I personally would be happy if they just made a serious effort to get the drunks off the road. This is what they really should be focusing on, protecting us from the impaired rather than protecting us from ourselves.
Here’s my thoughts on that. They should impound the vehicle of every driver who fails a field test, no matter WHO the owner is. If the driver is subsequently convicted, the vehicle should be confiscated and auctioned, the proceeds to go toward more inforcement, and the driver addtionaly punished with a loss of license as a minimum.
One cannot repeat offend if one’s car has been confiscated. And if the car was borrowed, nobody is likely to lend the drunk another after one has been lost.
I truely think this is the only meaningful solution to impaired driving.
I mean think about it. We’ve already got blind spot monitoring systems that warn us of cars in another lane, lane deviation warnings, adaptive cruise control, GPS in even a small sedan like a Cobalt(OnStar), back up sensors/camera, and probably more that I can’t think of right now. So it wouldn’t be all THAT difficult to make the car drive itself
the $1000 was a rough estimate. Depending on the vehicle, a rusted shell that’s being held together with rust and no welds, may fetch $5k or more easily. And by that time, it may just be cheaper to buy the parts from a catalog and build it from the parts out of it(i.e. Camaro convertible or tri-five Bel-Air)
Great point Mountainbike. If this really was a zero sum issue, you would get no argument from me. However, the police fall under the executive branch of government and the lawmakers fall under the legislative branch of government. Adding stability control to cars doesn’t keep police officers from doing their jobs. In fact, it might possibly free the police to prevent drunk driving by reducing the amount of accident investigations.
Now, there is a mandate I could get behind! If it would work. Unfortunately, we all know that taking a person’s license away does not prevent them from driving.
Interesting thought. Unfortunately, the police aren’t the problem. They really do their best, but the impaired driving laws are so poor as to allow offenders to continue to repeat, over and over and over again. As a matter of fact, right now the executive branch, in cohort with the legislative branch, is doing everything possible to let as many prisoners as possible go free…due to budgetary problems. DWIs are considered nonviolent offenders, so you know they’re going free.
Here in NH we just had one that was on parole for DWI with a fatality (he hit and killed a cop) and he killed another innocent victim while driving drunk…on parole…without a license. He had lost his license, but that clearly has no effect. Those who drive drunk continue to do so even after their licenses are revolked. As I type this he’s probably wobbling down the road again.
Sorry for going tangential from the original subject. But it does have a tie-in, as this focus toward more and more mandated safety systems is IMHO the wrong place to spend the money to reduce accidents. The money needs to instead be apent, and the focus be on, removing from the roads those that are dangerous. And impaired drivers are at the top of the list.
Enough equipment mandates. Let’s start eliminating the real sources of danger.
You make a darn good argument. Strengthening our drunk driving laws should be a higher priority than mandating safety equipment.
Of all the crimes we have mandatory minimum sentences for, this should definitely be one of them. Maybe if a simple drunk driving conviction (without fatalities or damage) carried a ten year minimum prison sentence, drunks might finally see the benefits of calling a taxi. I could approve of that, a mandatory minimum 20 year prison sentence if there is property damage, and a mandatory minimum 50 year prison sentence if the driver killed anyone in the process. With the legal drinking age at 21, most of the worst offenders wouldn’t be released until they were at least 71 years old, so this would be a life sentence for many of them, as it should be.
I could support that approach. We could perhaps debate the lengths of the sentences, but minimum jail time would be a definite start in the right direction.
My S-10 will start without stepping on the clutch. My Snapper will continue to run when I get off the seat and it will cut in reverse. My Lawn-Boy will start and run without holding a dead-man switch just like the one I used 50 years ago. Somehow I have driven well in excess of 1 million miles without a ticket or wreck other than parking lot dings using my somewhat limited good sense. The “high tech sky hooks” that are being touted by the industry seem to have the same effect as 4-wheel for many, drivers just use the added capability to get deeper into trouble, causing greater damage.
I know there good intentions when a lot of these laws are passed,it seems that a good dose of common sense would be even better in some of these cases-Kevin
And then we get back to the prison overcrowding, who gets released first problem. The govt. could build more prisons, but that requires more money. Where does the govt. get its money? From us. Find me two people who would willingly give up their money to the government.
I think the government must be very careful. This is not a thing to play with it. In fact, the best option is to ask the people what are thinking about this problem. optimizare site