I just love how this country handles DUI. No he should not be jailed; no he should not lose his awesome job at ESPN. His sentence should involve your basic fines, counseling, and community service. ESPN and/or the judge in his case should have him speak to high school kids about drinking and driving...a well-known athlete will have more of an influence on young minds than a random stranger with a story.
That's part of the problem with DUI in America; it's all about prosecution, rather than prevention. There's very little education about alcohol and how it effects the body, but once a DUI gets printed on your record, your whisked off to a 3-day seminar where you see pictures of smashed up bodies, listen to stories of ruined lives, and learned things like how it can lead to erectile dysfunction and how many drinks it takes to get above the legal limit. If these scare tactics were presented to high school/college kids around the nation annually, instances of DUI would fall faster than Manny Pacquaio's next opponent.
But DUI won't be about prevention around here. Think about all that money that the state departments, lawyers, and club owners would lose. We can't have that, now can we? There's a term for this: "cash register justice".
A thought I've always had about the breathalyzer: how can this be legal, when you have no way of definitely knowing what your own BAC is when you jump in the car? Imagine if we started building cars without speedometers in them. Speeding ticket citations would spike. How long do you think motorists would put up with that practice? All vehicles should be manufactured with some form of a drug/alcohol detector. However, that of course is in the vein of prevention.
I'm just saying we need to stop and review DUI law/prosecution in this country. The legal limit of .08 is too low. The founder of MADD left the very same organization she started. She stated that her purpose was always to get the threats off the road; not to have hoards of responsible social drinkers arrested. Recently, MADD has been criticized as being neo-prohibitionist. If DUI prevention becomes the ultimatum, then we'll have achieved something genuine here. Think about it. In Russia and in Germany, if you drink and drive...you lose your driver's license for life. That same measure put into effect here would scare thousands of inebriated people out of even considering getting behind the wheel.
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http://www.ridl.us/
I just love how this country handles DUI. No he should not be jailed; no he should not lose his awesome job at ESPN. His sentence should involve your basic fines, counseling, and community service. ESPN and/or the judge in his case should have him speak to high school kids about drinking and driving...a well-known athlete will have more of an influence on young minds than a random stranger with a story.
That's part of the problem with DUI in America; it's all about prosecution, rather than prevention. There's very little education about alcohol and how it effects the body, but once a DUI gets printed on your record, your whisked off to a 3-day seminar where you see pictures of smashed up bodies, listen to stories of ruined lives, and learned things like how it can lead to erectile dysfunction and how many drinks it takes to get above the legal limit. If these scare tactics were presented to high school/college kids around the nation annually, instances of DUI would fall faster than Manny Pacquaio's next opponent.
But DUI won't be about prevention around here. Think about all that money that the state departments, lawyers, and club owners would lose. We can't have that, now can we? There's a term for this: "cash register justice".
A thought I've always had about the breathalyzer: how can this be legal, when you have no way of definitely knowing what your own BAC is when you jump in the car? Imagine if we started building cars without speedometers in them. Speeding ticket citations would spike. How long do you think motorists would put up with that practice? All vehicles should be manufactured with some form of a drug/alcohol detector. However, that of course is in the vein of prevention.
I'm just saying we need to stop and review DUI law/prosecution in this country. The legal limit of .08 is too low. The founder of MADD left the very same organization she started. She stated that her purpose was always to get the threats off the road; not to have hoards of responsible social drinkers arrested. Recently, MADD has been criticized as being neo-prohibitionist. If DUI prevention becomes the ultimatum, then we'll have achieved something genuine here. Think about it. In Russia and in Germany, if you drink and drive...you lose your driver's license for life. That same measure put into effect here would scare thousands of inebriated people out of even considering getting behind the wheel.
Have a great day