DUI, traffic deaths, and police indifference

[billvon 3,070]

>Purely ex ante pollution controls were a dismal failure.

Here in SoCal the air is between 75% and 90% cleaner than it was in the 70's (depending on pollutant.) That's been done by hard limits on car and industry pollution. I'd call that a success. And even though the rights of car manufacturers and power companies have been curtailed, many fewer people are dying of emphysema, COPD and lung cancer.

>Would you propose a DUI fatality trading system?

Nope. No one drives drunk. Period. Same rules for everyone.

[nathaniel 0]

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Here in SoCal the air is between 75% and 90% cleaner than it was in the 70's (depending on pollutant.)

Yes, southern CA, the pinnacle of ecological society. Even though you can't see the mountains from the 15th floor of the Marriott Newport Beach, it's still a resounding success!

Wait, how do we know that the levels we have are the best levels? What is the criteria?

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[billvon 3,070]

>it's still a resounding success!

Yes, it is. My wife's family was told by their doctor to move out of LA in the 70's because of the air quality. Nowadays it's at least four times cleaner.

>Wait, how do we know that the levels we have are the best levels?
>What is the criteria?

Number of people who die vs. cost to clean it up.

[nathaniel 0]

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Number of people who die vs. cost to clean it up.

You speak nothing of the benefits of pollution, as you spoke nothing of the benefits of drunk driving. Is that due to ignorance or malice toward society? Aphasia?

It's poop, it's bad and it's ugly. You can't talk about health and sanitation until you get over it. Poop is good because it is the byproduct of a functioning and healthy society. We speak not of carelessly minimizing poop or regulating the exact level, but of ensuring its efficiency and balance against the needs of the rest of the body.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[billvon 3,070]

>You speak nothing of the benefits of pollution, as you spoke nothing
> of the benefits of drunk driving. Is that due to ignorance or malice
> toward society? Aphasia?

Malice towards society, of course. I dislike pollution because I hate everyone!

>It's poop, it's bad and it's ugly.

Are you OK there?

[willard 0]

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Until a way is developed to test each and every driver for their own tolerance to alcohol and other drugs we have no choice but to go by past experience and other available data to make an educated decision as to where we draw the line.

Exactly. That's essentially how legal BAC/driving limits have been set. Such laws need to have a degree of consistency that applies equally (in the legal sense) to everyone, so that there will be a common standard that everyone can predict without having to guess what applies to them.

What I mean is this: any statutory BAC limit – be it 0.10%, or 0.08%, or whatever, is essentially a compromise out of necessity. They take studies that show that people's driving performance tends to become substantially impaired at, say, somewhere in the 0.07% to 0.11% range, depending on the individual. Person A may be able to drive safely at 0.11%. Person B has a low tolerance, and becomes an unsafe driver at 0.06%. So the legislature decides to compromise at a mid-range. The law may be unfair to the guy who can drive safely at 0.11%, and may place the public at risk from the lightweight who's unsafe at 0.07%, but hey – it's all part of the social compact.

Well stated.

[DaVinci 0]

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I think the number of dead should be balanced against the benefit derived from the activity....Drunk driving doesn't heal a person like a hospital, but I think there's a strong case to be made that it's a benefit to the driver, else people wouldn't do it in such large numbers.

OM fucking god.....Drunk driving has BENEFITS?

[nathaniel 0]

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OM fucking god.....Drunk driving has BENEFITS?

Yes. Like pollution and poop, DUI has benefits. It's transportation after all--it is commerce. People value it, or else they would not persist in doing it despite all the inherent costs and the legally induced risks associated with getting caught.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[willard 0]

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OM fucking god.....Drunk driving has BENEFITS?

Yes. Like pollution and poop, DUI has benefits. It's transportation after all--it is commerce. People value it, or else they would not persist in doing it despite all the inherent costs and the legally induced risks associated with getting caught.

Cannibalism is valued by many people...does that mean we should make it legal??

Maybe we should just quit enforcing all traffic laws. Let people drive as fast as they want and only punish those who hurt cause a wreck. Do away with CDLs and let anyone who wants to drive 18-wheelers for a living. As long as they don't cause a wreck we'll let them drive as many hours and miles a week as they want, as fast as they want, and overloaded as much as they want. We won't even require them to have any kind of lighting on their trucks and trailers. Maybe then you would be happy.

[nathaniel 0]

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Cannibalism is valued by many people...does that mean we should make it legal?

Cannibalism does not add value to our society, due to our cultural norms. We do use dead bodies for non-nutritional purposes. Trade in tissues is not yet commonplace, but our legislature and our society is gradually coming to understand the immense cost of our culturally derived restrictions on it. Such as death in patients waiting for organs due to insufficient supply. In a fully functioning tissue market, once you pay it's your responsibility. I suspect the cannibals would be priced out of the market by legitmate patients, but I don't see any harm in leaving the scraps to them.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[billvon 3,070]

>Maybe we should just quit enforcing all traffic laws.

Aviation laws, too! Pilots could have drinking contests before getting in the cockpit. Think of the additional profits that bar owners are currently being denied by the unfair and completely arbitrary laws against airline pilots drinking before they fly.

And if they crash and kill everyone on board? Perhaps take out an elementary school in the process? Just arrest them and charge them _then._ It's only fair.

[nathaniel 0]

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Aviation laws, too! Pilots could have drinking contests before getting in the cockpit.

That something might be permissible under the law, does not make it desirable or commonplace. I think the marketplace alone would be sufficient to deter drunken mass market airline pilots, between the risk to the owners of damaging the plane and the public perception issue, no airline would tolerate drunkenness among its pilots.

I think you mischaracterize the effect of the law. In the example you gave, it's window dressing.

why won't someone think of the children!

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[willard 0]

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Cannibalism does not add value to our society, due to our cultural norms.

Exactly my point.

Driving while intoxicated does not add value to our society, due to cultural norms.

Of all the reasons you have offered in support of allowing people to drink and drive, not one can be considered anywhere close to reasonable.

[willard 0]

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why won't someone think of the children!

I am. You may think it amusing when somebody loses a family member or close friend due to the actions of a drunk driver but, I can assure you, most, including myself, do not.

[DaVinci 0]

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Yes. Like pollution and poop, DUI has benefits

No pollution is a by product of making something...So BTW is poop. Drunk Driving is not, it is an act.

Most logical people know that an act that endangers people with no reason is normally considered bad. There is no benefit to driving drunk other than for the driver to get home. But for the WHOLE it is a dangerous act that should nto be allowed.

To claim other wise is crazy.

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People value it, or else they would not persist in doing it despite all the inherent costs and the legally induced risks associated with getting caught.

They do it since they think THEY are the exception. Add in the effect of alcohol on the thinking process and they get behind the wheel.

And just because people do it, does not mean it has benefits. People murder, and they think they have a good reason, but that does not mean it is good.

[1969912 0]

OK. I feel the need to get beat up some more, but first I'll apologize for the crappy title I gave this thread. It is the politicians and special inerest groups that I should have pooped on.

I have never really trusted the statistics that are thrown around about DUI and accidents/deaths. Here are a couple things I just found:

The following was cut from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_Sobriety_Test#Field_sobriety_test and is consistent with NHTSA documents.

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In the United States the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 17,013 people died in 2003 in "alcohol-related" collisions, representing 40 percent of total traffic deaths in the US. Over 500,000 people were injured in alcohol-related accidents in the US in 2003. NHTSA defines fatal collisions as "alcohol-related" if they believe the driver, a passenger, or a nonoccupant of the vehicle (such as a pedestrian or pedalcyclist) had a BAC of 0.01 or greater. NHTSA defines nonfatal collisions as "alcohol-related" if the accident report indicates evidence of alcohol present. NHTSA specifically notes that "alcohol-related" does not necessarily mean a driver or nonoccupant was tested for alcohol and that the term does not indicate a collision or fatality was caused by the presence of alcohol.On average, about 60 percent of the BAC values are missing or unknown. To analyze what they believe is the complete data, statisticians simulate BAC information.(using a statistical method called "multiple imputation" per DOT-HS-809-403)

(bold tags added by me). DOT-HS-809-403 seems to say that if you're found in your crumpled car a couple days after the crash and they cannot get tox info from your body parts, then they estimate your BAC based on other data (age, sex, crash type and time, etc.). That's for ~60% of deaths. Maybe its accurate, but the following makes me wonder.

Remember, NHTSA considers a fatal accident to be ETOH-related if the driver has a BAC of .01 v/v or higher. Next I used a NHTSA BAC estimator to see what happens after one beer over one hour. Results are below (bac.jpg). No impairment. Looking at the NHTSA website, I found a chart showing predicted impairment at various BAC's (bac2.jpg). The chart stops at .02%, which agrees with the "no impairment" on the first jpeg.

Looking briefly at NHTSA TSF2004, the annual traffic safety report, it seems that 30+% of what NHTSA deems "alcohol related" traffic fatalities are caused by drivers with "no impairment", again per NHTSA.

Brings to mind the saying "Figures never lie, but liars sure can figure"

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[nathaniel 0]

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No pollution is a by product of making something...So BTW is poop. Drunk Driving is not, it is an act.

Drunk driving is a byproduct of our healthy society and economy, which comprises acts as well as products. Of all the means used to dissuade drunk driving, and which have failed to eradicate it, it is pointless and wasteful to pretend that we can eradicate it. It is costly and demonstrably counterproductive to reduce it needlessly.

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People murder, and they think they have a good reason, but that does not mean it is good.

Murder causes death 100% of the time, and is of negligible benefit to anyone (discounting abortion and euthanasia, if you lump those in with murder due to your morals).

Relative to its incidence, drunk driving rarely causes death, and drunk driving is of sizeable benefit to our economy well in excess of its inherent cost. The costs can be recouped by tort proceedings, or perhaps a functional equivalent.

You may think that causing inefficiency in our economy is funny, people who lose their jobs and their livelihood as a result do not.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[DaVinci 0]

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Drunk driving is a byproduct of our healthy society and economy

With a starting premise like that, nothing else you write will be taken seriously.

So the USSR has a healthy society and economy?

[willard 0]

Welcome back!

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Remember, NHTSA considers a fatal accident to be ETOH-related if the driver has a BAC of .01 v/v or higher. Next I used a NHTSA BAC estimator to see what happens after one beer over one hour. Results are below (bac.jpg). No impairment. Looking at the NHTSA website, I found a chart showing predicted impairment at various BAC's (bac2.jpg). The chart stops at .02%, which agrees with the "no impairment" on the first jpeg.

I looked at the pics you posted and have seen those charts before. They are good for what they are intended, and that is estimating BAC and it's effects. The first shows a slide rule type device for BAC. Interestingly it is set for the conditions to match my body weight, etc. It shows a BAC of .006 one hour after consuming a beer. What it does not show is what impairment there would be at that level, or at any BAC level, just the estimated BAC.
The second pic shows what impairment can be expected at various BAC. It clearly shows that there is a decline in visual function and a decline in the ability to perform two tasks at the same time.
.006 is well below what any state considers the maximum BAC, but to say there is no impairment at all because the second chart stops at .02 is misleading. We can not make that assumption.
If the charts are correct, then setting the limit at .08-.10 is more than fair to drinkers, since even at .02 and more so at .05 the effects are significant.

[willard 0]

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Murder causes death 100% of the time, and is of negligible benefit to anyone (discounting abortion and euthanasia, if you lump those in with murder due to your morals).

Attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder are also illegal. We don't wait until the act is completed before we consider a crime to have occurred. Almost every law in our society is aimed at deterence. Laws themselves never physically prevent a crime, they merely punish those who are found guilty of breaking them. To remove laws that deter people from doing something that is proven to be a menace would reduce our society to anarchy. Our DUI laws may not be perfect, but they are effective. Nothing we can do will ever prevent all drunk driving, the same as nothing we ever do will prevent all murder.

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Drunk driving is a byproduct of our healthy society and economy, which comprises acts as well as products. Of all the means used to dissuade drunk driving, and which have failed to eradicate it, it is pointless and wasteful to pretend that we can eradicate it. It is costly and demonstrably counterproductive to reduce it needlessly.

See above.

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Relative to its incidence, drunk driving rarely causes death, and drunk driving is of sizeable benefit to our economy well in excess of its inherent cost. The costs can be recouped by tort proceedings, or perhaps a functional equivalent.

Once again I ask, where is the benefit? You are saying that in a healthy economy people drink more and therefore more people drive drunk. Some would argue just the opposite, that a poor economy leads to more drinking and hence more drunk driving. In either case, the drunk driving is a symtom of the economy, not a cause. If everyone stopped driving after they were done drinking the causative factor, the economy, would be uneffected.
If you really want to help the economy by drinking, then hire a taxi service to drive you to and from the bar. It's safer than driving yourself, it puts money into our economy, you can sleep on the way home, no worries about the cops, and you get to puke in their car, not yours.

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You may think that causing inefficiency in our economy is funny, people who lose their jobs and their livelihood as a result do not.

I never said or implied that I did think it was funny. On the contrary I have, in the past, lost my job to a depressed economy.

[nathaniel 0]

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If you really want to help the economy by drinking, then hire a taxi service to drive you to and from the bar.

A free market is not fomented by telling people what to buy. That's entirely backwards. Shunting transactions from one place to another with law is the sine qua non of economic inefficiency. Yes we do it all the time, and yes some of the time it connotes benefits by correcting market inefficiencies. In the case of drunk driving, the law
a) doesn't cause most to substitute taxi cabs for driving, empirically, although it undoubtedly does a small number
b) heightens the inherent inefficiencies of drunk driving rather than alleviating them. I suspect due to hatred of alcohol, because I can't think of any other way to justify the law.

The inefficiency of the law is precisely due to the imprecision of the methods of enforcement, and the perversity of the penalty structure. Distorting the economy, and damaging it.

To speak of drunk driving as a cultural sin is to concede the uselessness of drunk driving criminal law, because drunk driving practiced by millions of people annually. Its practitioners have included mainstream celebrities, politicians and people of all sorts, such as our esteemed Vice President. I'm sure you would find balut to be disgusting. Nonetheless we permit food vendors to sell it despite the inherent health risks because of the value it provides to some.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[willard 0]

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A free market is not fomented by telling people what to buy. That's entirely backwards. Shunting transactions from one place to another with law is the sine qua non of economic inefficiency. Yes we do it all the time, and yes some of the time it connotes benefits by correcting market inefficiencies.

No law is telling you that you have to hire a taxi, only that you are not allowed to drive on public highways after your BAC reaches a predetermined level. Whether you hire a taxi, call a friend, walk home, or stay where you are is entirely up to you.

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doesn't cause most to substitute taxi cabs for driving, empirically, although it undoubtedly does a small number

Agreed. At least these people take their responsibility to society seriously.

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heightens the inherent inefficiencies of drunk driving rather than alleviating them.

In what way? Please share this information with the rest of us.

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I suspect due to hatred of alcohol, because I can't think of any other way to justify the law.

DUI laws are not in place due to what you perceive as a hatred of alcohol, but as a measure to deter those who would drink and drive from doing so.

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The inefficiency of the law is precisely due to the imprecision of the methods of enforcement, and the perversity of the penalty structure.

The laws have been proven to be quite efficient in detering drunk driving. You yourself admitted that you don't drive when you suspect your BAC is anywhere near the legal limit due to being subjected to the penalties if caught.

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Distorting the economy, and damaging it.

Once again, I challenge you to show where there is any benefit to society by allowing people to drive while intoxicated. While you are at it, you can show us where these laws distort the economy and damage it.

Since you seem to be concerned only with the financial implications of DUI laws and not the cost in terms of lives lost or destoyed, maybe you should read up on the financial impact that drunk drivers have each year just in the U.S. The cost in lost days at work, medical bills, etc. runs in the billions.

[1969912 0]

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Welcome back!

I was hiding.

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I looked at the pics you posted and have seen those charts before. They are good for what they are intended, and that is estimating BAC and it's effects. The first shows a slide rule type device for BAC. Interestingly it is set for the conditions to match my body weight, etc.

Guess we weigh about the same. The pic is a screenshot of an online calculator that I used.

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It shows a BAC of .006 one hour after consuming a beer. What it does not show is what impairment there would be at that level, or at any BAC level, just the estimated BAC.

The pic is too small to see all the text. Here is what it says in the window below the results line:

Behavior normal. No detectable alcohol.

NOTICES:
We use the NHTSA formula for estimating blood alcohol content/levels. This is only an estimate. We base our estimate on 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol content per drink and the accepted 'normal' metabolic rate for alcohol elimination from the body. Most other programs use 0.54 ounces of alcohol per drink and a slower than normal metabolic rate.
Comments about DUI conviction possibilities are based on Florida law and may be different for other states.

I'm not sure why it says "No detectable alcohol", unless it's because that concentration is below the accurate limits or breath analyzers. I do know that DOT approval standards for law-enforcement breathalyzers only require accuracy testing down to .020%.

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The second pic shows what impairment can be expected at various BAC. It clearly shows that there is a decline in visual function and a decline in the ability to perform two tasks at the same time.
.006 is well below what any state considers the maximum BAC, but to say there is no impairment at all because the second chart stops at .02 is misleading. We can not make that assumption.

Yep. It would be silly to think that impairment v. BAC has a sharp cutoff below some point. Impairment of ones ability to multitask seems to be the biggest problem with a BAC twice the level where a fatal accident is considered to be alcohol-related. Heck, a butt-itch while driving could do the same thing. It seems that most of the impairment charts bottom out at either .020 or .040. The one on the MADD site stops at .020. Some say you are clearly impaired at .010 or above. Here is what DOT says in DOT-HS-809-075, their study of impairment v. BAC which is referenced on the MADD website:

The results obtained in this laboratory study demonstrate that major driving-related skills were impaired by BACs as low as 0.02% on some important measures for a majority of [persons tested] who were a broadly representative sample of the driving population.

Seems curious that NHTSA, which is a part of DOT, uses .010% as the per se level at which the accidents are essentially blamed on a "drunk" driver, while DOT says the above.

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If the charts are correct, then setting the limit at .08-.10 is more than fair to drinkers, since even at .02 and more so at .05 the effects are significant.

I don't give much of a shit about being fair to the drinkers. What I care about is actually preventing death and suffering, not playing stupid political games.

Based on the fact that ~60% of fatality BAC's are estimated, not measured, and fatalities are arbitrarily attributed to alcohol at a BAC of .010%, it wouldn't be surprising if the true DUI death toll is somewhat less than half of the ~17,000 claimed. The DUI witch hunt doesn't sound like a good use of resources to me, especially when 16,000 people are murdered each year and over 3,000 die of malnutrition.

Ok, flame me now. I'm gonna have me a pint of Guinness.

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[nathaniel 0]

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Once again, I challenge you to show where there is any benefit to society by allowing people to drive while intoxicated.

In descriptive economics, we do not tell people where the value is. People tell us by their decisions. It is purely descriptive and incontrovertible to say that people derive value from driving drunk, because they do so in large numbers in spite of the costs inherent to the activity and again in spite of the penalties of getting caught. Alcohol and cars are not free. Freedom has intrinsic value that is taken away with imprisonment and felony conviction.

Your normative judgement of the value of driving drunk reflects on you, and despite your protestations it demonstrates your hatred of alcohol. I do not care for the feeling of drunkenness, yet I do not deny the value it objectively provides to others on my subjective basis. Neither would I ban balut, even though it is much more repugnant to me than driving drunk. The pictures of balut on wikipedia make me nauseous, at least as nauseous as .08 BAC worth of alcohol.

It is ironic that you would attribute drunk driving to innumeracy among drunk drivers, when innumeracy is demonstrated by the law itself.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[willard 0]

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Ok, flame me now. I'm gonna have me a pint of Guinness.

I have no intent on flaming you. Your post was informative, to the point, and presented accurate statistics and your interpretation of them.

I think I'll have a Guinness myself.

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