200th Debate: Drunk Driving Should Be Legal

Framework I just saw my opponent"s comment about putting his citations offsite. I"d appreciate if he"d refrain from that, because I view it as a conduct violation. The reason I made the debate 10,000 characters is to account for the citations. I prefer smaller debates with less contentions. I"d advise my opponent to be more concise with his arguments, use tiny URL to condense space for his citations, or find some other creative solution. If he continues on his intended path, I"d advise the voters to deduct the conduct point from him. Introduction Alcohol effects everyone differently, depending on race, age, gender medication, fitness level, weight and a whole host of other reasons. We all know somebody who is tipsy after just one glass of wine or another who is still sober after a 6 pack. The guy who drank a 6 pack and is over the legal limit may be fine to drive, while the woman who simply had a wine with dinner needs a designated driver. The legal level of the BAC is completely arbitrary and is too high for some people, while too low for others. What drunk driving laws really do is punish people for crimes they"ve yet to commit. The laws are intended to stop people from reckless and dangerous driving, but there are already laws against that. Why not just punish reckless driving more harshly than punish people who are driving great, despite being over the legal limit. Increasing punishments for reckless driving works as a catch all as well, so other types of people aren"t being needlessly punished. Particularly people who drive fine while talking on the phone, texting, eating, yelling at their kids in the back seat or putting on make-up at stop lights. A lot of people can do all those things while driving safely. The ones who can"t should obviously be punished for engaging in something that endangers others, but there is no reason innocent capable people should be punished. http://www.cdc.gov... Pre-crime In the movie "Minority Report" we see a pre-crime division of law enforcement. Three psychics are strapped into a machine and try to predict future crimes. Our instincts tell us that arresting people for a crime they haven"t committed, is wrong. The Minority Report leads us down that road, playing on that instinct and showing us why that"s true. The main character, an officer in the pre-crime division is predicted to commit a murder, which leads us down a series of events, I won"t get into now. All I"m trying to say is arresting somebody for a crime they may commit is fundamentally wrong. We know it when we watch the minority report. We know it when we talk about any scenario that has not been indoctrinated into us with endless commercials and the misdirected agendas of victims" rights organizations. Just take the example of murder for instance. People are more likely to murder somebody when they"re angry. The reason we don"t outlaw anger, is because it"s something merely associated with murder. However it is neither the act of murder, nor does it guarantee that one will commit murder. Just like most instances of anger don"t lead to murder. Most instances of drunk driving, don"t lead to crashes, fatality or even reckless driving. We should not be making something associated with crime illegal, merely for its statistical association. Especially when most instance of said event, don"t actually lead to the actual committing of a crime. We all know that using statistics to predict how harmful an individual is to society is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it"s a threat to liberty. There are stats that show young adult black males are more likely to commit violent crimes than any other group. I think everyone would agree laws created to stop those individuals from committing crimes before they start would be unfair. If murder is wrong, let"s punish it, but let"s not arrest people because of predictive statistical analysis. Let"s leave predictive statistical analysis to insurance companies and weathermen. If it"s reckless driving we want to punish, let"s punish that. Slippery Slope There is a logical fallacy known as the slippery slope fallacy, but not every argument that is slippery slope, is a fallacy. What DUI/DWI laws have done is signal to legislators that punishing people for doing something that is statistically more likely to harm others is okay. We"re starting to see DUI/DWI laws being used to justify distracted driving laws. This threat to liberty shouldn"t be taken lightly. Using statistical analysis to punish frequent drive through users, angry mothers and people running late for work and have to do make-up on the go are already starting to be enacted. This slippery slope is very real, and it"s only a matter of time before we see people stopped for having droopy eyelids. http://en.wikipedia.org... Drunk Driving Laws Lead to Violations of Rights You would think people who are drinking and driving would only have something to worry about if the police had a reason to pull them over such as by swerving, speeding, forgetting to signal or otherwise driving recklessly, but this is not the case. Even an incredibly good driver is prone to being pulled over while obeying all the traffic laws. We now have what"s known as DUI/DWI checkpoints, where people are investigated for merely having a specific substance in their body, whether or not they are driving recklessly or a risk to the public is ignored. As one site dedicated to the issue of checkpoints, points out. Even the judges that decided checkpoints should be legal admit that they infringe on the constitutional fourth amendment, of Americans to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. "In a split ruling, the federal court overruled the Michigan Court"s decision and determined that DUI checkpoints were, indeed, legal under federal law. Despite finding that roadblocks did meet the Fourth Amendment"s definition of an unreasonable seizure, the court found that, due to the threat a drunk driver imposes on other motorists, they were a necessary means of protection. However, as several dissenting judges pointed out, the Constitution doesn"t make room for exceptions and, whether beneficial or not, DUI checkpoints are a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, forcing drivers to participate in "suspicionless investigatory seizures." We have an institution sworn to uphold the constitution admit that these checkpoints infringe on our 4th amendment rights, and go ahead and keep it legal to continue to do so. A good way to get rid of this infringement on people"s rights is to abolish drunk driving laws. http://www.duicheckpoints.net... Drunk Driving Laws Don"t Work Let"s just admit it. Drunk Driving laws are totally ineffective, and in fact may be counterproductive. Before the legal limit went to .08 from .10 in the year 2000, experts predicted that. According to reason.com "Once the 0.08 standard took effect nationwide in 2000, a curious thing happened: Alcohol-related traffic fatalities increased, following a 20-year decline. Critics of the 0.08 standard predicted this would happen. The problem is that most people with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.10 don't drive erratically enough to be noticed by police officers in patrol cars. So police began setting up roadblocks to catch them. But every cop manning a roadblock aimed at catching motorists violating the new law is a cop not on the highways looking for more seriously impaired motorists. By 2004 alcohol-related fatalities went down again, but only because the decrease in states that don't use roadblocks compensated for a slight but continuing increase in the states that use them." http://reason.com... There is simply no evidence that drunk driving laws actually do anything to prevent drunk driving accidents or to stop drunk driving. At best they are a waste of resources to pursue. All evidence seems to support that drunk driving laws are completely ineffective. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... Lives Destroyed Every day people have their lives destroyed by receiving drunk driving charges, when they were in fact driving perfectly fine, or in some cases even better than they would have sober, from fear of the effects of alcohol. Teachers and principals lose their jobs, when they"ve done nothing wrong. People go to jail, have increased car insurance payments when caught, even if they were perfectly fine to drive. We have politicians embarrassed and kids just starting out in college who can"t find a decent job upon graduating for just having a couple of beers. Drunk driving laws hurt people who can drive perfectly fine after a few drinks, are a violation of our rights and have already set a dangerous precedent. Beyond that, drunk driving laws are completely ineffective, and in some cases increase the dangers of driving. If we want to stop reckless driving, awareness and stiff penalties for the actual act of driving recklessly are the way to go, not blanket laws that hurt the innocent and have no effect on achieving the desired result.