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Comment by azth | Hacker News Reader

> But claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention. There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving.

False equivalence. Drinking is not necessary for life (and it's harmful as we see here), but driving is required for many people's livelihood.

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It's not unreasonable to equate the two. The necessity of driving in western cities is very much a design choice that could reasonably be considered to be a public health crisis. It's not an inherent property of the world.

Have you ever been to an asian city? I can assure you, there are (100s of millions of) people that rely on vehicles/driving for their livelihood.

To equate the necessity of drinking alcohol with that of mobility is absurd.

Actually in Japan you could argue drinking was somewhat required for their livelihood lol it’s different than driving requirements but interesting nonetheless

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ameliemarieintokyo.com/en/nommu...

They can change their culture such that they socialize over tea or something not harmful.

Yet, the government does not recommend against non-essential driving. So yes, you're technically right it's a false equivalence, but one can easily modify the scenario to make it a fair comparison.

Yet, driving has been getting safer and safer with cars that crash better, have monitoring systems, pre collision breaking, etc. This is not possible with drinking.

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