Changing Attitudes Towards Drunk Driving
You know, when cars first started to appear on roads in the late 1800s, mankind just wasn’t quite ready for such an awe-inspiring invention. We looked at the fantabulous contraptions and thought of just how ripping it would be to be able to putter along in a horseless carriage with a pair of goggles on our face. But what we didn’t understand was that inherent in the design and the power of the infant automobile was danger that had yet to be comprehended. Given enough speed, the car stops being a vehicle and instead becomes a weapon that kills through the power of momentum. The first car-related fatality ever recorded occurred when the scientist Mary Ward was thrown from the passenger seat of a steam powered automobile and was crushed under the wheels, and since that time countless lives have been lost as a result of the unsafe use of cars. Nowhere is this more prominent than in relation to driving while intoxicated.
These days, there is a definite and well deserved stigma associated with drunk driving. After all, those who choose to slide in behind the wheel of a car after kicking back some alcohol are risking more than just their own lives; they could potentially be endangering every other person on the road (and possibly even the people who aren’t on the road). As such, it’s pretty universally agreed that if you chose to drink and drive, you are a terrible, terrible person (unless you’re a Hollywood celebrity, in which case the world can forgive you of almost anything).
However, our current attitude towards drunk driving is a relatively recent development. For starters, drunk driving has been around for much longer than cars have existed. For the greater part of history, alcohol was much cleaner and safer to drink than whatever water happened to be available. As a result, many peoples throughout the ages have basically gone through their daily tasks with a BAC that would get them arrested today. The difference was that the vehicles they drove (if any), were generally animal powered.
That means that not only were they seldom traveling fast enough to cause any significant damage, but also that the animal in question could exercise it’s own initiative and swerve to avoid obstacles (even if its driver was passed out in a drunken stupor while riding).
The first arrest associated with driving an automobile while intoxicated occurred in London, England in 1897. George Smith crashed his vehicle into a building, and faced criminal charges as a result, but as the automobile found its way to the United States, very little was done to regulate its use.
Even once laws prohibiting drunk driving began to surface, the BAC limit was set dangerously high at 0.15%, thus allowing drivers to ingest copious amounts of alcohol without technically qualifying as ‘drunk.’ And even as new laws began to take effect, there was a tendency to view drunk driving accidents as unavoidable.
One startling example includes Margaret Mitchell, celebrated author of the book Gone with the Wind, who was was run over by a drunk driver in 1949 while crossing the street. The driver, who had already had 22 previous arrests for various driving violations, was not generally held accountable. He served a sentence and paid a fine, but the general attitude of the public was that these things happen, and that everyone involved had simply been unlucky.
Unfortunately, this mindset is still occasionally embraced in the modern world. DUIs are viewed as an annoyance by many, with various groups campaigning to reduce DUI penalties or alter the conditions in which an officer may test someone for alcohol.
Still, we’ve come a long way from the time when a person could start up a car and go barreling across the country with no formal license or registration and a jug of moonshine in his hand.
Even though the current BAC limit in the United States is 0.08% (which is still high enough to result in a substantial buzz for the drinker), it’s a step in the right direction from the previous 0.15%. Still, many other countries are taking more drastic steps, increasing penalties and reducing the BAC limit to 0.02% (such as in Sweden). And there are still times when drunk drivers are able to avoid punishment due to other circumstances (such as what happened with Ethan Couch, who only received 10 years probation for causing an alcohol related accident that claimed four lives).
RID (Remove Intoxcated Drivers) a group of volunteers without any money from the alcohol industry turned the tide against DWI in 1980 in New York State, by curbing plea bargains out of alcohol link in DWI arrests. Most states copied RID’s lead by passing similar legislation. RID challenged the all-lawyers members in the NYS codes committee to face a lawsuit on a personal interest conflict on plea bargaining if they chose to kill the RID supported bill. For the first time in 20 years, this bill wasn’t killed. RID was instrumental in turning public opinion against DWI with serious penalties including felony convictions of repeat offenders as well as those who injured or killed their victims.
Still, on the whole, America is beginning to recognize drunk driving for what it is: a dangerous and irresponsible use of deadly machinery. As such, it should be treated with harsher penalties than community service and traffic school. If a person were to begin blindly firing a gun in a public place, you can be sure that the penalties he would face would be more strict than a small fine and suspended gun license, whether or not anyone became injures as a result. But even if we have a ways to go before we can really view drunk driving as the crime that it is, at least we’ve made some progress, because the first step towards eliminating drunk driving, is to stop tolerating it.