Recently a law was passed, a zero tolerance law. The law states that persons under the age of 22 can not drive with any alcohol in their blood. First off I do not condone drunk driving, or for that matter "buzzed" driving, but this is not how we should try and stop it. In a radio interview today, a politician involved in enacting this law(sorry didn't catch her name) was saying that this law is to help change society's attitude towards drinking and driving, a noble effort but there are other ways. The interviewer even asked if this zero tolerance law would eventually apply to all age groups, she didn't give a clear answer but started talking very political like.
There is no doubt that alcohol will affect ones ability to drive, the question is how much? When you hear of an accident where "alcohol was a factor" what does the really mean? Is alcohol a factor if I crash my car with a BAC of 0.05, what if I was simply hooning about and lost control, was the alcohol really a factor? What I really fear with this is the innocent person who had a few drinks earlier in the day, had a meal then gets into his car for what ever reason thinking the alcohol is long gone, wrong, it's still there, now he does still need to get caught but he does and a drunk driving charge is not a good thing. "Well he should not have drove" some will argue but you tell me how you know when your BAC is at 000? A night out drinking, when can you drive again? the next morning, noon, afternoon?
Zero Tolerance just doesn't make sense, be it for school yard violence, drinking and driving or even murder, yep murder if there was a zero tolerance law what do you think would happen in self defence cases?
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3 comments:
I totally agree! The term "zero tolerance" really just means "zero thought" and there should ALWAYS be thought when judging a crime. Also, I can't imagine many people out there will have their ability to drive impaired by A beer.
My big issue with this particular law is that it's a knee-jerk reaction to drunk driving. It's designed to LOOK like something is being done about drunk driving, when in actual fact it won't prevent any accidents. If they actually wanted to prevent harm to the general public they'd be coming down harder on repeat offenders, not just making it easier to call something an offence in the first place.
Yeah and if someone speaks out against it, they look bad, Try convincing you local MP to vote against something like, lobby groups such as MADD would destroy him career.
You make so great points Jason.. We agree with you.. It is true about the night after drinking.. When is the acohol gone out of your system??
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