The emotional stakes are high for many people in the debate on whether drunk driving laws are necessary or ethical.
I realize that many people are for oppressive drunk driving laws because they have lost a loved one as a result of drunk driving.
However, when deciding what I should or should not support, I try to minimize my emotional reactions and arguments as much as possible.
I maintain that two significant questions have to be answered in determining the efficacy of drunk driving laws. First, are drunk driving laws consistent with basic moral principles? Second, do drunk driving laws accomplish what they are intended to accomplish?
The reason given for drunk driving laws is they are necessary to keep the roads safe from drunk people harming innocent people.
I have a simple question to ask: do you think it is ethical to punish people for possible harm to others or to punish them for the actual harm done?
If you say yes, we should punish possibilities, then I hope you would be honest enough to apply that principle consistently.
Are you going to support arresting an African-American prematurely because statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau show he or she is disproportionately more likely to commit a crime? What about giving citations to people who have antisocial personalities because many studies show that they make up a large percentage of the male criminal population?
I’m assuming that no sane person would support punishing all of the possibilities and probabilities in the examples given. You would be a bigot.
If you are not consistent in punishing all probabilities of harm then you are simply picking and choosing when to be for or against preemptive laws.
By not applying the principle consistently, the discussion now is about your opinion or preference about certain possibilities that should be prevented by law.
Another consistency issue is with keeping people safe on the road from other possibilities too.
Where are the calls to suspend people’s licenses that drive tired, angry, without prescription glasses, while eating, while text messaging and while talk on cell phones?
All of these activities can be very dangerous to the driver and others on the road. Yet, most people will only support draconian laws for drunk driving but not other possible dangers.
Now, the potential risk that drunk drivers cause others must be examined.
The most recent and complete statistics on traffic fatalities in Oklahoma date back to 2006. The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety (ODPS) reported 765 motor vehicle fatalities for 2006.
Of the 1,037 drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2006, 13.5 percent (140 out of 1,037) were under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Apparently drunk drivers are not the harbingers of death they are made out to be. Personally, I would be more concerned with the 86.5 percent of sober drivers who are killing themselves and others.
Data on all fatal crashes involving drunk drivers for the entire nation for 2006 compiled by The National Center for Statistics and Analysis shows that only 18 percent of the deaths were innocent victims or 36 percent if you include the drunk driver’s passengers as an innocent victim.
However, the majority of the time drunk drivers are killing themselves (64 percent of the time) or their passenger (18 percent of the time). So the assumption that others are more likely to be the victim of the drunk driver’s decision to drive drunk is simply not true.
However, these statistics mean little if we do not have an understanding of the big picture. According to the ODPS, the fatal crash rate in Oklahoma is 1.4 per 100 million miles traveled. So in a given mile you travel, you have a 1.4 in a 100 million chance of being in a fatal crash.
The chances are even smaller of being in an alcohol related fatal crash. This chance amounts to nearly .252 per 100 million miles or 1.008 per 400 million miles traveled. One cannot even argue that there is a good chance of being in a fatal accident, let alone one that involves a drunk driver. Are we really going to base our laws on the nearly infinitesimal chance of being killed by a drunk driver?
Drunk driving laws fail both questions that I believe are important in determining their efficacy.
The principle of punishing people for potential harm to others cannot be applied consistently.
Civilization has advanced quite remarkably over the centuries to where we punish people for their individual actions and harm they cause others. I wish we would apply that principle consistently to our laws and punish people for actual harm and not possibilities or probabilities of harm.
Another problem is the fact we are punishing innocent people for the statistically insignificant chance they will harm others as a result of their drunk driving.
Simply put, the empirical evidence doesn’t support the necessity of drunk driving laws.
Tarrant Carter is a philosophy and psychology senior.
