beeboo said:
I actually think the deterrent impact of harsh sentencing would probably have more impact in the former example. One of the problems is that people don't associate themselves with negative stereotypes of drivers - eg, 'just because I've had a couple of drinks doesn't make me a drink driver'. Harsh punishments for all drink-driving related deaths would help get the message home (although of all aspects of driver behaviour, drink-driving is the most socially unacceptable - you'd maybe be better targetting speeding or other reckless behaviour for harsh sentencing).
I don't want to hijack this thread, which is specifically about drunk driving, but I am seriously disquieted by the idea that speeding is being tacitly lumped in with reckless behaviour in this way.
There can really be no excuse for anyone knowingly getting behind the wheel while drunk, but I'd still argue that there is "reckless" drink driving (and, for that matter reckless driving while drunk), and - let's call it - "foolish" drink driving. In practice, recklessly choosing to drive while drunk doesn't need to be treated all that much differently from foolishly doing so: what DOES need to be treated differently is reckless driving (whether drunk or not) from foolish driving - I'd have expected the courts to see driving such as that you described in your post being treated considerably more seriously than that of someone who was simply driving (badly, perhaps, but not recklessly) while under the influence.
(I said "knowingly" at the beginning of the last paragraph, because I believe there is one potential - albeit moral, rather than strictly legal - defence for someone driving while under the influence of drink or drugs: namely, that they were unaware of the fact that they had consumed anything of that nature. I believe there have been cases where people were given food which contained enough alcohol to put them over the limit, and where this has been used as a defence: while it's hard to credit that someone could consume enough alcohol in this way to put them over the limit and be completely unaware of it, it's certainly fair to say that there could be situations where someone's drink was spiked, either with alcohol or some drug, and they therefore unknowingly found themselves driving under the influence. Whether or not this defence washes in court, I have no idea - I suspect probably not, but if there's a possibility that someone could unknowingly find themselves in this position, I think that it's important that the law provides some way of recognising and acknowledging the situation, even if it isn't enough to acquit)
But when you're talking about something as abstract as speeding - which is, after all, only a question of driving faster than some arbitrary limit, as opposed to driving while incapacitated - I think it's dangerous to start classifying that as reckless in itself. I have driven with (and seen) people who were driving well within the speed limit, but whose driving was clearly reckless in the proper sense of the word: their driving was not taking any account of the circumstances in which they were, and was - in my view - quite capable of resulting in harm to themselves or others. In several of those cases, it has only been the actions of other road users (including, on occasion, me) that avoided them being involved in or causing an accident.
Speed CAN be responsible for causing accidents, there's no doubt about that. But I suspect that, in many more cases, it was simply a contributory factor, and made what might have been a less serious accident worse, BUT NOT NECESSARILY MAKING THAT ACCIDENT MORE LIKELY TO HAPPEN. It's also fair to say that speeding, in and of itself, provided the driver is driving in a safe and responsible manner otherwise, is not automatically dangerous or liable to cause accidents: it often occurs to me that those people who insist that speed is inherently dangerous would presumably be much happier if we all went back to driving ox-carts at a maximum speed of 4 miles per hour.
I think we devalue the seriousness of the offence of driving while incapacitated by drink or drugs by calling it "reckless", then simply lumping in with "reckless" all the other things that drivers can do wrong, such as speeding.
