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DVD-Watching Driver Charged with Murder
joke-boy writes "CNN reports that a driver in Alaska is being charged with second-degree murder for allegedly causing a fatality accident by driving while watching the movie 'Road Trip' in an in-dash DVD player. The driver contends he was just listening to music. Alaska has no laws prohibiting drivers from watching DVDs, although many other states do."
Clearly manslaughter is not enough. If a measly slap on the wrist like "manslaughter" were enough, would that driver have killed those innocent people? Would he have been so careless? The purpose of the law is to deter crime. If it is not a sufficient deterrent, it must be strengthened.
Murder is defined as killing another person, is it not? Isn't that what this driver did? He killed a person. Therefore he is a murderer. Trying to water it down with "manslaughter" only confused the subject and enables the sort of behavior that leads to the deaths of our children. Think of the children!
Once the precedent is set and killing people via automobile is commonly punished as murder, drivers will be more careful. They will drive in fear, knowing that carelessness will carry grave consequences. But that will still not be enough: non-fatal accidents will still not be deterred sufficiently by such a system. Therefore, it is essential for the security of our nation that all reckless driving be punished as attempted murder, with long prison terms with the convicted criminals can use to reflect on their mistakes. Reckless drunken driving and weaving in and out of traffic at triple-digit speeds is so dangerous that it can only be considered attempted murder.
Likewise, all other death-defying driving attacks must be dealt with the same way. Running red lights. Tailgating. Running stop signs. Excessive speeding. Cutting people off. Failing to use your turn signal. Flashing the brights inappropriately. Speeding at all. Driving too slowly on a busy road. Playing loud, distracting music. Parking in a no-parking zone. Excessive honking.
All of those crimes must be deterred with punishments fair enough that the murderous criminals will not dare to threaten our children's lives. Those bastards who threaten our very way of life by driving at 26 miles per hour, letting the parking meter expire, and honking near moving vehicles must be stopped. Lock them away, and throw away the key. Any argument against the plain fact that those actions are attempted murder is merely a two-faced attempt to hide one's own crimes.
But there is still one problem-how can we support such a large prison population? Strained by the war on drugs, our prison system is near the point of failure. Therefore, instead of breaking the system with a flood of vicious murderers, we must expand use of the death penalty to rid our society of its most violent, remorseless criminals. The murderers plaguing our roads must all be put to death. Only when anyone who drives 26 miles per hour on an empty residential road is shot on sight will we be able to live free as our forebears intended.