In fact, driver profiling is worse than racial profiling, because the latter only implies that the police are more watchful, not that they criminalize race itself. Despite the propaganda, what's being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself. A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm.
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In fact, driver profiling is worse than racial profiling, because the latter only implies that the police are more watchful, not that they criminalize race itself.
But they're only watchful towards the race they're profiling against, and they send to see crimes that aren't there when they do so. (Why isn't this in RSTDT?)
Despite the propaganda, what's being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself.
First off, your blood alcohol content isn't an inborn trait. Second, there is a proven fact that drunk drivers are a threat to everyone around them. It's one thing not to care about your own safety, but putting others at risk just because you want to drive drunk without getting arrested...that is just sick.
A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm.
Because said drunk driver very easily COULD have caused harm. If you don't want the scorn that's associated with driving drunk...DON'T DRIVE DRUNK. Seriously, how is this a thing?!
what.
edit: nope, still don't get it. is he implying driving drunk is less dangerous than being black? cos i know it's the other way around. unless you're:
a) black
source: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst
and even then, racial profiling is still wrong.
can someone get me a clear explanation of what this dolt said? cos i'm confused right now
A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm.
The police don't need to humiliate a drunk driver, he's already done that himself. If you drive while drunk, you are a moron. And you are an even bigger moron for not seeing the common sense in these laws.
"A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm."
I have family members who have been killed and others whose lives have been destroyed from the loss because of drunk drivers, so my response to this comment is GOOD!
Despite the propaganda, what's being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself.
Because, you moron, we have to have a set standard which applies to everyone equally to make it legal, and it's generally agreed that a BAC of .08% or greater means that you're too impaired to drive a vehicle.
Also, "no harm, no foul" doesn't apply to our criminal justice system. If you want to change that, get in line behind the "legalize pot" crowd.
lost our job, did we after driving under the influence?
But of course you KNEW you could drive safely - afterall you'd done it before (probably)
My whole family (me included) could have been killed when a drunk driver drove straight into our car some 25 years ago; our car rolled around and landed on its roof. He wasn't particularly drunk, to my knowledge, perhaps just above the limit.
If he was humiliated by being hauled away in a police car, GOOD! My mother and I got concussions, my father kicked off a pedal with his foot and hurt the foot in the process, my sister hurt her tail-bone, my older little brother got a nose-bleed. We were all black and blue from the seat-belts keeping us in our seats. We would have all preferred a little bit of humiliation, rather than about a week's worth of pain and the aftermath of shock. The only one who was unhurt was my youngest brother, who sat in a baby-seat facing backwards.
The blood-alcohol content itself is what's causing the probability that a person will get into an accident, asshole!
Ahh Mises Institute, just redefing liberty all over the place aren't we? I don't think the fellow is racist (though I'd be easily swayed...), just confused by how to be a libertarian. protip: advocating institutionalised racism doesn't really make it.
Driving drunk is like throwing a bunch of knives in the air in a public place: Sure you might only hurt yourself, and you might not hurt anyone, but you are knowingly engaging in behaviour which may well seriously injure or kill bystanders. If you can't refrain from that sort of behaviour, you can't play with the other children.
@ Doubting Thomas: Not even close in rationale to legalising pot though! At least no one insists it should be legal to use while driving or working . If you want to alter your consciousness on your own time, in your own home, sure. While operating a one tonne metal box capable of 200km/h though...
Edit: 0.08? Damn, that's pretty tipsy for a lot of folks. In Australia it's 0.05 and we... Well, we drink a bit.
A lot.
My name's Straya, and I'm 15 million alcoholics.
This is individualism taken to its sociopathic extreme, ie, fuck everyone else.
Love this comment:
"A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm."
Another Libertarian piece of nonsense. How the hell is being aressted for drunk driving mean that the person being arrested is "destroyed"?
I am amazed by so much sympathy for the idiot driving drunk and so little for the persons potential victims.
@Farpadokly: Actually, I've seen one or two pamphlets--I don't know if the author(s) identified outright as Libertarians--that actually CHAMPION the removal of road laws and traffic lights, as constricting of liberty. To them, self-interested wish to survive is enough to ensure that one won't be reckless. Presumably, those who WON'T follow safe driving on their own initiative deserve to die on account of not having a will to survive at all costs. I didn't see how they justified the death of anyone on the receiving end of a collision, though; maybe they thought there was something wrong/unfit/etc. with them if they didn't think to swerve at once?
Actually, he raises a good point. Drunk driving is what I call a "presumptive" law. That is, it punishes you not for the harm you actually caused but for what it was presumed you might do. In the case of drunk driving laws, the correlation between driving drunk and having accidents is so well-established that it's hard to argue against them. But in general, society should always be careful about passing presumptive laws. There's a fine line between presumption and bigotry and there are plenty of historical examples of laws that were on the wrong side of it.
LOL, figures they would be a free market supporting Institute.
@John
Fuck off and die, preferably by a drunk driver. But only after you got hit by it and were in the hospital, that way the irony could sink in.
If alcohol had no measurable effect on the response time and judgement of human beings, this guy would have some kind of point.
Randroids produce arguments in flat-out denial of (ironically) objective reality disturbingly often. Apparently some libertarians can't even bear to have their freedom of action constrained by physical laws.
A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm.
While you might not have caused any harm, you are much more likely to do so then if you were sober. And it's not just drunks, by the way. DUIs cover the gamut from sleep deprivation to taking prescription medicine. If you are not fully alert and in control of your actions, you can not be trusted to pilot a two-ton hunk of metal at 20 or more mph. The risk of you harming someone else is too great.
Drunk driving is like playing Russian Roulette. You might have a five in six chance of surviving, but the fact that that one chance even exists makes it too dangerous.
"A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm."
Yes, and so he (or she) fucking should be!
I've seen what drunk drivers do.
Nobody FORCES you to drink, idiot.
If a drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed, that just makes my day. :D
Guys, guys! Leave John alone, he was perfectly right! He said drunk driving laws are justified, but that sort of law is still dangerous to enact without being sure of the facts. He's very right, too.
@Ebon: Not even. At least we want everyone to co-operate for greater liberty and equality, and would mostly approve of laws like this. Anarchists are mostly communist (though I'm not, I'm a "free-market socialist"); we just believe anything causing no harm to anyone else should be legal (and that, without social welfare or a fake drug war, fake religious war or some other bollocks source of paranoia, the government has no justification for existing). This is my basis for nearly all my opinions, in any sphere. This guy believes anything should be legal even if it's likely to kill a bunch of people , and that the government should protect his wealth but not others' safety. Most confusing, though, is that there is apparently any justification at all for racial profiling.
Libertarians are just intellectually dishonest, overprivileged, selfish-to-the-point-of-sociopathy would-be anarchists who want police protection.
Forget that stuff, that's peanuts. Did you know that, if you fire into a crowded room, and somehow nobody gets hurt, they can still charge you with a crime? Outrageous!
"A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn't done any harm."
As they should be BEFORE they do any harm. If one of these kills someone you love, wouldn't you wish they had been stopped BEFORE they killed your loved one?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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