Building an interlock device for DUI parolee.

If you're talking "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" revenge- type laws, then all bets are off.

If killing people is wrong, then killing people is wrong, regardless the size of the lynch mob that happens to be in power at the moment.

But, if somebody does kill somebody, they need to be removed from society.

If you can grant me that that's sufficient to continue with the discussion, then I you'd let me modify our premise to, say, "If you kill someone with your car, you should be treated the same as anybody who kills someone by any means at all", I'd say, I agree wholeheartedly.

I'll probably push everyone's buttons when I say, "Regardless of impairment." i.e., If you drive DRUNK OR SOBER and kill someone, then you should be dealt with the way current society deals with killers.

But things like checkpoints just to catch people who are doing no harm and are very likely to get home safely, even though they have a few drinks in them, is too much.

And the hysteria and blaming and evasion of responsibility for one's own well-being are just playing into the hands of the manipulators.

Good Luck! Rich

carry on the explanation, but since it was a child, "oh well, who cares?"

want. In your town, it ought to be okay to drive on the wrong side of the road, because the other person should be getting out of your way. Running stop signs and red lights are permitted because everyone should be driving defensively anyway. I lived in NYC for years, and it doesn't always work out when you drive like that.

Its bullshit, but its interesting.

against the law to drive on the wrong side of the road, and if you do, you pay the penalty. Its against the law to drive drunk, and if you do, you have to pay the price.

I believe Germany has a rule that one DUI and you lose your license for a year. I certainly know that my German hosts were extremely wary of drinking ANY alcohol while driving me around.

...Jim Thompson

I will mellow out a bit, but I will also start another fire and say that murder, the taking of an innocent life, is wrong, and not the same thing as killing a person who is no longer an innocent. I am not in agreement with those who equate murder with putting someone to death for committing murder. It is not the same thing, in that one is perpertrated on an innocent, and the other is done to punish the crime.

Now, somewhere down the line, someone is going to throw out something about "but we might kill an innocent person on death row" and I will just smile and note that no one wants to kill an innocent person, so we would agree with that. Someone who is without a doubt guilty of purposely killing another, should be put to death. That kind of guilt is easily applied to the subject of this thread, the drunk driver. Its kind of hard to show him to be innocent when the accident scene is out there for all to witness. Other stuff on death row is not going get discussed from me.....

However, I don't want to waste anymore time on the death penalty. If you can get it so that person is put away, gets only what he needs to stay alive, can't write a damn book to raise money, or have a TV show made about him, if he lives in a hole and we never hear his name, or mention it again, if Hillary Clinton doesn't try to get him on 60 minutes so she can earn death row votes, then I would avoid the arguments and go along with those conditions.

So long as you guarantee that removing them means I ain't paying for their CATV, education, internet, dental, or butt exams (the real medical kind, who cares if he gets the other kind ) then as I said, okay with me. Its not a fight either side can win. Go ahead and err on the side of life, but I just don't even want to see them on A&E, or even know they are still alive. Make them a White Sox fan. No one cares about them either :-)

Okay, as long as the law views it as having purposely gotten drunk and then committed the crime. Driving drunk is not an accident, it is a choice, so killing someone that way ought to be considered aking first degree murder, with the accompanying penalties. I really don't want to hear about someone killing someone with their car, and the drunk saying "I didn't mean it" He got drunk, got in the car, and killed someone. No excuses, none of this, "it was an accident" crap.

Okay. I am down with that. I just disagree with the way society deals with murderers in the first place, but that's a whole 'nuther thread and I ain't going there ;-)

(I think most times someone dies, its because of stupidity and could have been easily avoided with a modicum of brainpower, but there are sometimes reasonable explanations for someone getting into a wreck and maybe killing someone. If its just stupid, inattentive driving, I have to agree with you, but some things just happen in the mix of steel and speed on the roads.)

Checkpoints are stupid. I don't approve. I also don't approve of assuming one size fits all when it comes to assigning a blood level. Its like saying everyone's car gets better mileage at 55mph. Its an incorrect assumption. No checkpoints, but I think major punishment if you get caught with even minimal blood alchohol levels would eliminate a lot of incidents, and take away the need for checkpoints. It seems to me that people don't generally shoot each other because of the laws prohibiting it, and I think the same could save lives with drunk driving. Most people are basically good folks doing dumb things. Make them think twice about major jail time and fines, and perhaps they would reconsider taking the chance.

I only like to be manipulated in certain ways :-)

John

I like their cars, I like their women, and I even admire the way they handle crime. We could learn a bit from them if we would notice the results that their efforts produce.

John

I recall a Swedish friend talking about the laws on DUI at home. They sound similar to your proposal. Here is more information I just found:

The website below claims that over 20% of all highway fatalities in the US are caused by drunk drivers:

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Sounds more like he is trying to give car-jackers an edge while you are trying to start you car.

I think they should add a Taser to the breathalyzer in a drunk's car. Fail the test, get zapped.

BTW, Rich should be proud. He is the only ID10T I ever got kill file four IDs for at one time.

Of course we should. However, if we could simply make cars refuse to drive for drunks, we would save a lot of lives. Even the drunks would be happier, not being maimed or killed.

According to this fun website, traffic accidents account for 1/160th of the number of yearly deaths as tobacco. Since we as a society appear unable to do anything about that, it appears unlikely that we will do anything about drunk driving.

I took a computer architecture class in college in the 80s, and built a device as my 'final project' that tested reaction time for the purpose of detecting drunk drivers. It had a series of buttons and LEDs. The LEDs lit up in a pseudo-random sequence and the subject was required to push the associated buttons as the corresponding LEDs lit. It went on for some number of cycles. If you failed to keep up, and missed a button, it would light a red led at the end of the cycle. If you kept up, it would light a green led at the end. The idea was to put this on a car, and prevent it from starting if the ability of the driver to react quickly was compromised. I no longer have the design, but I believe it used a 556, one timer of which was used to clock some logic, and the other of which was used as a monostable to detect a failure of the test subject to push the proper button.

The day I was to demo it for the final grade, I had stayed up the entire night before building it and tweaking it. Each student was given a maximum of 10 minutes of time to show their project. Unfortunately, I was so tired that I couldn't 'pass the test', at least at first. I guess I had that monostable timer set to go off a bit too quickly. I finally got it to go 'green', after about 10 tries, to the cheers of my classmates. Afterwards, they all took turns trying to beat it.

To borroe a line froom SNL, Rich, you ignoarnt slut!

Trees don't dive the wrong way on the interstate and crash into school busses head on and kill the driver and most of the kids. trees don't run off the road into the side of some's home and kill them in thir beds. Drunk drivers do. The son of a bitch who hit the bus survived. When he got to court he plead not guilty and his lawyer stated, "He was ony drinking, it wasn't his fault he killed so many people". I think they should have put both of them in the electric chair and let them burnn for a half hour or ore.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Bob Monsen wrote (in ) about 'Building an interlock device for DUI parolee.', on Wed, 20 Apr 2005:

Should we not be more concerned about the just under 80% that aren't?

This is actually serious: if 20% of fatalities are caused by drunk drivers, is the proportion of drunk drivers in the whole population greater than or less than 20%? My suspicion, based on my own reaction to booze, is that the orthodox view is right, and that a tiny number of drunks causes a disproportionate number of accidents. But unless you know the actual figures for drunks in the whole driving population, it's even possible that drunk makes you safer.

Threre's a proposal to make it an offence to be drunk in charge of a boat on the British canals. For those who don't know the UK canal system, it's an almost zen-like activity, where you putter along at maximum 4mph, OAPs walking there dogs burn you off. But as the equipment for testing drunk is only available for 70mph car drivers, they propose to make the level the same, in a kind of Schlieffen plan way.

Paul Burke

That number is way too low. Its more like 40%, not 20%. I missed the OP with the URL, but the usual google search comes up with a lot of sites that all hang right around 40%.

Figures don't lie, but liars can sure figure......

Even beyond the fatalities, we ought not pass over the percentage of total accidents caused by alchohol, and you are right, we should be paying attention to ALL the causes as well.

There is probably a whole thread just waiting to be born that considers fatalities, and matches them up with who the victims are :-) If a person drives stupid and kills himself, that's one less person who is a threat to me, but if it happens that an impaired driver more often seems to injure or kill another, I would be concerned with that statistic more than others. If you want to kill yourself, be my guest. I just would prefer it if you didn't take me with you.....

John

Heh. Well, I guess we all know what page Michael is on. ;-P

I guess I should have embedded this link in one of the "Kill The Bastards" threads:

Cheers! Rich

Feh. The religion of antismokerism.

If 400,000 people are killed every year by smoking, then obviously the other 2,500,000 people killed every year are killed by NON-SMOKING!

NON-SMOKING KILLS FIVE TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS SMOKING!!!!!!!!

Check the statistics!

Cheers! Rich

I read in sci.electronics.design that Bob Monsen wrote (in ) about 'Building an interlock device for DUI parolee.', on Thu, 21 Apr 2005:

These devices are not fitted in cars because elderly politicians and judges can't pass the test.

-not if that "blowout" was caused by a sorely worn out tire that the owner should have been aware of. It all boils down to negligence- the alcohol thing is largely an artificial crusade to get people excited, and the facts are that DUI does not necessarily apply to alcohol- it can be any drug- and now that the data is coming in, it is known that far more people are impaired because of prescription drugs than alcohol. There are bunches of people who are too irresponsible or stupid to be allowed to drive- their permits should be revoked for life the first time they cause a major pileup that cost several hundred thousand dollars to repair and wastes maybe 10,000 man hours of people idling in traffic. Alcohol related anything has always been a target of the evangelical riffraff and that is the crux of it- they are perfect swine from hell.