Drunk Driving Issues - Research Paper Example

DRUNK DRIVING Drunk driving is a terrible scourge. It kills many thousands of people each year and ruins the lives of many more (Hingson, 220). And yet it is a somewhat new crime. Only a few decades ago people thought nothing about getting behind the wheel of a vehicle when drunk. Today laws are very tough against driving under the influence and there is a stigma attached to doing so. However, such laws are not tough enough. We need to have stronger penalties for driving under the influence and our government needs to act now before more people are killed on our highways and streets by drunk driver who have no business getting behind the wheel. Alcohol has been around for millennia. In fact the first recorded use of alcohol can be found in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Some of the problems relating to alcohol abuse involve direct physical injury. You are more likely to fall down the stairs or walk into traffic if you have been drinking. Alcohol affects peoples’ motor skills and makes it more difficult for them to coordinate their actions. Also, depending on what sort of person you are, you might be inclined to get into fights with people. Alcohol is usually consumed in bars with other drinkers and these places are not always safe; many alcoholics lose control of their senses and are easily provoked. They might smash a bar stool on your head, for example, which could cause a serious head injury. Alcohol is famous for reducing inhibitions and judgement capacity—and this should be known in advance. Another important thing to do in advance of a night of drinking is to choose someone to be your “designated driver.” This is a person who will stay sober and look after you—if you were to drive while drinking serious problem might occur. All of this facts about alcohol make it clear that driving when drinking is a bad idea. However, they do not quite make clear how devastating the impact of such crimes are. We need to do everything we can deter people from getting behind the wheel while driving. We need to have much better detection and we need to have much more severe penalties. Only that will deter drunk drivers. The policies in place are a lot better than the old ones. The human body can be examined for alcohol use. The pupils of the eyes are dilated when under the influence and people have red faces and eyes. There are a variety of tests police perform including standing on one leg, counting backwards, and so on. Different quantities of alcohol in the blood will have different affects on different people. At a certain point of alcohol per blood, the law is broken. It can be detected in both the blood and the breath. Both tests have advantages and disadvantages. Blood tests are very accurate, but impossible to conduct roadside. You have to take the person to the station before taking the test. By that time some of the alcohol will have been dissipated and absorbed into the body (Gusfield, 39). Breath tests can be done on the sport, but are sometimes faulty and less reliable. They have been thrown out of court on occasion because of this problem. They are more commonly used than blood tests, but have significant evidential problems. While these policies for detecting alcohol abuse are good, we need stronger ones. Ones that will make it easier to lock up drunk drivers for good. Without these new penalties drunk drivers will continue to escape justice. Sadly, some jurisdictions such as British Columbia in Canada are lightening their penalties, after having been accused of being too harsh. This is not the way to approach the situation. A tough public education campaign implied that no drinking was acceptable. The government has backtracked from the campaign and is putting in place a new one. Since the new penalties came into effect in September, business at restaurants and bars has dropped by 15 to 30 per cent, said Ian Tostenson, president of the B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association. “I’m very impressed that Rich Coleman and the government are prepared to take a second look at this,” he said in an interview. “The impacts have been horrendous.” He said he supports the education campaign but said it isn’t enough. He said the government still needs to “lighten up” on the penalties for people who are found in the warning category with a blood-alcohol level over .05 per cent but under .08. In those cases, penalties include an immediate three-day driving ban and a $200 fine for a first offence (Hunter). It is clear that this government is going in the wrong direction. We need governments that crack down on these kinds of crimes and protect our children from drunk drivers on the highways. There are those that argue that making the laws on drunk driving stricter risks increasing the power of the Nanny State (Mappes, 20). A Nanny State is one that uses excessive state controls, be they regulations or laws, to restrict its citizens’ freedom of choice. This is a criminological theory which suggests that crimes are defined as those that an elite believes to be wrong but which may not have much popular support. It is not based on natural law or on democracy; it is a kind technocratic theory of what is criminal or not. It believes that it knows best and that citizens should follow its centralized morality. This morality is often based on warped sociological or academic data and is enlisted in the name of utilitarianism. Of course, there is a general societal consensus that certain things are wrong and should be discouraged or criminalized, but for proponents of the Nanny State, the government should seize control of actions and issues where there is no consensus and unilaterally impose its view of morality on these issues. Why is this happening more and more these days? Many experts believe that in an increasingly complex world people are more willing to turn over power to the government in order to make their own lives easier. There is a sense the world can be and should be completely ordered and that government is the right body to do this. In some situations the Nanny State may be bad, but not when it comes to saving lives. We need our government to protect us from drunk drivers who are menacing us. To some radicals that may be an overreach of the states responsibilities, but it seem clear to many others that it is a perfectly natural response to a growing danger. We need to act soon to prevent more deaths. The truth is that driving under the influence is a crime and should be dealt with as a crime. It is a crime that takes away tens of thousands of lives each year. It is no joke. People who do this are criminals and should be treated as such. We need to increase the deterrence. The truth is that in the law enforcement system there are two opposing modes of looking of how to deal with criminals. The first is the due process model. The gist of this model is that an individual can never be deprived of basic human rights no matter how horrible a crime he or she has committed. Even for the police or DA to put someone in prison is to take away the criminal’s inalienable right to liberty. In the course of this system there must be many appeals and a thoroughly scrutinized process to ensure that everything is done by the book (Samaha, 22). This system would give drunk drivers just a slap on the wrist and send them on their way. Indeed, at its heart the due process model would rather see nine guilty people on the street than one innocent person in prison. The end result of this mode requires many hours of painstaking work by humans checking and rechecking evidence and the court case moving very slowly through the system. The second mode of looking at criminal justice is the Criminal Control Mode. This system puts a high value on locking up guilty people. It focuses on protecting citizens from criminals as quickly as possible. Under this system more money is spent on policing and deterring and prosecuting criminals as quickly as possible so that the police and prosecutors can move on quickly to the next batch. If an innocent person is caught in the net, that is a tragedy, but what is important is that many bad guys got caught too. For the most part, however, the Crime Control Mode believes that the police are almost always right and there is probably a very good reason someone was arrested by them. That is the approach we need to take with drunk drivers. Every day more people are killed by these irresponsible criminals. We need to ensure they are behind bars where they cannot kill (or drink) again. We need more severe penalties to deter this crime. For some drunk driving is a small problem we should all live with. People caught drinking and driving should be fined and sent on their way. For others, who believe in the dignity of human life, drunk drivers are potential killers who have taken a massive gamble not only with their own lives but with the lives of the people with whom they share the road. We need much stricter laws put in place to deal with these criminals in order to protect ourselves—and our children. Work cited Gusfield, Joseph. The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Hingson, Ralph. "Prevention of Drinking and Driving." Alcohol Health and Research World 20, no. 4 (1996) Homel, Ross. Policing and Punishing the Drinking Driver: A Study of General and Specific Deterrence. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988. Hunter, Justine. “B.C. moves to soften drunk-driving message.” Globe and Mail. Nov. 8, 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-moves-to-soften-drunk-driving-message/article1790825/ Mappes, Thomas A, and Jane S Zembaty. (2007). Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 7th ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Samaha, Joel. (2005). Criminal Justice. New York: Cengage. Read More