I am stunned by the uselessness of this article. Are you saying drinking and driving is a bad thing? Are you saying that it’s enforcement is arbitrary? Are you encouraging it? Are you saying anything at all? Doesn’t look like it to me. It sounds like you are just copying out everything you have ever heard or thought about drinking and driving without thinking about what it is you are actually trying to say.
There is a difference between legal and moral guilt and it is abundantly clear that you do not understand this distinction. just because a person’s actions meet the literal definition of ‘drinking’ and ‘driving’ is does not mean that their behavior makes them automatically guilty of the crime of drinking and driving (DUI, DWI, whatever). MADD or any other number of MORAL entrepreneurs would have you believe that if you drink any alcohol at all you should be prevented from driving, but the laws Canada (and Im pretty sure most US states) do not reflect this attitude. Instead we find threshold levels and sobriety tests which are designed to separate out those who have ahd to much and pose a danger on the road from those who are within legally defined limits and so are NOT GUILTY of the crime of drinking and driving.
I hate to break this to you because you seem to be so keen on holding yourself and everyone else up to an insane standard of criminal responsibility, but you are just not guilty all the time. If you have a bunch of drinks and you get in to your car you’re and idiot who deserves no compassion. But drinking one beer and then driving home an hour later does not and should not make you liable if “someone crashes into a pole and dies, and the family sues me because I was withing 10 miles of the accident”, because that is nonsense.
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Post CommentBaffled
On January 26, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I am stunned by the uselessness of this article. Are you saying drinking and driving is a bad thing? Are you saying that it’s enforcement is arbitrary? Are you encouraging it? Are you saying anything at all? Doesn’t look like it to me. It sounds like you are just copying out everything you have ever heard or thought about drinking and driving without thinking about what it is you are actually trying to say.
There is a difference between legal and moral guilt and it is abundantly clear that you do not understand this distinction. just because a person’s actions meet the literal definition of ‘drinking’ and ‘driving’ is does not mean that their behavior makes them automatically guilty of the crime of drinking and driving (DUI, DWI, whatever). MADD or any other number of MORAL entrepreneurs would have you believe that if you drink any alcohol at all you should be prevented from driving, but the laws Canada (and Im pretty sure most US states) do not reflect this attitude. Instead we find threshold levels and sobriety tests which are designed to separate out those who have ahd to much and pose a danger on the road from those who are within legally defined limits and so are NOT GUILTY of the crime of drinking and driving.
I hate to break this to you because you seem to be so keen on holding yourself and everyone else up to an insane standard of criminal responsibility, but you are just not guilty all the time. If you have a bunch of drinks and you get in to your car you’re and idiot who deserves no compassion. But drinking one beer and then driving home an hour later does not and should not make you liable if “someone crashes into a pole and dies, and the family sues me because I was withing 10 miles of the accident”, because that is nonsense.