[piercehawkeye45]

Blah...I have a lot of free time today so I have been thinking a lot about this today so here my summarized thoughts instead of the pretty cluttered stuff I've posted earlier.

As I mentioned many times, I feel there are two types of drunk drivers, the ones that do it because they feel they are "good drunk drivers" and have no respect for others and those that do not like drunk driving but will occasionally get into situations where it is an extreme hassle not to drink and drive. As for laws, I completely agree with extremely strict drunk driving laws as long as the second group is taken into account.

For the first group, there is almost NOTHING our government can do to stop them from drinking and driving. They will do whatever is easiest for them and drinking and driving is almost always that. Besides a few exceptions, no matter how strict we make the laws, these people will continue to drink and drive because they believe they will not get caught and have a general disrespect for everyone else.

The second group, on the other hand, will take into account that drunk driving is strongly unperferable. These people will make sacrifices to try to avoid drunk driving but will if it becomes too much of a hassle. This also means extremely strict laws will have little effect on them because, like the first group, they also will only do it when they feel they will not get caught. But, this group will avoid drunk driving if a realistic alternative is provided.

This means I believe anti-drunk driving laws and planning should include two parts. The first part is prevention. This means setting up realistic means of transporting drunk people that did not effectively plan ahead. An idea off the top of my head would be the subsidizing of five taxi rides a year for those to apply to a certain program (18+). This will not only provide an escape route for those who did not effectively plan but will also show that government is trying to prevent drunk drivers and not just prosecute them, making it harder to justify unplanned instances where drunk driving occurs. The second part is prosecution. This is where the extremely strict drunk driving laws come in. While not solving the problem, this will scare people from the "second group" into using alternative ways of transportation and try to keep people from the "first group" off the streets.

Whether you believe all drunk drivers, no matter the "group", are disrespectful selfish people or not, I would much prefer to pay a little more in taxes to subsidize a free taxi ride than have him or her go to jail for a few years, costing even more money, or potentially kill someone if they only drink and drive on rare occasions.