make an unsourced and unsubstantiated claim and then, when asked to support your statement, say something that avoids the issue entirely but implies your expertise in the matter" gambit.

Pretty tricky you!

~Heff

In a perfect world people would not take their vehicule after having drinked alcohol.
Personally i would forbid alcohol, plain and simple. Because too many people are irresponsible and illogical ( thats why the world is in its actual shape ) I see no difference between alcohol and the other drugs that are forbidden.
And if you reply that its not addictive on the same level, just watch the crowd in bars every weekends.

I agree with the OP in principle, if all else were equal. However, all else is not equal. North American society promotes alcohol use and abuse, miseducates it's children and forces them to be reliant on the state by stripping them of their critical thinking ability and does very little to teach its citizens how to use alcohol responsibly.

Once we can change the very direction of society, then we can amend it's laws but it cannot happen the other way.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Mnemeth1,

I would like to comment on your post. I think it's absolutely brilliant in many ways.
Before anyone trashes me for what i'm writing, I would like for the audience know that I lost my mother at the age of 10 due to a "drunk driver".
I was in the car with her when it happened. You know what i've learned from the experience? Empathy.
A few quick points...
- The guy that struck our vehicle was someone who had a history of drunk driving.
- My mother was not wearing her seatbelt

Now, I spent a good portion of my life blaming this individual for the loss of my mother. I realize that the guy lost 7 years of his life because of this.
As i grew older, I found it equally easy to blame my mother who was very hypocritical in the "wear your seatbelt" fashion, for not wearing it herself that day.
This type of thought process led me to gain a huge sense of empathy through the rest of my life.

On to the point. I continue that process on and on... Where does the blame end?, I ask myself. It is equally reasonable to blame the guys parents for their shortcomings, and on, and on and on...
I know this sounds crazy to most people, but I actually feel bad for the guy. The state solved no problems by taking seven years from the guy.
If anything, it probably made things worse for him, and might have made his alchoholism even worse.

In school, I was asked to sign into things like SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving) and went to counselling with other stundents who had lost a loved one, etc. . .
Although I went to counselling, I refused to go into SADD and other organizations for some odd reason.
Now that i'm a wee 28 years old I find it disturbing in many ways that school systems use children in this fashion to promote agendas.
The agenda in this case being a bunch of kids upset at drunk driving in order to keep the scheme going. Keep the dollars rolling in for the state.

I believe you are absolutely right in this assesment, and the entire purpose is more sickening than most imagine.
Hey, I could even go as far as to say (continuing from thought processes previously mentioned) that the government was at fault.
If I really cared enough I could go do some research on the guy and find out that he lived in poverty because the IRS took every last cent from his parents, and that they both had to work jobs leaving little timmy at an abusive sitter.
Where he might have been sexually molested, which then turned into a massive drinking problem....
I could easily blame myself as well. I pushed for us to go out and buy new shoes that day...

My point is simply this...
Government is not the solution. They are the problem.
You know what the governement is? It's a gang. You know what the officials are who impose these rules upon us?
GANGBANGERS WITH BADGES.
Live free or die trying,

WdBASH

Originally posted by Exuberant1

Originally posted by Maslo

Banning things that are dangerous is perfectly moral. Nobody should have a right to endanger other people, even if nothing bad happens. You are blinded by your ideology.

Blinded by his ideology?

You are the one who doesn't want to ban cars, pal.

You know that they kill tens of thousands each year, but the belief system which has been indoctrinated into you since childhood prevents you from being able to see the logic behind saving lives. You think it is more important for you to be able to drive your car than for forty-plus thousands people to not die.

By this same argument we should ban school, work, religion, war, gun, drugs, cars, planes, trains, etc.

Anything has a potential to cost lives. Take jewelery we buy for the wife or the girlfriend. Unless you do checking, chances are the diamonds in the jewelery could be blood diamonds from Africa, which calims many lives each year.

People who get bullied in school, have a breakup, or get embarrased have committed suicide rather than deal with it and move on.

People who dont get the promotion at work can go postal.

People consitently kill each other over religious beleifs, more so than the lives claimed by automobile accidents.

The argument is to narrow, and does not take into account socail implications.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by WTFover

 

It is clearly obvious that you have no desire to try and prevent fatalities from MVT.

You only seek to embrace ignorance and hypocrisy.

You make the accusation that I have "misrepresented" what you have said, but refuse to clarify how my post did so. What more can I say?

Happy ATSing!

reply to post by WdBASH


It takes a strong mind to overcome the reactionary responses most have exhibited in this thread and actually look at what I am saying and understand the logic behind it.

The government can not solve the problem of drunk driving by banning drunk driving. By the statistics, they can barely even reduce it.

The only just way to punish drunks is to charge them with the actual crimes they commit while under the influence. A crime must necessarily have a victim to be valid. The State can not be a valid victim without destroying our rights.

People think of the State as a person - it is not a person, it is a violent institution.

Let us replace the word "State" with "Goldman Sachs" and see how the drunk driving law plays out:

It offends Goldman Sachs that people drive under the influence of alcohol, therefore Goldman Sachs has decided to have armed security guards pull over drivers it suspects of having drank alcohol, and the guard will force those drivers to submit to a testing device that they have approved.

If the driver refuses to obey the security guard, the Goldman security guard will use violence against that person and throw them into a dungeon until a Goldman Sachs executive can decide what to do with them. If they do obey the security guard and submit to the test and the test comes out positive, the Goldman Sachs security guard will violently kidnap the person and throw them into a Goldman dungeon until a Goldman Sachs executive can decide their punishment.

---------

Now let us replace Goldman Sachs in a robbery case:

If a Goldman Sachs security guard finds a person breaking in to the Goldman offices, they will use defensive force to protect Goldmans property and attempt to apprehend the intruder, at which point they will hold him until a Goldman executive can determine what to do with him.

----------

Which makes sense and which does not?

reply to post by mnemeth1


Wow what's next....smoking crack should be legal? Same thing as drunk driving, your putting the toxin in your body like a smoking gun. Both IMPAIR your judgement, but the crackhead has to kill someone before he gets punished....get out of wonderland.

Originally posted by MarineSniper12Kills
Both IMPAIR your judgement....

Which is why we have to continually have these debates... Sometimes I wonder if the people who push this stuff ae stoned / high / etc when they think it up.

But then again we have something called a twinky defense.... If thats not reason enough to maintain a ban on drugs.

Originally posted by MarineSniper12Kills
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

Wow what's next....smoking crack should be legal? Same thing as drunk driving, your putting the toxin in your body like a smoking gun. Both IMPAIR your judgement, but the crackhead has to kill someone before he gets punished....get out of wonderland.

I can smoke crack and not kill people.

reply to post by mnemeth1


I don't know any crack heads who have murdered anyone either.

People would be safer if crackheads could get their monthly fix for five dollars from Monsanto.

*But if they legalise drugs, where will all those gangs get their income from?

And if they turn straight, there will be less need for police - what will all those ex-cops do?

I don't know... those law enforcement officers and bureaucrats get paid a good wage and then they put it back into the economy. Won't this negatively affect the economy? Is that something we really need during these tough times?

What about all the jobs drug users create? ....Jobs at the courts, correctional/penal system, counseling, law enforcement - those people all get paid well and have great benefits and that is alot of money going back into the economy during these tough times.

Think about it - if drugs are legalized , do you really want your child working along 'Tyrone-the-ex-drug-dealer'?

That could happen you know...

...Think of the children.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
The government can not solve the problem of drunk driving by banning drunk driving. By the statistics, they can barely even reduce it.

In the US, motor vehicle accident fatalities caused by drunk driving dropped approx 50% in the last 30 years, despite the fact there are more cars and drivers on the road.

The difference is the govt and law enforcement's attitude. Drunk driving used to be considered not that big of a deal. Now it is.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Ah so what are you superman? Crack does make many people murder others, look at statistics. Both alcohol and crack can impair you so much, that you do not know what you are doing. Yet drunk driving should be legal? Lmfao

S+F OP

I don't know if it has been stated or not, but the legal BAC(0.08) in the US is set by the federal government or they withhold road funding from your state. Basically change your laws how we see fit or we won't fund your transportation infrastructure. But different people metabolize alcohol differently. As a 200lb male I can handle far more alcohol than a 100lb woman in the same amount of time.

I also have a huge beef with the alcohol-related crash statistics, as I talked to a cop about them. Any time there is a crash with alcohol in the car they label it "alcohol-related", whether the driver was drunk or not. So driving to the liquor store and buying a case of beer, then getting into an accident, your fault or not, is put down in the books as alcohol-related.

Before people start ragging on me as well, yes I have been convicted of 2 DUI's and no longer drink and drive. The 1st one was bogus because I drove into a "closed" public park(no signs posting open times of course) while police were there. The 2nd one was entirely my fault and I'm glad I was stopped before something bad happened. However the DUI laws do nothing to stop anyone from driving when they feel OK to drive.