Worst part of the Cowboys DUI Death - Drunks will kill like it never happened

vta

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BringBackThatOleTimeBoys;4894732 said:
This brings up an interesting point: DUI is less of a problem in Europe than America. Why?

Where is this stat from?
 

BringBackThatOleTimeBoys

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Denim Chicken

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Anyway, they're coming pretty close to perfecting self-driving cars, so in about 20 years no more DUI problems.
 

vta

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BringBackThatOleTimeBoys;4894781 said:

I'm not looking to argue, I just wanted to see what kind of data would support the idea.

I can't see comparing a group of multiple countries to one, especially when that one has a population that is almost half of all of those nations combined.
 

BringBackThatOleTimeBoys

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Denim Chicken;4894789 said:
Anyway, they're coming pretty close to perfecting self-driving cars, so in about 20 years no more DUI problems.
Great if it happens, but it could go the way of the flying car predictions. And in the meantime, a drunk kills an American every hour.
 

BringBackThatOleTimeBoys

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vta;4894790 said:
I'm not looking to argue, I just wanted to see what kind of data would support the idea.

I can't see comparing a group of multiple countries to one, especially when that one has a population that is almost half of all of those nations combined.

So far, it looks like Europe in general deals with it better. Officers are allowed to do breathlyzer checks there.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2025301,00.html
 

vta

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BringBackThatOleTimeBoys;4894822 said:
So far, it looks like Europe in general deals with it better. Officers are allowed to do breathlyzer checks there.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2025301,00.html

Actually it doesn't. Taking a nation by nation approach to what steps they take doesn't at all suggest drunk driving is a greater problem for the U.S. than for Europe.

In fact if you look at your own Bloomberg linked article, you'll see the numbers aren't even close.

Deaths caused by drunk driving represent about 20 percent of road-accident fatalities in the European Union, which aims to reduce the total annual fatalities to 25,000 within four years from 41,600 in 2005. The two other main causes of road-accident deaths are driving too fast and failing to wear a seatbelt.

They're hoping to drop from 41000.+ to 25000 in four years.

In 2006, there were 16,005 drunk driving deaths in the U.S. There are eight drunk driving fatalities involving teens every day. Driving while intoxicated is extremely dangerous. It can be lethal. Something must be done to stem the tide of drunk driving deaths.

Source

These articles you're citing are generally comparing nations with less than 10,000,000 people to one with 300,000,000. It doesn't really work.
 

Denim Chicken

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BringBackThatOleTimeBoys;4894802 said:
Great if it happens, but it could go the way of the flying car predictions. And in the meantime, a drunk kills an American every hour.

10,000/year--that's really not alot considering other causes of death.

Major cardiovascular diseases 780,624
Diabetes 68,705
Suicide 36,909
Accidental poisoning 31,758
Falls 24,792
Homicide 16,799
 

vta

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This link shows a wild jump for the U.S. in 2009.

In 2009 over 33,808 people have died in alcohol-related collisions in the United States according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In the US that is over 32% of the total traffic deaths, that is 4 out of every 100,000 people, on average someone is killed in an alcohol-impaired driving crash about every 50 minutes. In 2003 NHTSA reported 275,000 people were injured in alcohol related accidents. In 1996, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, local law enforcement agencies made an nationwide estimate of 1,467,300 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol.

That seems a pretty incredible jump on things, but who am I to argue?
 

Denim Chicken

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BringBackThatOleTimeBoys;4894864 said:
"10,000 deaths not considered significant."

Wow.

I didn't say it was not significant. Just not as prolific as your making it out to be.
 

ABQCOWBOY

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Denim Chicken;4894724 said:
It depends on the State, but it's a pretty safe bet that if convicted your not driving for a while.

In New Mexico, you can be stopped and sighted for DWI. You can go to court and actually win the case but your license is still suspended for a year. The body that oversees the license is a MADD board. This is the kind of thing that I believe serves to hurt the process. A person can be found innocent and they will still lose their license. You automatically have to get a device installed in your vehicle or simply wait the year. I don't understand how on earth this is legal but that's how it is here.

The state and the city get paid from the licensed installers of breathalizers and then they also get paid for the reporting functions.

It's all about money.
 

ABQCOWBOY

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A lot of the statistics sighted are skewed. Breathalyzers do not really measure BAC all that accurately. Blood test do. The problem is that a breathalyzer does not account for the time frame of drinking. For example, if you were to sit down and open a beer right now. Take a drink of that beer and drive down the road and get pulled over, you would blow well over the .08 limit, even if you had only taken that one drink. The alcohol will register higher because you just took the drink, even though you didn't drink nearly enough of it to be drunk. Not so with blood tests. They actually measure the amount of alcohol that is in your bloodstream.
 

Cythim

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Dallas;4894190 said:
No offense, NOT a good idea. You have no idea what you are saying w/ 1 strike and all that loss. People make mistakes, something you cant obviously comprehend. I mean why not do the same thing w/ someone who gets into a fight and almost hurts someone? Why not put him in jail for life? He almost hurt someone. He could have killed the guy. What about a spouse hurting the other? Why not make them divorce immediately and split the kids up? They could have killed each other. I mean where does it stop? You can take this same neolithic approach to soo many misdemeanor crimes as well. So be careful what you wish for. You could easily get far more reaching effects than you could possibly imagine by doing what you suggest.

Now, saying that. I am a fan of more oversight of those who have had DUI's and far more penalties than are in place at this time and they are very solid and hard hitting penalties we have on the books now. MADD has done a fantastic job of strengthening our laws against DUI's. I think things are fine now w/ maybe being a bit more bite. Even w/ all of this, there are still those DUI's happening and situations like Jerry and Josh's.

I just don't think you think it through far enough and speak to much w/ emotion when stating that all DUI's peeps should lose their car forever and the right to drive. A mistake is a mistake and outside yourself, none of us are perfect.

Slippery slope doesn't work for an argument. The fighting and domestic abuse have no bearing on DUI's and the argument is a logical fallacy. Americans don't take driving serious enough, someone almost ran me off the road because they were texting and picked their head up long enough to laugh about it. People can get by without a car, the law needs to be strict enough that no one will ever want to get caught doing it.
 

ABQCOWBOY

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Cythim;4897460 said:
Slippery slope doesn't work for an argument. The fighting and domestic abuse have no bearing on DUI's and the argument is a logical fallacy. Americans don't take driving serious enough, someone almost ran me off the road because they were texting and picked their head up long enough to laugh about it. People can get by without a car, the law needs to be strict enough that no one will ever want to get caught doing it.

The problem, at least as I see it, is that the idea is not to get rid of it. The idea is to capitalize on it.
 
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