Nick Hull wrote:

In article .com,
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote:

"I agree there is a problem but where is your rant on DUI-related
deaths?
http://www.duiawardsprogram.com/dui_stats.htm
FYI...the sooner the laws are ENFORCED the better.
Respectfully,
Ron Moore "

It goes double for drinking and driving Ron.

In my own family, we lost five family members in one accident due to a
drunk driver.

If I ran the world, a car would test for blood alcohol before starting
and while you are driving.

You drink...you walk.

Better than banning cell phones or alcohol (prohibition didn't work) is
to treat them as premeditated. Since a drinker or cell phone user is
deliberately degrading their driving ability, if they kill someone while
drinking or using the cell phone it should be treated as premeditated
murder. No accident = no problem, a death means a trip to the gallows.
The remaining people would learn quickly. Accidents are caused by
people, not cars or cell phones or alcohol etc.

The trouble with this scenario is that most drunks don't deliberately set
out to get drunk and having gotten drunk they are in no condition to judge
their state of sobriety, so making premeditation stick is going to be
difficult.

Cell phones are another story but there you have to make convincing argument
that talking on the cell phone is somehow worse than talking to the
passengers, or else you have to hang anybody who had a fatal accident with
a passenger in the car. And do you hang the passenger for conversing with
and thus intentionally impairing the ability of the driver?

This kind of solution looks good to children. Once you reach a certain
level of life experience (which, alas, many people never attain) you
realize that things just aren't that simple.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)