Who to believe?

[MileHigh]

Yeaaaaa, that‘s not going to work. Sound like the stupidity around gun microstamping. Cool idea to stop a real problem that won’t work In the real world. Hopefully like microstamping, it will get caught up in the development stage and everyone gets to virtue signal.

And the drunks will just drive old cars, duh.

My EU buddies don’t screw around with drinking and driving. Are the penalties much higher in EU countries? I think We have a drunk driving problem here because we don’t impose heavy enough penalties so that people don’t drink and drive.

 

[Eric]

Yeaaaaa, that‘s not going to work. Sound like the stupidity around gun microstamping. Cool idea to stop a real problem that won’t work In the real world. Hopefully like microstamping, it will get caught up in the development stage and everyone gets to virtue signal.

And the drunks will just drive old cars, duh.

My EU buddies don’t screw around with drinking and driving. Are the penalties much higher in EU countries? I think We have a drunk driving problem here because we don’t impose heavy enough penalties so that people don’t drink and drive.

In the UK automatic minimum of 12 month driving ban. Persistent offending can/will lead to a prison sentence. The allowed alcohol limit in Scotland is 30% lower than England and Wales

 

[stickshifter]

We don’t monitor people’s diet because if I eat myself to death I’m not taking anyone else with me. An impaired driver on the other hand endangers everyone around him. My wife, who used to dispatch for 911, told me off one particularly gruesome accident where a drunk driver crossed the median and collided with a van full of children, some as young as a year old. They all died miserably in the ensuing fire. Furthermore, not a single day goes by where I don’t see at least one instance of someone using their phone while traveling down the road at highway speeds, and those idiots would hopefully also be covered by such technology.
Remember, driving is a privilege not a right. That’s why we have licenses, registrations, insurance etc. With all that being said, the law instructs the NHTSA to create standards and regulations by 2024 to implement these technologies in new vehicles. I don’t believe they have actually done so yet, but once they do they’ll have to give manufactures a few years to implement.

From one perspective, I understand your argument, and it is the obvious argument. So I get where you are coming from. But think about it like this: the government is just trying to save lives, right? How is the life of an "innocent" driver who is hit by a drunk driver actually any different than the life of someone who dies from heart disease or Diabetes? You can't say - objectively - that there is a difference. Maybe the "innocent" driver on the road was actually a criminal, while the person who died from Diabetes was an upstanding citizen, who contributed positively to the community; this person - one might argue - was a victim of poor parenting that resulted in addiction to salt and sugar at a young age, and a lifetime of poor eating habits (just a hypothetical for the sake of argument). Are the lives of 10,000 people who die per year on the road as a consequence of drunk driving really more significant than the lives of the 900,000 Americans who die every year from Heart Disease, Diabetes, etc.? One could easily argue that the impact to society of the "obesity crisis" is far more significant than the impact of 10,000 tragic deaths. What is the increased cost of health insurance as a consequence of the obesity crisis? How do you measure the pain and suffering associated with Diabetes? It is a horrible disease. I'm also not suggesting that we do nothing about drunk driving. On the contrary, I'd like to see more enforcement and more significant penalties. A single infraction, and you get a breathalyzer installed in your vehicle, or something like that. There are ways to address the problem without imposing a blanket solution on all drivers - regardless of their driving record. Lastly, this kind of legislation will shift what is considered an "acceptable" level of government monitoring, and that is a slippery slope.

Anyway... thanks for the conversation. I won't comment on this anymore as this is a car-enthusiasts forum. If you want to continue discussing this, we should probably do it using the private conversation feature. All the best.

 

[Sillius Soddus]

From one perspective, I understand your argument, and it is the obvious argument. So I get where you are coming from. But think about it like this: the government is just trying to save lives, right? How is the life of an "innocent" driver who is hit by a drunk driver actually any different than the life of someone who dies from heart disease or Diabetes? You can't say - objectively - that there is a difference. Maybe the "innocent" driver on the road was actually a criminal, while the person who died from Diabetes was an upstanding citizen, who contributed positively to the community; this person - one might argue - was a victim of poor parenting that resulted in addiction to salt and sugar at a young age, and a lifetime of poor eating habits (just a hypothetical for the sake of argument). Are the lives of 10,000 people who die per year on the road as a consequence of drunk driving really more significant than the lives of the 900,000 Americans who die every year from Heart Disease, Diabetes, etc.? One could easily argue that the impact to society of the "obesity crisis" is far more significant than the impact of 10,000 tragic deaths. What is the increased cost of health insurance as a consequence of the obesity crisis? How do you measure the pain and suffering associated with Diabetes? It is a horrible disease. I'm also not suggesting that we do nothing about drunk driving. On the contrary, I'd like to see more enforcement and more significant penalties. A single infraction, and you get a breathalyzer installed in your vehicle, or something like that. There are ways to address the problem without imposing a blanket solution on all drivers - regardless of their driving record. Lastly, this kind of legislation will shift what is considered an "acceptable" level of government monitoring, and that is a slippery slope.

Anyway... thanks for the conversation. I won't comment on this anymore as this is a car-enthusiasts forum. If you want to continue discussing this, we should probably do it using the private conversation feature. All the best.

View: https://youtu.be/lDnO4nDA3kM

 

[Eric]

From one perspective, I understand your argument, and it is the obvious argument. So I get where you are coming from. But think about it like this: the government is just trying to save lives, right? How is the life of an "innocent" driver who is hit by a drunk driver actually any different than the life of someone who dies from heart disease or Diabetes? You can't say - objectively - that there is a difference. Maybe the "innocent" driver on the road was actually a criminal, while the person who died from Diabetes was an upstanding citizen, who contributed positively to the community; this person - one might argue - was a victim of poor parenting that resulted in addiction to salt and sugar at a young age, and a lifetime of poor eating habits (just a hypothetical for the sake of argument). Are the lives of 10,000 people who die per year on the road as a consequence of drunk driving really more significant than the lives of the 900,000 Americans who die every year from Heart Disease, Diabetes, etc.? One could easily argue that the impact to society of the "obesity crisis" is far more significant than the impact of 10,000 tragic deaths. What is the increased cost of health insurance as a consequence of the obesity crisis? How do you measure the pain and suffering associated with Diabetes? It is a horrible disease. I'm also not suggesting that we do nothing about drunk driving. On the contrary, I'd like to see more enforcement and more significant penalties. A single infraction, and you get a breathalyzer installed in your vehicle, or something like that. There are ways to address the problem without imposing a blanket solution on all drivers - regardless of their driving record. Lastly, this kind of legislation will shift what is considered an "acceptable" level of government monitoring, and that is a slippery slope.

Anyway... thanks for the conversation. I won't comment on this anymore as this is a car-enthusiasts forum. If you want to continue discussing this, we should probably do it using the private conversation feature. All the best.

In the UK we also have an equal number, and getting bigger, drug driving stops/ prosecution which carries the same penalties as drink driving. There is a spot onsite saliva test. It appears from prosecutions that the older generation are more likely to be the ones caught driving whilst the younger generation are the drug drivers. Some out and out a..eholes fail on both accounts.