to think that anyone who drives while over the limit is scum!!

[memoo]

I am so angry and upset!

Just found out that my friends DS was knocked over yesterday evening by a woman who was pissed! She mounted the kerb and knocked him from his bike.

He lost a couple of teeth and is very bruised but thank God he is ok.

How the hell can anyone think it is ok to get in a car when they're drunk? WTF do they think they are playing at. They should be banned from driving for life.

Poor lad :( I have a friend who lost her seven-year-old child, her fiance and her twin brother to drunk drivers in three separate accidents over the space of a decade, so I'm sure I don't need to spell out my views on the matter.

I know what sumfing means, to a degree. There was a recent case where a driver stopped to help someone else who'd been in an accident on a quiet road at night. There was no question of the first driver behaving in any way dangerously. He was simply a good Samaritan. He waited with the second driver until the police arrived.

They breathalysed him. He was found to be slightly over the limit and was punished.

That seems, to me, to fly in the face of natural justice.

Obviously it's very different indeed to the terrible case related by the OP.

Reducing the limit to zero wouldn't stop the really dangerous idiots who don't think they have a problems and are good drivers even when they've had a bottle of wine. It would just stop people like me having my one glass of wine when I go out (rarely).

sumfingnew I'm a liberal and generally wish to minimise the number that we have but I think that we need to have restrictions on the amount of alcohol you have consumed and whether you can drive, cars are potential lethal weapons so you must be in a fit state to drive one.

Ban them for life.

My GP's first born son was killed at age 18 the week before Christmas by a drunk driver many yrs ago.

My Grandad was never the same man & my Mum says hearing my Nana wail when the police came & told them was the worst thing ever.

I abhor drunk drivers,they are selfish twats in my opinion.

Hope your friends son makes a quick recovery.

"actually encourages us all to act irresponsibly because it removes our opportunity for deciding for ourselves"

mm...

I think you miss the point that however hard you punish a person after the event, someone has to have died or been horribly hurt before the perpetrator comes face to face with the consequences of their actions. Your assumption is that only one person has to die (nice for that person!) and one more be punished because everyone else will then get the message and not even try. Whereas the truth is that the ever-optimistic human animal will go on happily assuming that it isn't going to happen to them, until it does.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with pre-emptive legislation when the consequences are potentially so dire. Responsible drivers know what may happen so they don't chance it, regardless of whether they could "get away with it". But there are many irresponsible idiots out there who will not learn however much freedom you give them to make their own mistakes. They have to make them before they get the point. And I wouldn't like the point to be made with my child's life, thank you very much, or even yours. I'll take "Don't drink and drive because there WILL be fairly unpleasant consequences" over "Don't drink and drive because there MIGHT be horrifying consequences" any time.

ps Who is the secretary of Hullygully's fan club? I want to join.

Chil1234 ? absolutely, we do expect all those things. Driving is potentially very dangerous and should be undertaken with respect. I am in complete agreement with you. Where we differ is that you wish to punish people for doing something that might have harmed other people, whereas I want to punish people when they actually cause that harm.

I say again - the punishments need to be draconian and harsh, so as to deter anyone but the unreachable from driving whilst drunk.

But to drive home from the pub after 2-3 pints ? this in itself should not be illegal. If by doing so, someone gets hurt, then yes, throw the book at the driver, by all means.

I'd in fact in further and say that anyone who knowingly allows someone else to drink drive without reporting them should be ashamed of themselves.

I had friends at university who were going to drive back drunk from somewhere because it was 'just around the corner'. I told them nicely that if they did I'd be ringing the police. They didn't think I was serious at first, I said they could drive and see just how serious I was.

"No amount of punishment is going to bring back a dead victim."

You're right. I tell you what let's repeal all the murder laws and the rape laws, come to that, and any laws that deal with assault or manslaughter or negligence or...

you get the picture.

Cos y'know, at the end of the day, punishing a rapist isn't going to stop the rape having happened is it? Or punishing a murderer isn't going to bring back the victim and so on

Go further

"Where we differ is that you wish to punish people for doing something that might have harmed other people, whereas I want to punish people when they actually cause that
harm."

So a person who fires into a crowd but accidentally misses should not be punished? And no attempt made to stop him from doing it again?

In your example, two people could be driving home equally drunk, but one goes to jail because the person he hit when he mounted the pavement happened to be a slow mover, and the other one gets off scot free because the person he drove straight at happened to be an olympic jumper and hurled himself out of the way?

Nope, I still don't get it. When you drive after having a drink you are taking a risk that you may have an accident and hurt or kill somebody, are you saying that is an acceptable risk?

Another thing I don't understand is why anyone believes that not drinking is some dreadful imposition. I never heard of anyone dying or suffering lifelong disfigurement from not having a glass of wine. All you have to do is drink something that isn't alcoholic if you know you're going to drive - or take the bus or a cab if you're asked to drive unexpectedly after drinking - and if you can't do without alcohol for 24 hours, or can't afford a cab because you spent the money on booze instead, man you have a problem.

ps abr1de, there is no such thing as natural justice. Justice is a human invention. Nature is rather nasty when it comes to teaching lessons the hard way, hence why we want to do better for ourselves.

Anniegetyourgun - good response and I far prefer a decent discussion like this over the "moronic" comments written earlier. Some people get scared at the possibility of true freedom, I guess.

I take your point about the tragedy of someone having to die, and a harsh punishment be meted out in order for the rest of us to be deterred from acting in that way. But we?re not starting from a clean sheet of paper, are we? Lots of people have been killed on the roads thanks to drink-driving and yet people still do it. In other words, our current approach does not work.

To be clear, I share everyone?s contempt of people that drink and drive and cause accidents ? just as I have no time for people that are manifestly unsuited to driving (for reasons of poor health, eyesight etc). I am not an apologist for irresponsible behaviour in the least. In fact, far from it. I would hope that my approach would encourage more responsible behaviour because it would force people to examine their capabilities and be accountable for them.

@Sumfingnew... what you're saying is that you only want harsh, draconian punishments at the point when other people are lying dead and bleeding in the roads. I'd prefer less draconian deterrents for those willing to risk that happening in the first place and so avoid so many dead and wounded.

The seat belt law is a good example of why appealing to commonsense & responsibility doesn't work. Up to its introduction, no end of Jimmy Saville 'clunk click' adverts went unheeded and we had thousands die hurtling through windscreens. Pass one tiny law (which hardly anyone has been prosecuted for disobeying), we all buckle up and the problem is vastly reduced.

So, if somebody blows up a bomb in a crowded place but it doesn't hurt anyone you wouldn't punish them, even though they have put all thoses peoples lives at risk?

I think though that you are crediting people with much more intelligence than they are entitled to.

If the DD laws were repealed tomorrow, I am 99 percent sure that by the end of this year, the deaths caused by DD would rise significantly.

I don't think people would examine their capabilities, I think they'd just get pissed and get in their car and "hope for the best"

Don't let's forget as well, that booze tends to make people feel invincible - the fact that DD is illegal and so totally frowned upon by society, means that many younger drivers would never even CONSIDER getting into a car pissed - I put that down to the laws that are in place (in part)

Sumfing, I am genuinely trying to understand your point. Nobody who drink drives thinks they are going to have an accident, they must all get behind the wheel believing that they are capable of driving safely. The alcohol clouds their judgement so how are they in a position to "examine their capabilities"

ShirleyGunPowderPlot ? I?m sorry, I don?t see any analogous relationship between my argument and yours about rapists and murderers. Could you explain it to me?

Rape and murder cause actual real harm to people. Drink-driving per se does not. Dangerous driving does.

In fact, to use your examples, your enthusiasm for drink-driving laws implies that you seek to control what women wear at night ? i.e. the specious argument that dressing provocatively increases the risk of being attacked. But do we accept this approach? Of course not ? we treat men and women as responsible adults and punish actions, not potential actions.

Sumfing, you are being absolutly ridiculous now

In that case we've wasted a lot of time in this family researching natural law and natural justice from the Romans through to the present day.

That part of my argument was directed at a very specific line in a PP. ""No amount of punishment is going to bring back a dead victim."

This line is the one my post was referring to.

Sounds like a very interesting subject, but I don't think it's well named. As I say, justice doesn't happen in nature. What you're talking about, I'd guess, is what I'd call fairness, and that's all a matter of perception and depends very much on the attitudes of the current society. Don't get me wrong, I believe in fairness, and it's a shame yon bloke suffered when he was doing a decent thing. At the same time, he had in fact committed an offence, whether he got caught for it or not. A fair result might have been that he was given a caution for the offence in recognition that he had done a good act; a just one might have been for the person he stopped to help to have paid his fine for him! But let us not say "he was penalised for doing a good thing". He was penalised for driving over the limit, which he should not have been doing. Maybe stopping to help someone along the road meant that he didn't run someone else over a bit further on. In any case, let virtue be its own reward.

Chil1234 - ah, well you see...I object to the seatbelt laws as well, alas.

"I would hope that my approach would encourage more responsible behaviour because it would force people to examine their capabilities and be accountable for them."

Never worked in the past. Roads have got a lot safer since legislation. Doesn't surprise me with drivers like my FIL who was blind as a bat but simply wouldn't accept that he was an unsafe driver. He needed somebody else to stop him. As did my 80yo friend who was only saved by sheer fluke from killing somebody (I was there)- she never registered what had happened because she couldn't really see what was going on; she t got very indignant when people tried to explain to her afterwards.