Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by Rob MacLennan
That's why I specifically qualified the stat as being what it was, drinking, fatal, less than .08 BAC but no lower limit specified.
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Moderator
Or perhaps it could be that ANY alcohol content was reported? It's a nice statistical game, if you can play it.
Morally Ambiguous (submissions welcome)
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
That's why I specifically qualified the stat as being what it was, drinking, fatal, less than .08 BAC but no lower limit specified.
If you could get those number it would be great.
Even without the specific numbers between .05-.08 it still is a very small number of deaths caused by drivers with less then .08 bac. 25% of all deaths caused by drinking and of this 25% only 16% were less then .08. So around 4% of all deaths are caused by drivers under .08 bac. If you can find the numbers between .05 and .08 the percentage will go down. I know there are lies, damn lies and statistics but it seems to me we are trying to solve a problem that really does not exist....
Thomas Jefferson said "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".
I think there is a huge factor being ignored here, and that is the effect of awareness campaigns.
As new laws are introduced, they are made extremely well known in the short-term by large scale awareness initiatives, whether that be through roadside signage, advertising or simply 'blitz' enforcement where people are made uncomfortably aware of the new law by being charged by it.... Laws that have been in place for decades don't benefit from this as often.
turbodish stated that there has been a rise in drinking-related accidents for the past 5 years. It is arguable that this is at last in part because anti-drinking advertisement and awareness campaigns have noticeably backed off since the 80s/90s. As drinking and driving becomes less of a problem, funding for awareness campaigns drops, and the cycle repeats.
Moderator
Laws don't necessarily alter behaviour either. Have you noticed how many people are back to using hand-held cell phones now? From my observations, it's almost back to what it was prior to the law coming into force.
As far as drinking and driving, it has now largely become a social taboo. These days when I see number quoted rather than seeing statistics, I see RAW NUMBERS of the people involved. When this sort of thing is done it is generally because the statistic itself is on the downturn, even if the numbers are increasing. Either than or because a number of deaths has a greater impact on most people than a piddlingly small percentage of a sample group.
Morally Ambiguous (submissions welcome)
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
I guess it depends on what you consider "a problem that does not really exist".
The stat pertains to "drivers" killed. In 2005 there were 466 drivers killed, of which 4.2% had been drinking and had a BAC under .08, representing 19 lives.
While I don't have the fatality split between .0 to.05 and .05 to .08 split handy, I would tend to think that the larger part of the distribution would fall in the higher range, so I'll just work with a 4% figure for now.
However, that 4% of drinking drivers figure does not include deaths of other passengers in the car, pedestrians, cyclists, and even no-drinking operators of other vehicles involved in a crash with a drinking driver. That fact could bump up the numbers some.
The number of ALL traffic deaths in 2005 was 766, and no doubt some of those extra 300 deaths involved the 4% of now-dead drivers who had been drinking and had less than .08 BAC. I know it's making an assumption, but if you try to ballpark it by using the same 4% number applicable to ALL deaths, that's now 31 deaths.
The social costs of unnecessary premature death to a victim's friends and family cannot really be measured, but an economic $ cost can.
American economists place a $ value on premature death ranging from $0.6 million right on up to $13.5 million. The US Department of Transport places average $ loss to premature death at $2.4 million based on a 1991 Urban Institute study. The actual Canadian value may be more, may be less, but let's use the US figure as a starting point.
Counting just the under .08 BAC drivers killed, those 18 lost lives represent a $43.2 milion dollars lost economic opportunity to the country. If you extrapolate to include estimated non-drivers as well, that estimated loss to the economy from 32 prematurely lost lives climbs to $74.4 million.
That's just cold hard $, but the real cost of unnecessary and avoidable premature death is social. We tend to shrug our shoulders when 31 people die in dribs and drabs throughout the year, but if it had happened in one fell swoop because a marginally-impaired person had run a bus off the road, there would be howls of outrage.
So, the question becomes, how much unnecessary and avoidable death does there have to be in order to be seen as 'a problem", and how much of that problem are we prepared to tolerate? If you ask the friends and families of the victims, the answer no doubt will be none. If you ask the economists, the answer will be different but will still tend to prefer lower numbers than high.
People don't think they'll be caught. Even when they are caught, the penalty is minimal so they perceive the risk/benefit ratio as being acceptable.
Now, if you change the law so that being caught means instant forfeiture of the phone and maybe tow and license suspension, what do you think will happen to the compliance rate? The chances of being caught won't change, but if the repercussions are severe enough most people won't see it as being worth the risk.
Moderator
I don't know. What do you think would happen to the politicians who passed such a law, given the number of people who use cell phones?
Morally Ambiguous (submissions welcome)
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
Moderator
For the record there were 8,762,210 registered drivers, in Ontario, in 2005. This was an increase in registered drivers of 106,613 from the year before.
Just to put the number of deaths in context.
By the way, these are the numbers from the MTO website:
(From: http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/saf...foreword.shtml)
Category 2005 2004 Fatality Rate 0.87 0.92 Fatality per 100 million km 0.61 0.66 Number of Licensed Drivers 8,762,210 8,655,597 Number of Motor Vehicles 7,854,228 7,698,416 Number of Fatalities 766 799 Number of Major Injuries 3,619 3,565 Number of Minor Injuries 29,518 29,918 Number of Fatalities Involving Drinking and Driving 174 192
Last edited by Rob MacLennan; 06-04-2010 at 03:00 PM.
Morally Ambiguous (submissions welcome)
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retributive_justice
R e a d S l o w l y ! - Children at Play.
You are knocking on the door of a very old problem, sacrificing individual freedoms for security. Some guy named Benjamin Franklin had something to say about that.
Arguably the difference between 0.05BAC and 0.08BAC is not a huge loss of freedom but 'zero tolerance' policies created out of fear of 'unnecessary and avoidable death' are the most dangerous kinds where personal freedoms are concerned.
In this case it seems justifiable but the issue is where do you draw the line?
I could better phrase it as I'd rather see laws/enforcement/education targeted at the other 96% of deaths on the road. Or at the 21% caused by drivers over .08 bac. The 4% are not a significant part of the problem, if there is a problem, of deaths on our roads. Since you are making a few assumptions I'd like to make one. I suspect that a significant % of the deaths caused by drivers with a bac of less then .08 were probably not a result of alcohol. Alcohol was just present in the drivers systems. Obviously this is just pure conjecture but I believe it is probably accurate as people are not impaired with low bac counts...
Thomas Jefferson said "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".
That's always the balancing act. The courts and appeal courts are the first back-stop when the line is drawn too far, but ultimately it comes down to the electorate voicing their opinion both before an election and during an election at the ballot box.
It's always better to put the bulk of resources at the bigger part of the problem.
Then again, you can argue that the process used to deal with the 05 to 08 BAC crowd, because of its expediency and efficiency compared to a full-blown criminal impaired charge, does not consume much in the way of system resources so the bigger problems are not significantly impacted by the minimal time required to take care of the lesser stuff.
Possibly, yes, but how many? A majority? And even if so, would they have made the same mistake stone cold sober, or at least caught it before the crash actually happened?
Well, this is where recent science seems to take issue.
Several studies note that risk of collision increase significantly at .05 and above. You may not be falling down drunk (which is what many people use as their indicator of impairment), but changes in awareness, judgment and reaction start much earlier on the BAC scale. Some say that a degree of impairment starts at as low as .02 BAC.
Regardless of those studies, or maybe because of them, the general international standard these days is the 05 BAC level.
Moderator
Or perhaps we should admit that a 0.87 per 10,000 licensed drivers, with that meaning 0.20 are 'alcohol related' (2005 numbers) is pretty damned good, and start looking at causation rather than enforcement? Enforcement seems to have worked.
Morally Ambiguous (submissions welcome)
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
Two crazy ideas, thought experiments if you will.
Give people who serve Alcohol breathalysers so everyone can be on the same page, the .04 to .06 crowd can start getting exact instead of guessing or failing to do the math. Heck, at only $20 USD a unit give them to anyone who wants one too (first unit free per drivers license.)
If someone wants to claim the won't be driving and shoot for public-intoxication levels let them self suspend their own DL with a portable interac-style machine and take on the added legal responsibility. I don't know what to do about those who claim to not have a license but I'm sure the industry can come up with something.
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Killing you and giving you good advice aren't mutually exclusive.
rather than holding peter responsible for paul's actions we should hold paul responsible for paul's actions... I find the idea that a bar and staff being held responsible for the amount of alcohol in some one's blood when the bar has no idea how the person got there in the first place to be rather surreal. yes the bar should avoid over serving to the point of alcohol poisoning, but who's to say the person driving doesn't down a mickey after the bar closes. and forget having some one turn in their keys when they come in, who says they don't have a spare set or even gave the keys for the car they're driving? and how about private parties/get togethers... then you have functioning alcoholics, they don't look all that drunk but they'll blow over no problem... we need something to treat the cause... and we need to hold people responsible for their own actions.
x
Amen... +1
Thomas Jefferson said "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".
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