is it so hard not to drink and drive?..if you are going to drink..then dont drive...yes it may be in ...
news 發表於 2010-9-17 12:16 
It's not as simple as that. It's always a case of trading between risk (think about others) and freedom (inconvinience). You always have to draw a line. The point is where do you draw a line and whether that line is drawn so that it's the most efficient trade possible between risk and freedom.
Some places draw the line where if you drink, don't drive, which is what you suggested but that's not our law anyways.
BC we are drawing this arbitary line of if you drink over 0.05, don't drive.
You can always make the world a safer place by stripping more rights. How about banning motorcycles because the ratio of death to accident ratio is high? How about banning Facebook since people are going viral with child porno rape photos? How about stripping the rights to drive at all since so many people die from just plain driving in general, and not to mention the air pollution might end the earth one day? I can just as easily extend what you said to 'if you are going to head out, then take the bus...yes it may be inconvenient to YOU.. but pls think about the others'. We can keep on stripping more and more rights from everyone becasue of the danger caused by a small number of people, and make the world a safer and safer place, but then what's the point in living at all then? Where do you end? The key is whether it's a fair trade of freedom and risk, and whether it's an efficient trade.
My argument is that 0.05 is arbitary, meaningless, and makes it very easy for people to unintentionally cross the line. If the intention is to allow people to drink a little bit, but prevent people that excessively drinks to drive, then I think the current regulation is very poor in achieving this. It strips more freedom from the ordinary people than necassary, but doesn't necassarily prevent the wreckless drink and drivers from driving, as they don't give a sh_t regardless, and it doesn't bar out people who can't handle even 0.05 from driving either. At the same time it intimidates people who intends to stay under the limit anyways, especially when portable breathalyzers are known to be inaccurate and there have been cases of conviction without even doing a breathlyzer sample at all. Raising the penalty is going to reduce excessive drinking and driving by a little bit, but increase conviction massively. All it's going to do is allow the police to be much more intrusive, and much easier to power trip the ordinary citizens (even the ones who didn't even drink!), and tie up the court system even more. All these new regulation is just trying penalize ordinary people doing ordinary things.
If the real intention of all these is to improve safety, there are a lot more that they can do than just slap on a bigger penalty. Obviously those are going to require thinking and efforts. It's much easier to tighten up the laws and act as if the government have done something. At the very end of the day, it's all just politics and all just for show. |
發表於 2010-9-17 14:12
| 
