4 ms·

As someone who knows people who died in a crash with another drunk driver, it is hard for me to accept your view. Certainly, at a bare minimum, the penalties fo

by djao 3y ago

As someone who knows people who died in a crash with another drunk driver, it is hard for me to accept your view. Certainly, at a bare minimum, the penalties for drunk driving that results in fatality should be much harsher than they are now -- at that point there is hard empirical evidence that you cannot be trusted to have the "skill and maturity" necessary for driving -- but we can't even bring ourselves to do that, not even for repeat offenders. Eventually I am optimistic that autonomous driving will solve the problem entirely, at least for those who are responsible drivers. In an era of widely available self-driving cars, if you choose to drive drunk, then that is an active choice, and no amount of "social lubrication" can excuse such degenerate behavior.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I'm certainly not trying to understate the very real and very serious suffering that irresponsible drunk drivers can and do cause. If any of this came off like that then that was never my intention. When it comes to understanding drunk driving and especially why it is de facto tolerated by society despite its significant problems, it's necessary to consider the motivators and both positive and negative results. Simply saying "they are all irresponsible and should stop" and such with a handwave isn't productive. After all, society wouldn't tolerate a significant problem if there wasn't a significant benefit to doing so.
pmarreck 3y ago
I am very sorry about your friend. I think the real problem is that people are really poor at assessing risk. And I think we can make some headway there, educationally, and it might actually affect how people reason around drunk driving (or their friends, assuming they still have their faculties). Let's take the example of driving home drunk without hurting anyone or having an accident. Suppose that (being optimistic) there's a 1% chance of an accident and a 0.1% chance of causing a fatality (including to self). Seems like an easy risk to take, right? But observe what happens if you drive home drunk 40 times: 99% chance of causing no accident each time, to the 40th power = 0.99^40 is roughly 67% chance that none of those 40 times results in an accident. 80 times? 45% chance of no accident. Now you're talking about flipping a coin to determine whether you cause an accident (potentially a fatal one, we'll get to that) at all over 80 attempts. (I feel like that is optimistic.) If I have a 99.9% chance of not killing someone when drunk-driving one time, after 80 times I have a 92% chance of not killing someone (that is, an 8% chance of killing someone). Again, this seems optimistic. Try tweaking the numbers to a 2% chance of an accident and a 1.2% chance of causing a fatality. Anyway, my point is that people are really terrible at evaluating the whole "re-rolling the dice multiple times" angle, since a single hit is a HUGE, potentially life-changing loss. (People are just as bad at evaluating success risk, as well, for similar reasons- a single large success is a potentially life-changing event)

by djao 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

I'm certainly not trying to understate the very real and very serious suffering that irresponsible drunk drivers can and do cause. If any of this came off like that then that was never my intention. When it comes to understanding drunk driving and especially why it is de facto tolerated by society despite its significant problems, it's necessary to consider the motivators and both positive and negative results. Simply saying "they are all irresponsible and should stop" and such with a handwave isn't productive. After all, society wouldn't tolerate a significant problem if there wasn't a significant benefit to doing so.

pmarreck 3y ago

I am very sorry about your friend. I think the real problem is that people are really poor at assessing risk. And I think we can make some headway there, educationally, and it might actually affect how people reason around drunk driving (or their friends, assuming they still have their faculties). Let's take the example of driving home drunk without hurting anyone or having an accident. Suppose that (being optimistic) there's a 1% chance of an accident and a 0.1% chance of causing a fatality (including to self). Seems like an easy risk to take, right? But observe what happens if you drive home drunk 40 times: 99% chance of causing no accident each time, to the 40th power = 0.99^40 is roughly 67% chance that none of those 40 times results in an accident. 80 times? 45% chance of no accident. Now you're talking about flipping a coin to determine whether you cause an accident (potentially a fatal one, we'll get to that) at all over 80 attempts. (I feel like that is optimistic.) If I have a 99.9% chance of not killing someone when drunk-driving one time, after 80 times I have a 92% chance of not killing someone (that is, an 8% chance of killing someone). Again, this seems optimistic. Try tweaking the numbers to a 2% chance of an accident and a 1.2% chance of causing a fatality. Anyway, my point is that people are really terrible at evaluating the whole "re-rolling the dice multiple times" angle, since a single hit is a HUGE, potentially life-changing loss. (People are just as bad at evaluating success risk, as well, for similar reasons- a single large success is a potentially life-changing event)