THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Maybe it would embolden more kids to turn in their parents, if they knew about such a law being enacted.

But isn’t there a pretty high rate of recidivism with this sort of parental behavior?  I think if you grant amnesty, you’re enabling a pretty high chance of the kid getting stuck in a car with a drunk parent a SECOND time.  So I’d much prefer putting the kid in protective custody and the parent in jail after the first time, if that is indeed a better way to stop it from happening again.

Of course, this assumes that the parent would go to jail for drunk driving in the first place, which they probably would not.  If the kid was in the car and they got charged with reckless endangerment of a child (or whatever it’s called), then maybe.  But the drink driving laws in the US are an absolute joke, in my opinion.

A kid getting into a car with a drunk parent, and the kid reporting it in progress will almost never happen.  So, not only did it happen the first time, but the second and third and nth time.

Granting the parent amnesty after the first reported incident by a child may certainly be the wakeup call the parent needs.

Of course all cars should have an “interlock” system.  I am a libertarian and generally not in favor of government telling us what to do.  But when something gets ridiculously out of hand (like drunk driving deaths and injuries) and there is little or no way for the “natural forces” and capitalism to take care of the problem, then it becomes time for the government to step in.

The car makers won’t voluntarily do it because who wants to spend an extra thousand or two on a car that will prevent them from driving when they are drunk?  Not many.  People who routinely drink and drive surely don’t want it, and the people who would not mind such a device don’t need it (those who don’t drink or who don’t ever drink and drive).

So the only answer is for the 95% of the population who do not drink and drive to “suck it up” and tell the automakers (in the form of a federal or state law) that they are willing to fork out extra bucks for a car in order to protect themselves and society in general from the 5% of the people who do drink and drive.  That actually is the way that government is supposed to work.

My guess is that the only reason that lawmakers do NOT require such a device in cars is that they would lose campaign money from the automakers.

Trying to make it a baseball theme, the 80% who don’t use PED should be in favor of PED testing (which comes out of their pocket) to get rid of those PED users they don’t want to compete against.

This is becoming a really interesting discussion, to me at least.

I guess my inclination would be the opposite of a libertarians (in this case at least), because I’d advise making the laws on drunk driving tougher.  Not more laws… just increased penalties.

I’d also suggest more cab-related services.  Imagine you drained your wallet at the bar, are now plastered, and need to get home.  You can hope in your car and drive out of the city and back home for the night.  Or you could hop in a cab, type your name and social security number in a little computer, and get billed for the cab ride on your tax return.  Cabbie gets paid from the government, and the cab rider has little to no barrier to taking advantage of this service as, at the time, it appears “free” to them because the payment is sometime in the future.

The “suck it up” thing is interesting too.  I actually find it amusing that both McCain and Obama are trying to come across as protecting us from having to “suck it up”.  McCain tries to make it sound like Obama wants to tax an outrageous amount of our paychecks just for kicks… and Obama, in his acceptance speech, drew cheers when he referenced McCain’s economist calling the population “whiners” with regards to the constant complaints about filling gas tanks.  Obama is trying to make it seem like McCain wants us to suck it up about gas prices, and McCain is trying to make it seem like Obama wants us to suck it up about paying taxes.

I think it’s pretty clear, if both candidates are trying to paint the other guy as the one who will force the population to “suck it up”, that the majority of the population has absolutely no interest in doing so.

The people you target with your laws is teenagers, the one group of peopl who probably don’t think too much of their consequences to begin with.

Forcing interlock would be great.  Being a passenger who is sober who blows into an interlock to disengage the system should also make that person liable for driving under the influence (or enabling the driving under the influence).

Lots of time penalties simply don’t do enough to deter dangerous activity.

Simply making penalties tougher as a way of deterring certain behaviors or crimes is a complex issue, at least in our country and in most “democratic” countries.

I always say to the people who constantly demand greater penalties, “Sure, you can get rid of almost all “discretionary crime” by making the penalty life or 20 years in prison, or the death penalty,” but it is not that simple.  Let’s say that all of a sudden, DUI’s were punishable by a mandatory sentence of 20 years in the state pen.  That would probably reduce them by 95 or 99% or something like that.  But…

The first time some an otherwise law-abiding citizen gets caught for whatever reason (obviously he is being really stupid), all hell will break loose.  Putting, say a Senator’s son in jail for 20 years for a DUI is just not workable.  Not workable at all.  Not to mention that really tough penalties would not pass Constitutional muster (8th Amendment) in the country.

So with all crimes, we try and strike a balance between deterrence and practicality and reasonableness (the punishment fitting the crime).  Yes, of course stiffer penalties almost always reduces crime. We already know that. The people who constantly scream for stiffer penalties and getting touch on crime don’t understand how the criminal justice system in this country and how our society works in general and it is just an easy way for them to act like they care or are doing something. 

As I said, all penalties are supposed to balance all of the things I mentioned above.  Obviously it is an individual thing too (personal opinion) as far as what crimes deserve what penalties, evidenced by the fact that there are so many different penalties for the same crimes in different states and in different countries, even countries with similar societies and governments.