Persuasive Essay On Drunk Driving Laws

According to this study, nearly all drivers were intoxicated and admitted. If all drivers were forced into a jail cell, there would be shrinkage in both fatalities and automobile accidents. In fact, “Almost half of all drivers who were killed in crashes tested positive for drugs and also had alcohol in their system” (Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, and Schulenberg 1). So why should any offender remain free? According to “Drunk Driving Accident Statistics”, “Three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some point in their lives” (5). To guarantee the safety of innocent people on the road, all offenders must go to jail immediately.

Imagine the idea of a college student driving back to her dorm from the grocery store. She waits patiently for the light to turn green as she sings to her favorite song on the radio. Finally, its time for her to go and she accelerates through the intersection. Little did she know a man that had too many drinks would come flying through the red light. The last thing she saw was the headlights of his car. Drunk driving is a heartbreaking occurrence. Every day drunk drivers are imprisoned, either for traffic violations, dangerous driving, or accidents. People that make the mistake of drinking and driving not only put themselves in danger; they put all of the other people on the roads in danger. Innocent lives may be lost because of another’s

There are two types of deterrence: individual or specific deterrence, and general deterrence. Individual or specific deterrence seeks to deter the offender from re-offending. General deterrence seeks to deter the public from criminal behavior through the punishment of offenders. “Deterrence is based on the perceived certainty, severity, and celerity of detection and sanction” (Vingilis 645). People who support legal measures are calling for harsher laws and tougher punishments. Some of the proposed measures are: 1. Anyone convicted of drunk driving will be required to pay large fines (starting at $5,000 for a first offense). 2. Anyone convicted of drunk driving will be required to spend at least some time in jail or prison. 3. All convicted drivers will be required to have yellow license plates on their cars so that other people will know who they are and what they have done. 4. Anyone convicted will automatically lose their driver’s license for one year. 5. Surprise roadblocks will be set up and police will stop all drivers and test them for drunk driving. 6. All convicted drivers who are alcoholics will be required to have psychological treatment. 7. An ignition interlock system will be installed in convicted driver’s vehicles. 8. The possible seizure and sale of a repeat offender’s vehicle, and 9. Lowering the blood alcohol level from .10% to .08%, since a person can still be drunk at .08%.

In the instance of drunk driving, the actions of the drunk driver are related to the safety of the drivers within their proximity and therefore affects not only the driver but others as well. Our previous moral experiences allow us to determine what the intentions of the drunk driver might be. Some drivers may choose to drive under the influence of alcohol because they have had an emergency that requires them to be at a certain place and they do not have the means to reach to their destination except for driving themselves. In this case, the context becomes complicated and intricate. However, if the driver is risking his own and other drivers’ safety, it becomes clear that their intentions are based on nonchalance and disregard for others.

Although there are many commercials, ads, documentaries, seminars, etc. on the reasons why people should never drink and drive, you would be surprised how many people still get behind the wheel after having had more than just a drink or two. We might not realize it but every day, about 28 people in the United States die in car crashes that involve a drunk driver. This equals to one death every 51 minutes! It’s so sad because these statistics could be way better if people had a well thought out plan prior to going out drinking. There has been research found relating to Drinking and Driving Behaviors since this topic is now becoming more of an issue in this generation than it was in the past. For instance, Schell, Chan, and Morral (2006), found that some people who have a DUI record tend to have pretty high expectations of themselves even after having some drinks in their system (e.g., “I feel more relaxed when drinking"), so with that being said those people with higher confidence were the ones more likely to be engaged in drinking and driving activity. While intoxicated, we often don’t consider any negative consequences that can happen to us but as you’ll see on the news, on social media, in the newspapers, etc. driving while under the influence can be very dangerous and even fatal.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true. There are not enough drivers who drive under the influence. In the year 2001, MADD Online approximated that only one in ten drivers, a mere 25 million, drove drunk, and, consequently these drivers were the ones significantly more likely to be involved in a crash of some sort, but why shouldn’t we level the playing field? (1)

You would think that if a person gets pulled over, arrested, gets his/her license suspended and gets court ordered to pay 250+ dollars in fines, that they would never get behind the wheel under the influence again and endanger someone else’s life. Wrong. According to a 2007 AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety study over half of drivers arrested for drunk driving in the nation are repeat offenders. All states have adopted 21 as the legal drinking age. Two-thirds of the states have now passed Administrative License Revocation (ALR) laws, which allow the arresting officer to take the license of drivers who fail or refuse to take a breath test. All states have now lowered the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit from .10 to .08 percent for adults, and all states have passed Zero Tolerance laws which prohibit drivers under twenty-one from having any amount of alcohol in their blood system. The penalties have increased for drinking and driving, yet the repeated offenders percentages haven’t decreased. Thus proving, what the laws are doing now is not working and they need to be raised. Going back to the purpose of punishment, if people keep doing the same thing, than the consequences before did not faze them and need to be stricter.

Drunk driving is a dangerous problem that needs to be addressed in our society, not only to cut back on the number of deaths caused by alcohol related accidents but also to ensure safety on public roads. Drunk driving is deliberately breaking the law, as well as a sign of indifference for other drivers.

In 2013, 10,076 people were killed in drunk driving incidents. Out of those people, 65% (6,515) were drivers, 27% (2,724) were passengers, and 8% (837) were non-passengers (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). Over half of those fatalities (67.1%) involved blood alcohol levels over .15% (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). The legal blood-alcohol content is .08%. Drunk driving caused 31% of deaths in car crashes in 2013 (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). In 2012, 402 people were killed by alcohol impairment in North Carolina (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). These numbers, though they seem astonishing, have been cut in half since 1991 (“Drunk Driving Statistics”). Even though the number of fatalities has been lowered, that number is not low enough. Most drunk drivers are repeat offenders. Lives are being taken because of the careless attitude of the drunk drivers. Drunk driving is selfish; those who commit this crime do not think about the extreme consequences of their actions. In North America it is estimated that 1-5 drivers has been drinking and 1 in 10 is legally impaired on any Friday or Saturday night (Root). Many groups, including MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), are fighting to stop drunk driving. Unfortunately, drunk driving cannot be stopped. People will always commit this heinous crime. The numbers may go down, but unfortunately there will always be a number. The only way to continually decrease the amount of lives lost is to increase punishments for drunk driving.

I chose to write about “Do Blue Laws Save Lives? The Effect of Sunday Alcohol Sales Bans on Fatal Vehicle Accidents” by Michael F. Lovenheim and Daniel P. Steefel, which featured in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management in Fall of 2011. I chose this article because it relates to my paper topic as it looks at the relationship between a specific law and fatalities as a result of drunk driving. In addition, I also found the topic to be interesting as it looks as it essentially analyzes the effect of a law that has archaic origins to see if it is applicable in the modern day. Finally, I thought that this paper sheds light on possible solutions to the drunk driving issue.

Not every DWI (driving while intoxicated) case ends the same, some have different verdicts in the courtroom. The Ethan Couch case is a great example of why punishing drunk drivers should be more enforced and not so lenient. The teen from Texas was driving drunk with two other passengers in his pickup truck on June of 2013, when he hit and killed four people. Ethan Couch was tried as a juvenile and charged with four counts of Intoxication Manslaughter, but was only sentenced to ten years of probation. His lawyers argued that it was due to “affluenza”, which means that he came from a wealthy family and it prevented him from understanding what was right from wrong, so he was not held accountable for his actions. The judge who took on this case

Utilitarianism and victim-offender mediation (REFERENTIE). The moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham developed an influential consequentialist philosophy of morality: utilitarianism. Bentham’s starting point in his philosophy is that feelings of pleasure and pain direct us in everything, and thereby also direct us in determining what is right and wrong. He believes that pleasure/happiness is intrinsically good, and pain/suffering is intrinsically bad. We strive for the most happiness by trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

Lastly, in 2015 about 10,000 people died and 290,000 were injured by being involved in drunk driving crashes. To think that most of these innocent people were just going on about their business and got into a car crash because of someone else's mistake is heartbreaking. Every death, and every injury not only affects the people that were in the crash, but it affects their family, and friends. In 2014, 209 children under 14 died while being in a vehicle with an impaired driver. Drunk driving causes unnecessary fatalities, and since the victims were completely innocent and did nothing wrong, the drunk driver should be given a harsh penalty, for not being responsible and making the wrong decision.

Jeremy Bentham was one of the first philosophers to present a fully developed system of utilitarianism. He thought that we, as humans, should evaluate the consequences of our actions, determine whether each action is morally right or wrong, and tally the pleasure and pain that comes as a result of our actions. Is it right for me to donate to charity? Is it right for me to cheat on my government test? These questions we ask ourselves fall under Bentham’s theory known as act-utilitarianism because it focuses on the consequences of every action we perform. Bentham argues that the “greatest happiness of the greatest number of people” (Bentham) is how we should determine right from wrong. He also believed “mankind is under the

Lee explains that even though offenders get punished, they still disregard the law: “Only until the time comes that we recognize that drunk driving should have serious consequences on the first offense (license taken away, car impounded, jail time, higher insurance rates) will we be able to reduce drunk driving and make ourselves safer” (Lee). As long as DUI punishment for first offenders remains the same, people will continue to ignore the law. If the government made stricter DUI laws, then people would think twice before driving under the influence. In an online newspaper at New Mexico Tech, an editor tries to convince a people that getting in vehicles while intoxicated puts lives in danger. In Victoria Carreon’s article, “The Social Consequences of Drinking and Driving,” she reminds her fellow students of what they should think about while drinking: “One tip is simply to not drive after drinking and to remember that even a small amount of alcohol can make a difference” (Carreon). A person’s BAC can become to high to drive by drinking as little as one beer. Lives lost in drunk driving can decrease if people under the influence would know whether or not they should drive.