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'other factors' like the improvements in car safety in the last 30 years. Or regular targeted checkpoints to remove drunk drivers from the road. Or the aging population bringing a shift in driver mentality. Constant campaigning commercials to raise awareness of the risks of driving under the influence. Bar tenders being forced to cut off and/or take the keys from drunks. Homeowners being liable for their drunken guests' actions, etc. I mean hell, that same website states "The rate of drunk driving is highest among 26 to 29 year olds (20.7 percent)" - and even if the drinking age is 21, it isn't like kids as young as middle school have trouble getting access to alcohol, must less late teens.

Personally found this to be an interesting read on various factors. Brought up a few things I hadn't thought of before reading it.

And the law didn't change a thing, just made nominal activity illegal.

Do you have a citation for that? Since the drinking age was raised drunk driving deaths have declined dramatically. There are, of course, other factors than drinking age, but the correlation is certainly in the right direction. I cannot find any figures for binge drinking, but you haven't cited any either. I think your assertion that "the law didn't change a thing" is unsupported by evidence.

Here in anchorage alaska, pretty much every biking fatality is the result of a drunk driver, and usually also a hit a run. Not sure how that holds up nationally, but it might be worth seeing how duis correlate.

In Anchorage, pretty much everything is a result of a drunk driver. Not much else is going on there.

Actually, there is a state-wide rule in Alaska, that you have to be drunk to drive any motor vehicle. Ask a [probably drunk] cop, if you disbelieve me. Makes for interesting discussions with MADD.

Then of course there's MADD. I assure you that more than one of the neoprohibitionist protofascists behind that organization is crosseyed with rage at the idea of cars that can safely take people home even if they've committed the mortal sin of alcohol consumption. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some MADD type had gotten so angry that she kicked her little yapping lap dog right through the living room picture window at the mere thought of an autonomous vehicle.

http://www.madd.org/blog/2014/...

"MADD is excited about the possibilities of self-driving vehicles. We support the development of advanced technology that will reduce crashes, fatalities and injuries on our roadways. Both the self-driving technology and the DADSS (Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety) technology, which automatically detects a driver’s blood alcohol concentration, hold tremendous promise for a safer tomorrow. We look forward to future advancements that will eventually eliminate drunk driving completely."

I do agree with you as far as law enforcement revenue, but I'm sure cities will just find another way to monetize the transportation infrastructure.

More people die each year from drunk driving. All of you that think the government should force us to do what's good for everyone should support a ban on alcohol. Otherwise you would be a major hypocrite. http://www.madd.org/drunk-driv...

Although I have generic sympathy for people being dicked around by an uncaring corporation, we're talking drunk drivers here. According to MADD, each year, Drunk drivers kill just over 10,000 Americans. In other words, Drunk drivers killed more innocent Americans in the last 4 months, than Al Quaida and the Taliban killed in the last decade (yeah, you can throw ISIS into that mix as well).

In all honesty, the biggest problem I have with the way that these companies (this company?) dicks people around is that they don't advertise it as a feature. Part of the reason why these machines are so finicky is that they have to be to keep people from gaming the system. The rest, I'll just put down to karma.

Seriously: You don't want to be dicked around by this system?

DON'T FUCKING DRINK AND DRIVE!!!

You have a death wish, then play russian roulette -- but don't bring innocent women and children into the game. ; You don't care about putting innocent lives at risk? Don't expect me to get all teary-eyed when it's your life that gets messed with -- at least its' not an innocent life being affected.

Sorry to be such a dick about this, but sometimes it takes people being a dick to shock drunk drivers out of their petty little world, and into thinking about the effects of their actions.

Although I have generic sympathy for people being dicked around by an uncaring corporation, we're talking drunk drivers here. According to MADD, each year, Drunk drivers kill just over 10,000 Americans. In other words, Drunk drivers killed more innocent Americans in the last 4 months, than Al Quaida and the Taliban killed in the last decade (yeah, you can throw ISIS into that mix as well).

In all honesty, the biggest problem I have with the way that these companies (this company?) dicks people around is that they don't advertise it as a feature. Part of the reason why these machines are so finicky is that they have to be to keep people from gaming the system. The rest, I'll just put down to karma.

Seriously: You don't want to be dicked around by this system?

DON'T FUCKING DRINK AND DRIVE!!!

You have a death wish, then play russian roulette -- but don't bring innocent women and children into the game. ; You don't care about putting innocent lives at risk? Don't expect me to get all teary-eyed when it's your life that gets messed with -- at least its' not an innocent life being affected.

Sorry to be such a dick about this, but sometimes it takes people being a dick to shock drunk drivers out of their petty little world, and into thinking about the effects of their actions.

If this was about keeping us and our kids safe, We'd be paying a couple billion a month to MADD.

Personally, I think any TSA employee in charge of TSA procedures needs to go through said procedure/screening every day before work.

Actually, they need to be fired and replaced by people with proper risk management training, as opposed to risk avoidance.

Risk Avoidance: Do everything in your power to prevent some risk, no matter the cost

Risk Management: Assess the risk, consider the liklihood of the risk, the damage it will cost if it happens, then look at mitigations, how likely they are to work, how much they'll cost, etc... And make the cheapest decision. IE if on average the mitigation will prevent more loss than it costs, you impliment it. Otherwise you just accept the risk.

The main proponents of this are all the safety nuts out there who feel that we can't drive safely. What you're missing in all the accident data is the fact that 1) Cellphones and in-car distractions (Nav Systems, etc.) are killing more people every year, it's on the rise. 2) Drunk Driving and Drugs are the leading cause of traffic fatalities. Since the government won't be able to control your behavior they'll just stick you in some little box that will take all responsibility away from you and most of these studies coming out are all sponsored by the government. Sorry, I choose not to listen to a bunch of drivel put out by some paid-for think tank research. Maybe someday if I can no longer drive because of age, then I'd probably consider it but this is a bureaucrat's dream of controlling people's lives. Too much traffic or smog? we'll slow you down or not let you drive today. Had too much to drink? We'll take you right over to the rehab center where you can get dried out? Drugs in your system? We'll just drive you over to the police and they can arrest you.

saying I am old enough to drink alcohol and use it that way, that's a victimless crime.

Until you kill someone because you got drunk at the bar or purchased from a distributor which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't used a fake ID.

Also, using a fake ID as you described might be considered fraudulent use for purpose of establishing a false identification but definitely using a fake ID is a crime.

So using the above, you've committed 2 crimes: false identification and depending on how it is phrased in your state, vehicular homicide, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide while driving under the influence, negligent homicide and several other variations:

Criminal listings.

Every day in America, another 27 people die as a result of drunk driving crashes. That's over 9500 people a year. There are 211,000,000 registered drivers I propose we ban either cars or alcohol. I'll let you pick. The death rate is about the same number, but the number of drivers is less than the number of guns, so you're more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than you are to be shot to death. Not much though. I assume you agree with me that all cars or alcohol should be banned? Or maybe you just think we should only allow smaller cars. Nobody really needs to drive a 2-ton dually death machine anyways. Or maybe we should just ban all alcohol but wine. Nobody ever gets drunk on wine and drives a car. And no the argument that it's fun to just drink a few beers in not a strong argument for not banning alcohol.

Except your argument is extremely flawed, because we've already drastically reduced the vehicular death rate through safety improvements and drunk driving initiatives. There's plenty more we could do, but it is in no way analogous to *complete inaction* in regards to gun-related crime. Also, note that, unlike a gun, it *is* illegal to operate a vehicle without a license.

Every day in America, another 27 people die as a result of drunk driving crashes. That's over 9500 people a year. There are 211,000,000 registered drivers I propose we ban either cars or alcohol. I'll let you pick. The death rate is about the same number, but the number of drivers is less than the number of guns, so you're more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than you are to be shot to death. Not much though. I assume you agree with me that all cars or alcohol should be banned? Or maybe you just think we should only allow smaller cars. Nobody really needs to drive a 2-ton dually death machine anyways. Or maybe we should just ban all alcohol but wine. Nobody ever gets drunk on wine and drives a car. And no the argument that it's fun to just drink a few beers in not a strong argument for not banning alcohol.

They really should do some actual investigating before just locking him up. If he had plans for bombs, or bombs, or some sort of credible weapon, then yeah you can arrest him. Until then, keep an eye on him. They do shit like this blowing things out of proportion, while some crazy person is really planning on doing it, but they don't do their jobs. It should have been pretty easy to get a search warrant for his premises and then to have actually searched them.

School shootings aren't really that common, I agree that it happens more often than it has in the past, but more kids are killed by drunk drivers than by mass shootings. Of the 1,210 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2010, 211 (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver. Out of those 211 deaths, 131 (62 percent) were riding with the drunk driver

Yes on a first conviction, if you live in the right/wrong state: http://www.madd.org/laws/all-offender-interlock.html

True, and one of the stranger things about the modern world. I know that on piracy, not only were pirates summarily executed on capture, but if the pirates in general got to be too much of a pain in the ass in general, some country would send a bunch of marines to invade wherever they were based, kill everyone they saw and trash everything they could touch, and then leave. Now, you can't invade anywhere without taking over the whole country, trying to "nation build", bending over backwards not to harm any civilians who might be innocent or destroy any of their stuff without compensating them, having a dozen NGOs up your ass about everything while they ignore what the totalitarian dictator next door does, etc. I'm not saying that either is necessarily better in all cases, but what a difference.

The DUI issue is interesting too. Apparently, we pretty much ignored it for most of the history of motorized transportation, along with stuff like having and actually using seatbelts. Then they decided to start in on it, mostly with publicity and notices. Most of it goes away, but they just keep going after it harder and harder with vaguely fascist tactics like checkpoints, installing breathalyzer interlocks in ALL cars (yes, MADD really wants to do that, it's on their website http://www.madd.org/drunk-driving/campaign/), etc.

I'm not saying I want to go back to the old ways on everything, but damm people, can't we keep a little perspective?

I've wondered about what's really behind it. Seems related to white guilt - rich white people who suddenly decided to feel guilty about being rich and white and feel a sudden desire to atone for supposed past sins by getting involved in things they often don't know anything about. Also the modern 24-hour news cycle - a bazillion news sources have to get eyeballs on them somehow. Something about modern Christianity too - there seem to be a lot of those types that believe that we must spare no expense to keep every single life going for as long as we possibly can, even if it's a week as a vegetable in a hospital whose costs will bankrupt the family, but don't dare have the Government pay for it!

Link

Back in the late 1960's and early 70's a number of states lowered their drinking age from 21 to 18. In many of these states, research documented a significant increase in highway deaths of the teens affected by these laws. So, in the early 1980's a movement began to raise the drinking age back to 21. After the law changed back to 21, many of the states were monitored to check the difference in highway fatalities. Researchers found that teenage deaths in fatal car crashes dropped considerably - in some cases up to 28% - when the laws were moved back to 21.

Maybe it is a good thing that it is becoming an uber-crime when you look at this. http://www.madd.org/stats/1298

Keep in mind that MADD inflates the numbers with a nutty classification scheme. Sober driver, drunk passenger? That's an alcohol related accident. Drunk pedestrian walks in front of sober driver? Alcohol related accident. Driver with one drink gets into their parked car, gets sideswiped by a sober driver? Alcohol related accident.

MADD inflates numbers

Maybe it is a good thing that it is becoming an uber-crime when you look at this. http://www.madd.org/stats/1298

who said drunk drivers aren't good for *anything*

Applekid wrote]: Look how long it took for Prohibition in the US to be tossed out the window. Look at what the War on Drugs STILL hasn't managed to succeed in. And, compared to gaming, these two examples are MUCH more important.

[Applekid wrote]: Look how long it took for Prohibition in the US to be tossed out the window. Look at what the War on Drugs STILL hasn't managed to succeed in. And, compared to gaming, these two examples are MUCH more important.

Well, there's at least one factual error in the article. They haven't denied that Candy Lightner was the founder according to their website:
http://www.madd.org/aboutus/1194

Compare traffic fatalites per annum with the terrorism fatalities.

• terrorism : 2,976 fatalities in 9/11 | spending 37.7 billion dollars (just for homeland security)
• traffic : 41,945 fatailities in 2000 | spending 5.3 billion dollars (just for the TSA)

-Phantom of the Operating System

references

• http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/homeland_securi ty_book.html
• http://www.tsa.dot.gov/public/display?theme=39
• http://www.madd.org/stats/2336
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11

You have a problem with Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

<shakes head>

http://www.madd.org/stats/1298 sez less than 17k killed in 2004 due to alcohol related deathe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_war#Casualtie s says 58,226 were killed in action or classified as missing in action.

can you 'splain the difference?

Your third sentence contradicts itself in most states. According to MADD, 42 states have Dram Shop laws.

they all definitly piss me off

So the building standards that require that your office won't collapse in a minor earthquake piss you off, eh?
Why should there be a law requiring this standard? We live in a capitalist society, so business's should use this as a marketing advantage (If I live in california and am getting a house built, I'm definitly going to go with the company that offers the earthquake resilient houses, but if I live somewhere like chicago where earthquakes are pretty uncommon, I'd like the choice of not having this option.

The drink-drive laws that help reduce the number of drunken fuckheads driving three ton killing machines piss you off, eh?
There's no statistics that prove that the harsher laws that were put in place in the late 80's for DUI's has helped at all. Even according to MADD stats, between 1982 and 1988, drunk driving fatilities dropped 9%, and since the harsher laws were put into place (I believe it was 988), the stats have only dropped 12% for this 15year period. Plus a car doesn't weight 3 tons.

The waste laws that stop your local pharmaceutical firm dumping chlorine and ammonia in your local lake piss you off, eh?
Yes this law pisses me off too. I would much rather have this law and the law that restricts me from vandalizing/destroying the property which is polluting me environment removed. As I recall, most companies find loopholes in these laws to allow them to keep their pollution levels high

The non-proliferation treaties that make it difficult for insane dictators to build nuclear weapons piss you off, eh?
We've already proven that these treaties don't work (iraq, north korea... [ok, so there were no WMD's found in iraq, that just shows that saddam swallowed them before he got caught]). On the other hand its great that we've reduced the amount of nucleur power these countries have been able to produce causing increased pollution and a lower standard of living for their citizens due to increased cost of power.

From The M.A.D.D website

According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2003, 17,013 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes - an average of one almost every half-hour. These deaths constituted approximately 40 percent of the 42,642 total traffic fatalities.

This means that in 60% of the accidents, alcohol was NOT a factor. What we need to do is stop those damn sober drivers.

Drunk driving laws are all about politics. When they had established the blood-alcohol level to 1.0, there was then nothing for the Mothers Agains Drunk Driving to do but lobby to have the level lowered to 0.8. Was there ever any scientific basis?

The joke of it is, one guy could be driving 70 MPH in a 30 MPH zone, at night, with his headlights off, and the radio blasting, with one foot hanging out the car window, and he would get off easier than someone who had two beers and got pulled over after leaving the bar.

I'm all for throwing the book at people who get behind the wheel drunk, and increasing penalties for accidents and such caused by drunk driving; but someone who gets pulled over with a small buzz ought to get a ticket.

And then there's this http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/health_co nsequences/mortali.htm:

Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking

2 million Americans killed by tobacco since Bush took office.

C'mon the if the trend is to attack a threat pre-emptively, then why is nothing being done? Or would that be too much like being productive?

But the truth still is that the "red" states benefit from federal dollars being spent there and I'm sure they have gotten used to it. I don't think many of the sparsely populated states would even have highways if the federal money wasn't spent to maintain them. Although they propably would establish tolls to compensate on second thought.

It will come in handy for all those long road trips to the M.A.D.D. seminars.

Every time someone mentions the 3,000 people who died in the WTC disaster, I wonder if they think of the "17,448 drunken driving deaths in 2001" or the "16,572 in 1999" that were caused by Americans on American highways.

Yes, 3,000 people died all at once in a horrendous act. But we kill a lot more on our own without the help of foreign terrorists. Sometimes, it's hard to figure out just who the enemy is.

Just keep some perspective.

Everyday three children in the U.S. are murdered by a parent or caretaker.

18,000 are permanently disabled every year.

565,000 are seriously injured every year.

Three million children were reported as victims of child abuse and neglect in 1999 in the United States.

I would be very surprised if less than 41% of that abuse wasn't related to drug and alcohol abuse.

Think of how many movies and tv shows involve a father coming home drunk and beating the wife or kids.

So yes, I think the cost of alcohol on our society is too high for a little fun on the weekends. Plenty of people have just as much fun without it. I also think that if we didn't have alcohol already, and a company tried to release it as a product and it was found to cause 17,419 deaths a year and all of the other "side-effects" that it would never be approved by the FDA or any other government organization. As it is, it is deeply entrenched and trying to get rid of it would be political suicide.

But I stand by my argument. As a country, as communities, and as families we'd be better without drugs and alcohol.

Which mafia-like companies are you referring to?

Sorry, I live 2 hours north of Las Vegas, so my comments were directed specifically at that town where the owners of the casinos are very, very powerful and don't spend their time just going around and building playgrounds.

There is at least one tribe where each member gets profit sharing of the casino's cut. IIRC, this was to the sum of $30,000 per member.

I can see how this may be good for the tribe in general (schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc), but I would think a check for $30,000 each year that required no work or effort would be a very bad thing for the individuals in the tribe (or any group for that matter).

"Something for nothing" robs people of their work ethic, skews their reality, and often ruins them for life. I remember a guy that went on the game show "Press Your Luck" and beat the system and won $106,000. It absolutely ruined his life and hastened his death. The same has been found of many lottery winners. Work is a good thing, free money only seems like it.

I happen to be a social drinker...

'Ya know, that's wonderful, but let's be rational about this. 3,000 deaths... a staggering number, right? However, it is hardly the most tragic thing ever to happen: "In 2002, an estimated 17,419 people died in alcohol-related traffic crashes--an average of one every 30 minutes. These deaths constitute 41 percent of the 42,815 total traffic fatalities. (NHTSA, 2003)" [from MADD.] Don't get me wrong... 9/11 was no doubt a significant event. I just mean to say that the threat posed by it pales in comparison to so many of the threats that surround us every day and which go largely unnoticed.

Even if we assume that 9/11 represented such a grave threat as to cause us to consider the radical restructuring of the very nature of our rights, then we must ask if that is a productive course of action. Remember when TIME magazine ran the cover article claiming that not enough was done to prevent 9/11, even with the Phoenix memo and other warnings? So, please, remind me again how TIA will prevent a "second 9/11?"

While you may be ready to give up your rights in response to a vauge threat (color scale of doom, anyone?) and to passively take hook, line and sinker, there remain those of us who still value the lives lost back in the late 1700s... the lives which won us this freedom in the first place.

Am I the only one that thinks as evil as Drunk Driving is (I nearly lost my sister to a Drunk Driver) we are giving away too many civil liberties over it?

MADD are a bunch of fanatics imho. Why am I required to give evidence against myself if I get pulled over? In my state if you refuse a BAC test you automatically lose your license. The cop can ask you take one even if you haven't touched a glass of booze in months -- and you have no right to refuse.

Enforcement of DWI laws is out of hand too. I've personally been pulled over three different times (two of those times I hadn't been drinking at all -- the third time I had two drinks in a four hour period) on bullshit excuses (loud muffler on my brand new 2003 car with less then 12,000 miles on it) then immediately asked "Have you been drinking?" They shouldn't have the right to even ask that question without some sort of probable cause -- and he had none. I find it hard to believe that he smelled liquor on my breath when I hadn't had a drink in two weeks!

The third time I was actually forced to take the BAC test because I made the mistake of answering "Yes" to the question. He attempted to make me take the roadside sobriety tests -- which I refused. He then claimed that I would lose my license -- to which I replied I could only lose it for refusing the chemical test -- not the "Walk on the line" tests. I blew a 0.018 -- real threat to society there! I received no apology after the fact in any of these incidents for the way I was treated like a common criminal -- the third time I received a lecture! I replied to this lecture with an observation about how I was the DD for three people who were shitfaced and how my taxes pay his salary -- to which I was told "Son, don't let me see you here again." Quite the arrogant statement considering as how the Officer appeared to be less then 5 years older then myself.

I'm sorry as evil as drunk driving is we don't check our civil rights every time we climb into an automobile. What part of the 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination don't they understand?

I agree with the posters commnet: Stiffer penelties. But, we also need to realize that the current level of at which someone is considered drunk is NOT truely drunk for a large portion of people. In fact, the founder of MADD (Mothers against drunk driving) is kind of dis-heartened with the way this country is treating drunk drivers. Her intent was to never make it illegal to have a cocktail, and drive. She wanted to stop the true drukards from getting behind the wheel.

What I'm trying to say, in my rambling way, is that we should punish the true drunk drivers. And punish them hard. But, don't punish citizens who have never driven drunk (or, in the case of my state, arrest people for public intoxication because they where walking home! [why where they walking home? Because they where too drunk to drive! Give them some credit for knowing their limits!]

BTW, unlike MADD or a rambling lunatic, I'm going to back up every claim with a link.

MADD (and NHTSA) grossly overexaggerate their claims of "drunk driving accidents," which are really alcohol-related accidents (a misleading statistic used by NHTSA). Did you know that if you, while 100% sober, hit a drunk pedestrian, it counts as an alcohol-related accident? Or did you know that if you get in an accident and EVERYONE is sober (driver, pedestrian, passengers), you can still be counted as alcohol-related due to the statistical correction that NHTSA uses, since only 63% of drivers are tested for their BAC level!

MADD claims that 0.08 BAC reduction saves lives, yet a study by NHTSA found no proof of such reduction after North Carolina enacted the lower BAC limit: "There appears to have been little clear effect of the lower BAC limit in North Carolina. Survey data indicate that the general public believes the new law was well-publicized. Although awareness of the new lower limit was not particularly high nearly 18 months after the law took effect, frequent drinkers did evidence a substantial degree of awareness that the law had changed and about what the new BAC limit was. As is typical in North Carolina, enforcement of the lower limit was vigorous and strict."

MADD wants to lower the BAC limit lower and lower, to 0.05. It claims victory over the 0.08 law over the previous 0.10 standard. However, it has been found that "the relative risk [of being in a traffic accident while using a cell-phone] is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit." The legal limit in that paper was 0.10 BAC. Another interesting note is that "These data also call into question driving regulations that prohibit handheld cell-phones and permit hands-free cell-phones, because no significant differences in the impairments caused by these two cellular devices were found.", but that's another topic of conversation.

Point is, why do they want to keep lowering the BAC when it has been shown that the vast majority of drunk driving accidents occurs with drivers with over 0.10 BAC, and that below that, it's as risky as using a cell phone? Why is MADD targeting low-BAC-level drivers, such as 0.08 (and as they hope 0.05), with huge fines, property confiscation, loss of driver license, and obscene insurance surcharges? MADD wants to bully states into the 0.08 BAC law by passing legislation that threatens their funding.

Furthermore, when NHTSA's accident data was loaded in a database and independent statistics were ran on it, the massive exaggerations were exposed. Quote from the previous link: "Through the use of this tool we were able to discover that across the entire country NHTSA nearly doubles the number of instances of drunk drivers. And this is prior to them implementing their "Multiple Imputation" methodology w

...if every state required forfeiture of the vehicle on the first DUI offense? 25 states have some sort of confiscation law now.

...if drunk drivers had to purchase a special DUI offender's license plate? Are drunk drivers any less of a public safety threat than sex offenders? Sex offender info is very public information, why not DUI offenders?

No, the teetotalers write the alcohol laws, which is why 18 year olds can die for their country but can't legally have a drink.

According to M.A.D.D. 42,196 people died in car accidents in the year 2001. Have we instituted more realistic driving tests, installed governors to limit cars to 55 mph, raised safety standards, forced people to retake their drivers test when they renew their license? Nope.
After 9/11 they put soldiers with unloaded guns in the airports, a move that would not have prevented the hijacking, but how long did it take the senate to make airlines to install reinforced locking cockpit doors?
9/11 was a horrific and the people who perpetrated it should have been brought to justice, but destroying our liberties with idiotic laws does nothing to protect us.
If you want to feel safer, don't trust in the government, buy a bigger car.

Then I guess we should all still be talking about this:

Bus Crash Kills 27.

Speaking of priorities...

Yes, I'm sure that there have been plenty of studies that show that an excess of pot is bad for you in some way. But there have also been plenty of studies that show that an excess of alcohol is bad for you. Should we go back to the days of the alcohol prohibition? In fact there have been studies that show that an excess of food, exercise, sex and even water can be bad for you. Should we ban those too? I'm sorry, but the burden of proof is on your side.

Actually, It's not. Think about the number of alcohol related deaths and injuries ("An estimated 513,000 people are injured in alcohol-related crashes each year, an average of 59 people per hour or approximately one person every minute." - MADD) every year, through alcohol poisoning, drunk driving, etc, or the number of people who are obese to an unhealthy level. Now, every time you throw something else out there and say "knock yourselves out," you can chalk up that many more fatalities.

So all in all, you're saying because things are already that bad, a few thousand more people wouldn't hurt?

At those low percentages, it is hard to decorrelate the accidents with low blood alchohol with the non alchohol related accidents (at least, these statistics don't seem to; I would like to know what work has been done in this area. We would have to know how many people are driving around with each BAC level at any time). Perhaps your acctual accident likelihood is not significantly higher at low blood alchohol levels (this is where the propganda wars that set policy have been fought)

My take is that assholes cause accidents, people who drive very poorly, aggresively, foolishly, or who drink a LOT and drive. But if I have two beers at dinner, and drive home right away, I can be considered a criminal, even though I may not have any higher chance of getting into an accident than I normally would (in fact, due to paranoia, I might be driving even more cautiously and attentively than normal)

Do yourself a favor... Count from 1 to 6000. Don't go too fast, that's one human life you're counting there! See how long it takes you to count from 1 to 6000. With each number you count, imagine an innocent civilian dying an incredibly violent death. CIVILIAN, not somebody who's job is to die fighting for the government, but somebody who had no control over that action, and paid the price for somebody's hatred.

Drunk driving is preventable. Jason's accident could have been avoided.

Mother's Against Drunk Driving (MADD) accepts tax-deductable web-donations starting at $10. While I don't completely agree with everything they do, I support their primary mission of education and responsibility. I made my donation in honor of Jason Haas, LinuxPPC and Slashdot.org. There didn't seem to be a way of just tagging the donation with a name, so I sent an acknowledgement to:

LinuxPPC Inc.
P.O. Box 491
Hales Corners, WI 53130
USA

MADD's donation page: http://www.madd.org/donations/

1998 Factoids: (from MADD's site)

• 15,935 people were killed in alcohol-related traffic crashes---an average of one every 33 minutes. These deaths constituted approximately 38.4% of the total 41,471 total traffic fatalities. (NHTSA, 1999)
  
• About 1,058,990 were injured in alcohol-related crashes-an average of one person injured approximately every 30 seconds. About 30,000 people a year will suffer permanent work-related disabilities. (Miller et al, 1996b)
  
• Every weekday night from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., one in 13 drivers is drunk (BAC of .08 or more). Between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. on weekend mornings, one in seven drivers is drunk. (Miller et al., 1996c)
  
• About three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives. (NHTSA, 1999)

Drunk driving is preventable. Jason's accident could have been avoided.

Mother's Against Drunk Driving (MADD) accepts tax-deductable web-donations starting at $10. While I don't completely agree with everything they do, I support their primary mission of education and responsibility. I made my donation in honor of Jason Haas, LinuxPPC and Slashdot.org. There didn't seem to be a way of just tagging the donation with a name, so I sent an acknowledgement to:

LinuxPPC Inc.
P.O. Box 491
Hales Corners, WI 53130
USA

MADD's donation page: http://www.madd.org/donations/

1998 Factoids: (from MADD's site)

• 15,935 people were killed in alcohol-related traffic crashes---an average of one every 33 minutes. These deaths constituted approximately 38.4% of the total 41,471 total traffic fatalities. (NHTSA, 1999)
  
• About 1,058,990 were injured in alcohol-related crashes-an average of one person injured approximately every 30 seconds. About 30,000 people a year will suffer permanent work-related disabilities. (Miller et al, 1996b)
  
• Every weekday night from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., one in 13 drivers is drunk (BAC of .08 or more). Between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. on weekend mornings, one in seven drivers is drunk. (Miller et al., 1996c)
  
• About three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives. (NHTSA, 1999)