Actually, the police will take you back to the station machine whether you were just over or not - the reason isn't necessarily to secure a conviction, it's so that when they release you because they can't take you to court, you're less drunk than you were when they picked you up.
Except that these are the current punishments (up until the third time, where I believe the punishment is rather harsher) in most places. They really don't work very well.
The drink drivers simply ignore the bans.
Personally, I'd be fully in favour of "you're never allowed to drive without taking a breathalyser test for the rest of your life - you clearly can't be trusted to make that decision yourself". I can see your argument that the fees are somewhat government gold digging, but I don't see any reasonable way to do this, and cover the costs of hardware, and checking that it works, without charging the people who commit the crime a fee.
I think we can all agree on the idea that drink driving is a choice, and a pretty stupid one at that... But the fact that by being drunk behind the wheel may lead you to murder someone in the future does not mean that murder and drink driving are the same thing, or that they should have the same punishment.
Playing GTA5 may cause me to go on a gun toting killing spree, but that doesn't mean that playing GTA5 should be illegal, or that it should carry a life sentence.
I'm right there with you, getting drunk, then driving, and then killing someone is a horrible crime, but that doesn't mean that we improve society by taking everyone who drink drives, and telling them "okay, now you can't get a job", and causing them to all turn into petty thieves, alcoholics, and drug addicts. This is what throwing them in prison does to them.
You're saying that most other people don't have a choice to do (or not do) the thing that causes them to kill someone else? I think we're back on the crazy sauce if you think that drunk driving is the only way to kill someone through choosing some criminal behaviour.
I don't give a shit. Your right to drive is far less important than the people you're putting at risk's right to not be killed.
The point is not that it's inconvenient for the offender to not drive, the point is that by removing someone's ability to drive you remove their ability to make a living. By doing that, you force them to do something else to make a living. More often than not, that something else is petty theft.
As I've said so often in this thread - making idiots into criminals is not a solution to the problem of having idiots about. It's just making it worse.
So what do you suggest is the proportional punishment for someone who drinks and drives? Note - not someone who's a repeat offender (I think we can all agree that a short prison sentence is not unreasonable for that), someone who just drinks and drives once, what's the right response?
Ah, but drunks aren't the only ones who murder innocents. In fact, being human is also a condition that leads to murdering innocents in some cases. Surely then, by your logic, we should lock up every single person, and throw away the key, because we're all potential murderers!
I don't want to ensure the freedom to drive impaired, I just want to make the punishment proportional to the crime.
Murder someone - go away for life. Drive while drunk - lets just start with something a little less extreme, like, I don't know, how about stopping them from driving while drunk;)
Note, I would fully support the idea of trying someone who kills someone in the course of committing a crime for man slaughter. That is after all... the definition of man slaughter.
But that doesn't mean that the correct solution to all crimes that could in any way cause someone else to die is to put them in prison and throw away the key. While people have a strong emotional need to feel like someone has been punished, it turns out that this is rationally not a good strategy for getting a functioning society. Instead, what it creates is a society full of people who can't get jobs because of past felony convictions, and as a result, people who turn to theft, drinking and drugs just to get by in the world.
Okay... So, in your opinion, it's not reasonable to prevent people with DUI convictions from driving their car while intoxicated... But it is reasonable to prevent them from having any freedom for the entire rest of their life?
I think I'm just going to back away from the crazy person now.
You know, we could... put a breathalyser in their car, and make sure that they're sober when driving. I don't know if you realised, but that's... kinda what this article is about.
In what possible way is sending people to prison a better solution to this problem than making sure that they're sober when they're driving?
Drunk driving effectively is one of these reactive laws - it's a way of specifying when you've lost control of a moving vehicle by being too intoxicated. There is no possible way to drive drunk and actually be fully in control of the vehicle, this just makes it easy to prove and convict people for driving while not in control.
Yep, I'm completely with you there - repeat offenders are a danger to others, and need to be removed from society until they can learn to not be a danger to others. That said - prison also needs to be a place that's about making sure that people get into that state (of not being a danger to others), not just a bin you throw people in.
So what you're suggesting is get a DUI, and we'll ruin your life. I mean, I hate people drink driving, but ruining their life is not a good way of turning them into a functioning member of society, it's a good way of turning them into an alcoholic criminal.
Seriously, a felony conviction means you have a high chance of being fired from your job. Even if you're lucky enough to keep your income, a prison sentence longer than a week means you have a good chance of missing mortgage payments, and potentially losing a house. These punishments should not be taken (or used) lightly.
More so, "fear of real punishment" doesn't work - it's documented not to work. That's why America (despite it's huge prison population) still has a huge offending rate. Because stuffing people in prison isn't a good route to rehabilitation - it's a good route to indoctrination of criminal behaviour.
1) Following the maze around is trivially easy, and takes 5 minutes at most 2) They provide you with a map, and the locations of shortcuts, which are also trivially easy to find.
Something tells me you're the kind of person who can't manage to follow IKEA's simple instructions to assemble lego^Wfurniture either.
No one in their right mind would implement quick sort to sort millions of database entries either though. They'd likely implement something like merge sort.
It's usually mentioned in CS courses because the first stage in introducing these classes is "think about sorting some numbers - how do you go about doing it", and generally Bubble Sort is the first formalisation that falls out of that. The fact that Selection Sort is the one that you think of is neither here nor there - most students come up with something looking like bubble sort.
Wut... IKEA is a single corridor. You keep walking, and you get to the end and leave... It even has arrows on the floor pointing to the way out all the way around. It's literally the single hardest store to get lost in ever.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been busily playing my games for the past few days... You don't need a network connection to play any of them.
Actually, the police will take you back to the station machine whether you were just over or not - the reason isn't necessarily to secure a conviction, it's so that when they release you because they can't take you to court, you're less drunk than you were when they picked you up.
Wow, so we've now gone as far as drive while drunk once, and get the death penalty? Wow...
Except that these are the current punishments (up until the third time, where I believe the punishment is rather harsher) in most places. They really don't work very well.
The drink drivers simply ignore the bans.
Personally, I'd be fully in favour of "you're never allowed to drive without taking a breathalyser test for the rest of your life - you clearly can't be trusted to make that decision yourself". I can see your argument that the fees are somewhat government gold digging, but I don't see any reasonable way to do this, and cover the costs of hardware, and checking that it works, without charging the people who commit the crime a fee.
I think we can all agree on the idea that drink driving is a choice, and a pretty stupid one at that... But the fact that by being drunk behind the wheel may lead you to murder someone in the future does not mean that murder and drink driving are the same thing, or that they should have the same punishment.
Playing GTA5 may cause me to go on a gun toting killing spree, but that doesn't mean that playing GTA5 should be illegal, or that it should carry a life sentence.
I'm right there with you, getting drunk, then driving, and then killing someone is a horrible crime, but that doesn't mean that we improve society by taking everyone who drink drives, and telling them "okay, now you can't get a job", and causing them to all turn into petty thieves, alcoholics, and drug addicts. This is what throwing them in prison does to them.
You're saying that most other people don't have a choice to do (or not do) the thing that causes them to kill someone else? I think we're back on the crazy sauce if you think that drunk driving is the only way to kill someone through choosing some criminal behaviour.
I don't give a shit. Your right to drive is far less important than the people you're putting at risk's right to not be killed.
The point is not that it's inconvenient for the offender to not drive, the point is that by removing someone's ability to drive you remove their ability to make a living. By doing that, you force them to do something else to make a living. More often than not, that something else is petty theft.
As I've said so often in this thread - making idiots into criminals is not a solution to the problem of having idiots about. It's just making it worse.
So what do you suggest is the proportional punishment for someone who drinks and drives? Note - not someone who's a repeat offender (I think we can all agree that a short prison sentence is not unreasonable for that), someone who just drinks and drives once, what's the right response?
Ah, but drunks aren't the only ones who murder innocents. In fact, being human is also a condition that leads to murdering innocents in some cases. Surely then, by your logic, we should lock up every single person, and throw away the key, because we're all potential murderers!
I don't want to ensure the freedom to drive impaired, I just want to make the punishment proportional to the crime.
Murder someone - go away for life. ;)
Drive while drunk - lets just start with something a little less extreme, like, I don't know, how about stopping them from driving while drunk
Note, I would fully support the idea of trying someone who kills someone in the course of committing a crime for man slaughter. That is after all... the definition of man slaughter.
But that doesn't mean that the correct solution to all crimes that could in any way cause someone else to die is to put them in prison and throw away the key. While people have a strong emotional need to feel like someone has been punished, it turns out that this is rationally not a good strategy for getting a functioning society. Instead, what it creates is a society full of people who can't get jobs because of past felony convictions, and as a result, people who turn to theft, drinking and drugs just to get by in the world.
Okay... So, in your opinion, it's not reasonable to prevent people with DUI convictions from driving their car while intoxicated... But it is reasonable to prevent them from having any freedom for the entire rest of their life?
I think I'm just going to back away from the crazy person now.
How does turning them into criminals "do away" with them? Are you suggesting a life sentence?
You know, we could... put a breathalyser in their car, and make sure that they're sober when driving. I don't know if you realised, but that's... kinda what this article is about.
In what possible way is sending people to prison a better solution to this problem than making sure that they're sober when they're driving?
In what way is that better than only being allowed to drive your car when sober... you know... what the article is talking about?
Why do you think that me not wanting to change idiots into criminals mean that I don't care about the victims of idiots?
Does turning idiots into criminals somehow benefit the victims?
Drunk driving effectively is one of these reactive laws - it's a way of specifying when you've lost control of a moving vehicle by being too intoxicated. There is no possible way to drive drunk and actually be fully in control of the vehicle, this just makes it easy to prove and convict people for driving while not in control.
Yep, I'm completely with you there - repeat offenders are a danger to others, and need to be removed from society until they can learn to not be a danger to others. That said - prison also needs to be a place that's about making sure that people get into that state (of not being a danger to others), not just a bin you throw people in.
I have a problem with that because by ruining their lives, what we create is a bunch of criminals. That's much worse than a bunch of idiots.
So what you're suggesting is get a DUI, and we'll ruin your life. I mean, I hate people drink driving, but ruining their life is not a good way of turning them into a functioning member of society, it's a good way of turning them into an alcoholic criminal.
Seriously, a felony conviction means you have a high chance of being fired from your job. Even if you're lucky enough to keep your income, a prison sentence longer than a week means you have a good chance of missing mortgage payments, and potentially losing a house. These punishments should not be taken (or used) lightly.
More so, "fear of real punishment" doesn't work - it's documented not to work. That's why America (despite it's huge prison population) still has a huge offending rate. Because stuffing people in prison isn't a good route to rehabilitation - it's a good route to indoctrination of criminal behaviour.
Yep, the whole article is basically "we couldn't make any money if we actually wrote history about the thing you're interested in, so... tough tits"
If you don't know how mathematics defines computer science, then you need to go and study more computer science.
1) Following the maze around is trivially easy, and takes 5 minutes at most
2) They provide you with a map, and the locations of shortcuts, which are also trivially easy to find.
Something tells me you're the kind of person who can't manage to follow IKEA's simple instructions to assemble lego^Wfurniture either.
No one in their right mind would implement quick sort to sort millions of database entries either though. They'd likely implement something like merge sort.
It's usually mentioned in CS courses because the first stage in introducing these classes is "think about sorting some numbers - how do you go about doing it", and generally Bubble Sort is the first formalisation that falls out of that. The fact that Selection Sort is the one that you think of is neither here nor there - most students come up with something looking like bubble sort.
Wut... IKEA is a single corridor. You keep walking, and you get to the end and leave... It even has arrows on the floor pointing to the way out all the way around. It's literally the single hardest store to get lost in ever.