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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

I'll play devil's advocate: I doubt increasing the punishments for drunk driving is the most effective way to dissuade people from doing it. It's true that endangering people's lives by driving a vehicle while impaired is detestable behavior, but the desire for retribution should not be allowed to fuel unreasonable sentences and punishments. (Unfortunately, it often is, and it plays well into politicians getting re-elected into positions of power, so I suspect much of it creeps far higher than optimal.)

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Looming punishment at least puts it in people's minds, even if a majority still doesn't follow the law; there's a reason a lot of people have a 'designated driver', and I imagine it's more about avoiding the ticket & punishment rather than avoiding endangering lives on the road.

Of course, there are indeed other solutions that should be studied if they have a chance of reducing harm & death initiated by the act of driving under an influence.

Well, it is definitely good that a DUI is taken seriously. And maybe it is necessary for alcohol to have specific laws against it in order to make that dissuasion effective. I can, however, understand the position that the current punishments are unnecessarily harsh. What would probably be nice, is if we had data to back up which approaches are effective.

> I imagine it's more about avoiding the ticket & punishment rather than avoiding endangering lives on the road.

I wonder about that.

We always hear the trope about the drunk driver usually not dying because they're "relaxed," but being relaxed isn't going to do jack when you smash into an overpass at highway speeds or dump your car over a cliff.

Keep telling everyone that drunk driving is dangerous and they're easily going to infer that it's dangerous for themselves. And then which is more of a deterrent, a nasty fine, or death?

Drunk people are notoriously bad at judging their impairment. The threat of DUI has an deterrent effect on people who believe they could drive safely but are still concerned about a life altering criminal punishment. This is rational given that you are much more likely to get a DUI than kill yourself or someone else. There are ~10k alcohol related auto fatalities/year and approximately 1.5 million DUI arrests.

> Drunk people are notoriously bad at judging their impairment.

They are notoriously bad at executive function generally; deterrents aren't aimed at them.

The deterrent effect of DUI laws isn't on drunk people, it's on people who would otherwise choose to drink when they would then have to drive.

That is a good point, but I think it is both.

You should have been alive in the 1970s (maybe you were) when drunk driving was truly a slap-on-the-wrist offense. In 1980 came MADD, and though their ad campaigns were annoying -- they and other similar efforts were effective. Since 1982, drunk driving fatalities in the US has decreased 52%, while total traffic fatalities have declined 18%. Among persons under 21, drunk driving fatalities have decreased 83%.[1]

[1] https://www.responsibility.org/alcohol-statistics/drunk-driv...

I wasn't alive in the 1970's, so I indeed lack that context. However, I'm not arguing against punishment for drunk driving or anything crazy like that, just that it's possible we've passed the ideal point for how much punishment is appropriate for drunk driving. As far as I can tell, the journalist isn't either, just arguing that it should be covered by more generalized offenses rather than ones specific to alcohol. To be honest, that doesn't seem too radical.

A journalist "advocating" for anything is already pretty radical.

I'm sorta one, and I'll be the first to say that the newsroom is not a place for activism.

Fun with statistics…my gut tells me that if we looked at all fatalities on road miles driven basis, I’m not sure these statistics would look so impressive how much of that number is due to people wearing seatbelts, airbags/safer cars?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the...

You can use total fatalities as the baseline - 18% drop, which includes effects of the massive drunk driving fatalities.

https://www.slatervecchio.com/bc-drunk-driving-laws-saves-li...

TLDR: British Columbia implemented the toughest anti-drunk-driving laws in Canada. Automobile accident rates dropped 20%. Pretty damn effective.

Correlation is not causation. I'm sure those new laws saw a lot of press and surrounding commentary around the dangers of drunk driving as well.

My opinion: what would be nice is a robust set of studies that you can do a sort of meta analysis of. Ideally it would include measures that _decrease_ drunk driving offenses too, although I admit that it is unlikely to find a good example of that in today's world.

I do think that one study that shows a robust correlation is a good start, though. That would be the starting point for trying to decide what the optimal tradeoff is.

The thing is though, I think it's a matter of diminishing returns. I bet if you made the penalty for drunk driving death it would reduce drunk driving further, but I don't think many would agree that is a measured and reasonable response to the offense.

Good christ that tired old chestnut needs to be retired: it adds nothing of value to any conversation.

Here, take a look at the pretty pictures and tell me again that the results of the new laws are just a result of news media hype: a decade later and DD fatalities still down more than 50%.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation...

TLDR: lowering the acceptable BAC level and putting some teeth behind the law radically and permanently changed the DD accident rates in BC. Gosh, such a surprise, that.

> Good christ that tired old chestnut needs to be retired

People so consistently ignore it or get it wrong that people have to bring it out time and again. For example:

> a decade later and DD fatalities still down more than 50%.

We're trying to distinguish between the effect of the law and the effect of hearing about the dangers.

If the law is still actively being publicized, presumably so are the dangers, so that doesn't work.

If nobody has heard a word about the law in ten years but people remember hearing about the law ten years ago then they also remember being warned about the dangers ten years ago. Maybe once people change their behavior it sticks.

If people don't remember things they heard ten years ago then they don't remember that the law exists either and it can't be deterring anything.

If you really want to do the experiment, repeal the law but keep publicizing the dangers and see if the rate goes back up.

Really? You’re proposing that before the law was implemented in 2010, people were not hearing about the dangers? That the previous 30-odd years of MADD were not seen nor heard by the citizens of British Columbia? That the behaviour of BC drivers in 2020 is due to the burst of media activity in 2010? cORrELatioN DoES NOt IMpLY cAUSATion!!ELeVeNtyOnE!

Pull the other one, it has bells on.

> You’re proposing that before the law was implemented in 2010, people were not hearing about the dangers? That the previous 30-odd years of MADD were not seen nor heard by the citizens of British Columbia?

Something explains why the law was passed in 2010 and not 30-odd years before. How do you know the same thing that caused legislative action isn't the same thing that caused the behavior change?

This is the dumbest possible conversation and I’m out.

Do you actually think that correlation proves causation? Wet streets cause rain?

If you are saying it is due to increased publicity you will not have a problem finding an example where an anti drink driving campaign has a similar effect.

Also the way you use correlation isn't causation is disengenous. By your usage apples falling down is correlation not causation. The whole point about that statement is that we should not infer causation if we don't have a good understanding of why the causal relationship exists. In this case we do.

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