preview

The Dangerous Effects Of Drunk Driving

Decent Essays

The horror stories continue to increase, the lives of the innocent are silenced in one moment, and no highways are safe to use to escape this trauma that has taken the country by storm. The trauma that has caused so many lives and so much tax money is drunk driving. Drunk-driving is not only dangerous for the driver of the vehicle, but also for the passengers and everyone in proximity of the driver 's path. If the penalties are raised for drunk-driving offenses, all of the horror stories of crashes on highways and the loss of innocent lives can be prevented and the frequency of other alcohol related criminal activities would decrease dramatically because the deterrence from the laws would be more effective and have a wider audience. The drunk-driving laws that were implemented before the Zero-Tolerance era took a position stating that “[drunk-driving] laws [were to be] aimed at youth under age 21[. Specifically,] underage youth [were] subject to the same BAC [(Blood Alcohol Content)] threshold as adults over age 21, generally in the range .08–.10 [BAC]” (Carpenter, “Heavy Alcohol...Crime”). These laws were problematic because .08 BAC for a young adult (age 20 or under) still has a more devastating effect on a young adult 's body than on an adult 21 or over. The reason for this is that a young adult 's brain and body are still developing, so if alcohol is introduced into the young adult 's body multiple organs could be corrupted and deform. The BAC limit is also indirectly

Get Access