Debate whether DUI laws are working or should be repealed

If you're found driving under the influence of any substance to the degree that it can reasonably impair your ability to drive then you should lose your license forever, and be in jail for at least a year. This is of course barring fringe cases, like driving to the hospital in an emergency or such.

Same for speeding, if you are way over the speedlimit you're treating your giant death machine like a toy and don't belong on the road.
 
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Court ordered antipsychotics can also be grounds for the scarlett acronym.
 
SSj_Ness said:
If you're found driving under the influence of any substance to the degree that it can reasonably impair your ability to drive then you should lose your license forever, and be in jail for at least a year. This is of course barring fringe cases, like driving to the hospital in an emergency or such.

Same for speeding, if you are way over the speedlimit you're treating your giant death machine like a toy and don't belong on the road.
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The major problem, though, is where are you going to find room to hold those inmates? Jails are already over capacity as is and nobody in their right mind wants to build a new one in their backyard. It's the same reason why so many other misdemeanors are bound out on an OR bond and pled out with probation.

Plus, sending people to jail greatly increases the chance they'll commit more crimes in the future. Loss of employment and eviction are a great way to turn someone into a habitual criminal so jail sentences aren't handed out lightly. It's different with felonies due to the severity of the offense.

You'd also have to treat distracted driving with the same severity...I'm not exactly sure why this isn't the case even with the current laws on the books. When someone talks on their phone, they're just as impaired as someone with a BAC of >0.08. If they're texting and driving, they're equivalent to a BAC of >0.17 which is extremely impaired.
 

Jail time reduced for driver who killed four children in Oatlands crash​

11:43am Jul 15, 2022
The jail time for a drunk driver who hit and killed four children as they walked to get ice cream in Sydney's north-west has been reduced.
Samuel Davidson was drunk and affected by drugs while travelling 133km/h in a 50km/h zone when he ploughed into a group of seven children as they were walking and riding bikes on the footpath in Oatlands in 2020.
Abdallah siblings Antony, Angelina and Sienna, along with their cousin Veronique Sakr, were killed.
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Abdallah siblings Sienna, 8, Angelina, 12, and Antony, 13, died at the scene in Oatlands alongside their 11-year-old cousin Veronique Sakr.
Abdallah siblings Sienna, 8, Angelina, 12, and Antony, 13, died at the scene in Oatlands alongside their 11-year-old cousin Veronique Sakr. (AAP)
Davidson pleaded guilty to a raft of charges including four counts of manslaughter.
Last year, he was sentenced to a minimum of 21 years in jail.
His maximum sentence was set at 28 years, with a parole period of seven years.
Davidson appealed the sentence on the grounds it was "manifestly excessive" and that the sentencing judge mistakenly found there was "no causal link" between his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the crime.
Justice Paul Le Gay Brereton did not uphold that there was a link between Davidson's ADHD and the crime but he found it was relevant to his "subjective case".
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Oatlands crash accused Samuel William Davidson was arrested at the scene.
Oatlands crash accused Samuel William Davidson was originally sentenced to a maximum of 28 years in jail. (9News)
Brereton also said due to the publicity of the case and the "risk of being killed by other inmates in mainstream custody", Davidson had been placed in segregation for the first 11 months of his sentence.
He found Davidson's jail time will be more "onerous" due to his ADHD and the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also upheld the previous sentence was "unreasonable or plainly unjust".
"His one act of criminally negligent driving had catastrophic consequences," Brereton said in his judgement.
"It was important to have regard to all of those consequences and the life lost in each case when arriving at an aggregate sentence; but it seems to me that it is also important to consider that it was the one criminal act which caused so much harm.
"The applicant did not 'embark upon a deliberate series of discrete offences'."
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The Mitsubushi 4WD ute allegedly involved in the crash.
The four children were going to get ice cream when they were struck. (9News)
Brereton has resentenced Davidson to a minimum of 15 years in prison.
His maximum sentence was set at 20 years in jail with a parole period of five years.
"I am satisfied that the sentence I would impose acknowledges the dignity of each child who was killed by the applicant's conduct," the judgement read.
Bridget Sakr
The mother of one of the children, Bridget Sakr, said she was in shock over today's resentencing.(9News)
Veronique's mother Bridget Sakr said today's resentencing was "unjust".
"No punishment could serve the devastation the driver did to our children and families," she said.
"I don't know how anybody could put a price on someone's life, especially the lives of four children who were killed, whereby 3.75 years per child is the value that has been placed as a punishment for the driver.
"The wounds never close but this puts salt on the wounds and it stings."
 
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I feel like the punishments for a DUI are a bit severe but at the same time that severity serves as a deterrent to people who aren't habitual criminals. It's a necessary evil so to speak but it's also really easy to just... not drive while impaired, you know?
 
I don't think I've ever drove after having more the legal amount of alcohol. If you find yourself in situations where you have no choice after consuming lots of alcohol, you should look at your priorities a little harder.
 
I have driven under the influence one time in my life and fully admit it was an extremely dumb thing to do. That said I was sober enough to not only not arouse suspicion in the cops I drove past at 3am on a weekend exiting a place known to be a place where people get drunk and then drive home from (I'm still shocked I didn't get popped), but I also got home, didn't run any lights or damage the car, and parked my car successfully in a crowded apartment parking lot.

DUI laws are laws for a reason and if anything they're not strict enough. If you're caught driving while drunk you should immediately lose your license and be barred from getting it back for a year minimum. If you're a repeat offender immediately to jail for 3 months minimum, if three strikes - mandatory jail sentence of 2 years. Get busted driving a car without a license after you lost it in a DUI stop? 3 months in jail minimum, same as a strike two.

I read news stories of people with 18 counts of DUI and driving without a license and other shit and all I can think of is how tolerant is our society of people who clearly cannot function in it and don't intend to even try? Why should we suffer because some addict literally cannot stop himself from getting trashed and then driving home?
 
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