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Taxpayer funded, I pay for those roads. Why not something that records the results and can be checked by cops? Why not something which can transmit those results to the police should you fail too often? Hmm?
Because that truly WOULD be a Big Brother approach, and would constitute illegal search and seizure. Whereas a breathalyzer that you had to pass for your car to start would not.
Ikari said:Tired driving is now on par with drunk driving for fatalities, texting and driving is well more dangerous.
The technology exists to monitor if you are driving while drunk. As far as I know, there are no such inventions (yet) to do the same for tired drivers, or drivers who are texting. If that technology is developed and becomes relatively cheap, I might well support the implementation of those things too.
Ikari said:But we're caught in this DUI is the devil sort of stuff and running off on our righteous crusades against it without thinking of the negative consequences. The encroachment on privacy, constant monitoring by the authorities, and price of the device and its monthly fees is too much for this result.
As long as the results of the breathalyzer are not reported anywhere, the "encroachment on privacy" and "constant monitoring by authorities" arguments don't fly. So that leaves us with the price. It's rather subjective whether it's worth the cost, but let's frame it this way: Automobile accidents are one of the ten leading causes of death in the United States, and a good many of them are due to drunk driving. Approximately 11,000 people in the US die every year because of alcohol-related accidents (and many thousands of others are injured). As such, the expense would seem to me to be well worth it.
Ikari said:Drunk driving causes something like 30% of the deaths (and that number is probably slightly exaggerated as they use data for anyone with BAC in it greater than 0), there's a good 70% left to try to deal with.
Are you suggesting that a 30% reduction in automobile fatalities would not be worth pursuing?
Ikari said:And while for certain age groups, it can be one of the leading causes of death (dependent upon personal health), it's still something which the vast majority of people do not encounter.
The same can be said of virtually ANYTHING that kills people: most people will die of something else. That doesn't change the fact that automobile accidents (and specifically alcohol-related automobile accidents) are one of the leading causes of death.
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