soreff (12/17/82)
Paul Killey has written: "The big push against drunken drivers I see as a basic assault on personal freedom . If people invested that much time reforming the criminal justice system with regard to murderers and rapists, we would all be better off." I've read that there are about 50,000 people killed on the road per year, about half of whom were in accidents where at least one of the drivers was driving under the influence of alcohol. In contrast, the murder count was about 10,000 per year, at the last time I looked. Drunk drivers kill MORE people than murderers do. The appropriate way to think about drunk driving is to imagine how one would treat the act of shooting randomly at a sparse crowd. On any given occasion, no one may be killed, but its a damn good idea to make sure that the person doing the shooting never gets to handle a firearm again. In this case the equivalent of the firearm is composed of two parts, the car and the alcohol. I think that drunk driving should lead to either revocation of the driver's license, or some arrangement which makes it impossible for them to drink (an implanted perfusion pump with antabuse, perhaps?). -Jeffrey Soreff (hplabs!soreff)