> Turns out the state required you to “wear” this license plate after your third DUI or something.
This doesn't make much sense because the license plate is attached to the car, not the driver. Couldn't the manager just drive his wife's or friend's car or something? What purpose does the plate serve? "Warning everyone! A serial drink driver might be in this car, but might not be, and if he's in it he might be driving, or might not!" Totally useless. As someone else mentioned, wouldn't it make more sense to permanently revoke someone's license after 3 DUIs?
The theory is they'll just drive anyway without a license. Plus in many/most parts of the US, a car is effectively required to live, so removing one's ability to drive is a seriously major punishment. The whiskey plate indicates to other drivers that the car could be more dangerous than expected, and yes, I think the shame is supposed to be a component as well. It's harm reduction, not a perfect solution.
>>so removing one's ability to drive is a seriously major punishment.
Being caught drunk driving 3(!!!) times is a seriously major crime. I'm a strong advocate for a complete driving ban after a single drunk driving episode, 3 is just crazy to me. I get the argument that in US that basically makes it impossible to get anywhere without a car but I don't know - get a bicycle or something, literally anything is preferable to letting these people on the road again.
Depending on location, a bicycle is not a viable alternative. Driving is a condition of living if food is 30 minutes of driving into town.
I’m am not advocating for lax DUI laws, but a driving ban is the equivalent of house arrest or forced relocation for some people/locations unless they have people who can help them with transportation.
Moving to a city with public transit would provide the most autonomy, but would also mean uprooting one’s life, leaving family behind, etc.
The total impact is indeed very harsh, even if it is necessary for the safety of others.
We have ruined people's lives in this country for selling a bit of weed, but we wouldn't want to disrupt someone's life too much if they drove drunk THREE times!
Ruining people’s lives over weed is arguably immoral and not justice. I see no connection between that and penalties for drunk driving, which are necessary.
The point is that while a person should lose their driving privileges for driving drunk, we should take seriously the implications of the typical punishment given our car dependent society, and the lack of public transit options in most places that aren’t big city centers.
The comment was a reaction to the flippant “just get a bike”, which is clearly not sufficient in many cases. Driving drunk is stupid, dangerous, and should involve serious penalties. We should not ruin people’s lives over it.
> Driving drunk is stupid, dangerous, and should involve serious penalties. We should not ruin people’s lives over it.
After getting caught 3 times doing it? Meaning they do it very frequently and will never stop doing it? It's not an innocent mistake at this point.
Yes driving privileges should absolutely be revoked over it and if that ruins their life maybe they should have thought about the consequences of their actions?
Texting while driving (or other similar distractions) results in slower reaction times for drivers than even drunk drivers.
Yet it doesn't carry the same stigma. I would even guess a big portion of the people who have absolute disdain for drunk driving are guilty of distracted driving from time to time.
I don't know what the answer to that is, since it's more difficult to catch and prove But at the least we should all call out our friends or family if we see them doing it, the same way we would if they were about to drive while drunk.
I was specifically addressing the argument that driving drunk should automatically result in a permanent ban regardless of frequency.
If it’s happening habitually, the penalties are generally more severe, and that seems reasonable.
If someone reforms themselves, gets sober, stays sober and can prove that, they’re no longer a habitual drunk driver.
To add to a sibling comment, the level of distracted driving happening right now is insane. I’ve been almost hit as a pedestrian and as a cyclist about a half dozen times in the past year due to drivers looking anywhere but at the road. Something changed during/after lockdowns. I think people got more addicted to their devices, and take that on the road with them.
IMO, DUI needs to roll up to a “driving while dangerously distracted” category. Checking instagram, FaceTiming, etc. while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk, and seems to be happening everywhere.
To be clear, my argument is not that people should be excused for bad behavior. But penalties need to be balanced against basic human rights, and should be applied fairly to bad driving behavior across the board.
Take a ride on a tall (or double decker) bus, and just look down into random people's cars as they drive. Last time I did that, I'd say close to 80% of the drivers were scrolling through social media or texting while they were driving. It's a massive problem, and I agree it should be treated exactly like DUI and people should have their licenses revoked for repeatedly doing it. Playing with your phone while driving is probably even more dangerous than DUI because it's been so normalized that people doing it don't even realize how much of a menace they are.
All rights are a balancing act between the rights of the individual and the rights of society. Thinking about them as one or the other is a pretty dangerous line of thinking IMHO.
If it makes you feel any better, you don't have much of a right in the US not to be murdered by habitually sober drivers either [0-4].
Other drivers are often very aggressive [5], there's not all that much you can do to mitigate harm at the time, there's practically nothing you can do to discourage that bad behavior if they didn't actually crash into anything, and even if they do your options can be limited.
[5] Not a source; I'm just appalled at the utter disregard for human life I see every time I compare SF drivers to the rest of the country. It's not everywhere that you'll see a car speed >60mph around the shoulder (dodging pedestrians) to pass the car stopped waiting for the kids to cross at the well-marked flashing crosswalk in their school zone, but that level of misbehavior is commonplace here. Why? Is it a sampling artifact? Other major cities don't _seem_ so bad in comparison.
I can’t compare directly to SF, but I’ve noticed a similar trend in Chicago. Drivers here have always been a bit aggressive, but in years past, I wouldn’t have classified it as downright dangerous.
The things I see now are mind bogglingly stupid and dangerous.
Drunk driving is way more common than you might think.
If we’re ready to cut off ~10% (or more) of drivers for life, we should bite the bullet and mandate ignition interlocks.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. But enforcement needs to help people make the right choice, not just be a lottery for ruining lives in car-dependent places (unfortunately most of the US).
I've mentioned it before on this forum, but before I was a software developer I spent over 10 years as a land surveyor.
I mention that because it involves a lot of road layout and roadside work setting control points, &c. I used to find so many empty flasks of booze, empty syringes, and empty pill bottles in the weeds on the side of the road that drivers had thrown out the windows of their vehicles. Even in some rural areas this was the case.
The point is that there's still a lot of Americans driving impaired. There's a certain amount of risk involved in operating or riding in a vehicle even if you are stone cold sober. You never know if other drivers are impaired until it's too late.
This is going to sound maybe insensitive but I've noticed driving drunk is a cultural thing. I've been with certain groups of people and pretty much it seems everyone and their cousin has a DUI and no one regarded it as a major crime.
It sounds crazy but I bet if you were born 40 years earlier, you wouldn't care. Drunk driving wasn't even a thing until Mothers Against Drunk Driving made it a thing in the 80s.
I don't support drunk driving at all but it seems our views on right and wrong are just products of society, lol.
Reminds me of what my dad told me on drunk driving: "It is no longer safe to drink and drive. It used to be the worst that was likely to happen was you would wrap your car around an oak tree and that would be one less idiot in the world. Now the roads are full and you are likely to hurt or kill somebody else."
There's also drunk driving the crime and drunk driving the act.
What I mean by this is that when people go out to eat lunch or dinner, they drive to the restaurant. They obviously need to drive back when they're done. They obviously also had some good drinks while they were there; beer, wine, the works. Even just a sip of alcohol will count as drunk driving, legally speaking.
The police largely turn a blind eye to this, because it's so utterly commonplace and a fact and part of life that policing this would quickly lead to a community and public revolt. Restaurants also happily serve alcohol because drunk driving is not their problem, and restaurants that don't will quickly go out of business anyway.
On the other side of the coin however, if you drive to a liquor store at an ungodly hour the police will be on you in an instant to check if you're driving drunk and arrest you if you are. Why? Because everyone wants or needs to eat and drink, but nobody needs to drop by a liquor store at 10pm.
The police will also check if you're driving drunk if they see you on the road and it's blatantly obvious you can't drive straight. This should go without saying, though; and it means most people who drink at restaurants can drive safe (FSVO safe).
Obligatory IANAL, obligatory don't drink and drive disclaimer.
In the US most states have a BAC requirement above 0.00 to be drunk driving (so "a sip" of alcohol doesn't qualify). Also the idea that no one should buy liquor at 10 pm or that it is strange to get drinks for someone's party is odd. Why would the liquor stores be open if no one needed liquor then?
There are absolutely states where if the officer says you are impaired, you are going to jail. Even if you blow 0.00. Will you be convicted? Probably not but you’ll still get to deal with court costs and paying a few grand to a lawyer. Oh and you get to explain an arrest, that can never be expunged, for the rest of your life.
The police are almost never going to police restaurants, bars, wineries, and other such places even though there will obviously be plenty of potential drunk drivers to arrest. Meanwhile, a friend who parted ways with me after a night out stopped by a liquor store on the way home and was questioned and subsequently arrested (he was legally drunk) as he came out.
The point of this story is that the law states absolutely clearly that noone is allowed to drink and drive. On the other hand, practicality and reality means police will turn a blind eye to certain areas while enforcing the law elsewhere; knowing this is how the real world works is handy and important for what I hope are obvious reasons.
It's a good point.. furthermore, there have been studies that show texting or other distractions while driving are considerably worse, but you don't see many people arguing for someone to lose their license when they text while driving
I was curious how many people caught driving durnk go on to drive drunk again, and a NHTSA study found an average of about 25 percent of people arrested for drunk driving had a prior arrest. About 30 percent of people with a drunk driving conviction had a prior conviction [0]. This is pretty high. I'm not sure if it's high enough to warrant a permanent ban, but long-term suspensions and mandatory interlocks seem justifiable.
(Edit) As philwelch points out, the recidivism rate of all drunk drivers is technically different than that of first-time offenders. Accounting for this doesn't seem to wildly change the recidivism rate, though.
That's a good point. Since it's looking at offenders and not offenses, I don't think they can diverge too much (but perhaps I'm not thinking of the math correctly). I did find a study looking at just first-time offenders, which found a similar level after five years: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3095888/figure/....
Distracted driving is just as bad (or worse) than drunk driving in terms of reaction time. Texting, social media, doing makeup, fiddling with stereo/maps. People routinely do these things and while they are doing them, they are putting themselves and other drivers at serious risk. And yet they don't carry anywhere near the same stigma as drunk driving. My point is, if you're going to be that draconian about drunk driving punishment, you'd better be consistent and adopt the same attitude towards people who text and do tiktoks while behind the wheel.
Personally I don't think either should result in losing a license, at least not for the first offense
Being drunk on a bike is probably even more dangerous than drunk driving a car. Unfortunately, one doesn't need a license to use public roads with a bicycle.
Dangerous for all parties involved. Being out in the open with no safety belt, no crumple zones, a bicyclist can be easily killed in an accident. Drivers attempting to swerve out of the way can cause a greater accident with other vehicles, not to mention the possibility of killing a bicyclist. Add to that, the hypothetical of riding a bicycle while drunk, you've now just worsened the problem.
Moral of the story: don't drive drunk, don't ride a bike drunk. Ideally, don't get drunk at all, but if you do, don't operate any kind of vehicle.
In my country the state now confiscates cars of drunk drivers if their BAC is above 0.15%. And they also get criminally prosecuted - having a criminal record can seriously fuck up their lives.
Punishments are not an effective deterrent. That is, you could increase the punishment ten fold and people would still do it. What matters is if people think they will get caught. You put up driving check points every weekend around the nightlife areas and you will see a decline, because people will feel more certain they will be caught, even if the punishment is not as bad.
In Minnesota drivers recovering from DUI revocation are required to use the "whiskey" plates. (Incidentally the license plate database is incomplete because it does not include the Minnesota "whiskey" plate.)
While "whiskey" plates are on the vehicle police officers can legally stop the driver of the vehicle for a impairment check without cause (e.g. without any indications that the driver is under the influence or any traffic violations.) The idea is that the extra enforcement is incentive for the recovering DUI driver to continue to drive safely and re-develop that habit.
> While "whiskey" plates are on the vehicle police officers can legally stop the driver of the vehicle
Not any more. They changed this part of the law a few years ago. Probably around the same time that they (MN) began to implement breathalyzer interlocks where you can't start or drive the car if you're above a certain threshold.
However, I think that if you're pulled over and you have an active DUI but are not driving a car with whiskey plates, then it's an immediate loss of license.
Being unable to rent a car or borrow a car while having a license seems like a weird combination of outcomes, so I looked it up.
> What happens if I drive a car without whiskey plates?
> It is a misdemeanor to drive a car that should have whiskey plates but doesn't. If you illegally remove whiskey plates from your car and are caught, you will go to jail.
> When you register for whiskey plates, you'll need to disclose all cars that you own or plan to drive and get whiskey plates for each of them.
So, it seems like you could incidentally drive a random car that you didn’t have a reasonable expectation to drive that specific car at a time of being forced to get whiskey plates.
Well, you can do anything as long as you're not caught but the only exception that I'm aware of is if you must drive a vehicle as a part of your job, then it can have regular plates.
The median is 1.8 cars per household in the US, so I'd say, from intuition and experience, that in these states the targeted vehicle will be +95% of the time driven by the DUI offender.
But it doesn't matter, because "whiskey plates" are just plain wrong – they are a tongue-in-cheek, populist lawmaker's kool-aid. As a deterrent whiskey plates work best for conscious, god-fearing folk who rarely go over the limit. Besides these types of public shaming schemes can also have just the opposite effect, ie a university bro that looks cool with that whiskey plate or by creating enduring self or public confirmation that you are now that person the plate says you are. Adequate punishment would be to combine fines that are proportional to one's income, use tech like ignition interlock devices and invest on the individual's rehabilitation as a responsible driver, including participating in social services and education programs, among other ordinary measures.
Furthermore, permanently revoking a drivers license is a serious punishment in a country where transportation/commute is primarily done by car. Also not all DUI's are the same and there's a principle of proportionality that always applies when sentencing offenders. So strike-3-and-you're-done would be very harsh for the great majority of DUI/DWI cases in the US.
This sounds like a good reason to pursue policies that make taking away a license not life destroying, rather than pursuing policies that allow people to destroy lives by continuing to drink-drive.
Easier said than done, unfortunately. In suburbs, that'd require completely changing zoning, adding public transit, and waiting for new stores to be built in or near neighborhoods. In rural areas...I don't even think you can fix it, there's no infrastructure by design. (in cities, this usually isn't insurmountable, so there it'd just be incremental improvements)
The biggest roadblocks are the zoning and the public transit, because NIMBYs will come out of the woodwork to prevent any work being done. What it comes down to is that the people who can make laws affecting DUIs and the people who can lessen car dependency in an area aren't really the same people, so it's much more difficult to get done.
Effectively, not really. You can get your license pulled, for a limited (but long) time. But just because you're no longer permitted to drive doesn't mean you won't.
It's difficult to register your car when you don't have a license, so then you usually stop registering your car too. And it's hard to get car insurance if you don't have an active license or a registered vehicle, so that's another thing to skip.
If you get pulled over, and have no license, no registration, and no insurance, but that's all that's really wrong, you'll most likely get a ticket, probably have your license suspended for longer, and might have your car taken away, but won't likely be put in jail. So, time to buy another cheap car, private party.
I don't get your point. Are you defending people driving drunk in the USA because they are more likely to be caught?
In my country it's also common to get caught after being stopped for speeding or car malfunction (like missing headlight), after a minor crash, by driving in a suspicious way, or just during a random check (that police is allowed to do). In total, around 450 drivers out of 1000 are tested for drunk-driving every year. It's one of the higher numbers in EU, so drunk drivers here are also (hopefully) likely to be caught.
And the US DUI limit is insane - 0.08% BAC. In my country it's 0.02% BAC and if you get caught you lose a driving license for at least 6 months (with progressively more severe consequences for higher violations, up to a prison sentence, lifetime driving ban and losing your car permanently).
Generally, the more likely you are to get away with an offence, the steeper the penalty.
I can't speak for all EU countries, but I get the feeling that traffic enforcement is a lower priority by EU police than US/Canada.
Several hypothesized factors for this in EU: more competency-based licensing, more regular technical inspections of vehicles (so fewer missing headlights), more automated enforcement (so fewer in-person controls), less focus on revenue generation by police (again, fewer in-person speed/mechanical controls), and most collisions just being a matter of submitting paperwork to insurance without police involvement. In Ontario Canada, police interaction is mandatory if any injury, >$2k damage or public property damage, so 99% of collisions, which is far different than France at least.
So unless you have mobile alcohol checkpoints, even if drink-driving happens at the same rate as elsewhere, you're less likely to be caught in EU. And those that are caught probably did something more significant at the same time to warrant police attention.
But sounds like your country, testing 45% of drivers per year, makes up for those several factors I brought up. Doesn't seem to be the norm in my EU experience - I do ~25% of my driving there.
Just because you don’t have a license doesn’t mean you miraculously no longer remember how to drive. I recently got my driver’s license renewed after it had been expired for at least 15 years. Never seemed to impact my ability to operate a car safely.
/I have a state ID and passport I use when I need to present valid ID
Typically part of the sentence is to require an ignition interlock for multiple years. Driving a car without an ignition interlock is a lifetime driving ban, plus up to two additional years in prison. The details vary by state
The plate is there to shame the driver primarily and dissuade them from DUI, secondarily so the police pay more attention to them.
If an unlicensed driver drives a car in Michigan, they remove its plate:
> Unless the vehicle was stolen or used with the permission of a person who did not knowingly permit an unlicensed driver to operate the vehicle, the registration plates of the vehicle shall be canceled by the secretary of state on notification by a peace officer.[1]
Similarly, this follows the car rather than the driver.
You're right! We should make them wear a star or something to indicate their specialness!
Joking aside I imagine taking licenses away are a big part of it, but that doesn't stop them from driving, at least the license plate warns the rest of us not to drive too close to the guy.
This doesn't make much sense because the license plate is attached to the car, not the driver. Couldn't the manager just drive his wife's or friend's car or something? What purpose does the plate serve? "Warning everyone! A serial drink driver might be in this car, but might not be, and if he's in it he might be driving, or might not!" Totally useless. As someone else mentioned, wouldn't it make more sense to permanently revoke someone's license after 3 DUIs?