Comment by Marsymars
16 hours ago
I suspect you could step up enforcement in ways that don’t involve prison time simply by taking away people’s licenses, and then having a fast feedback loop to catch people driving without a license.
16 hours ago
I suspect you could step up enforcement in ways that don’t involve prison time simply by taking away people’s licenses, and then having a fast feedback loop to catch people driving without a license.
In addition to what the sibling said regarding the impracticality of not driving in most of the US, which I completely agree with, I'd also ask exactly what you want to do with your "fast feedback loop to catch people driving without a license". What do you do with the people who drive anyways because not driving is so impractical and get caught?
We already took their license, we can't double-take it to show we really mean it. Fining them seems a bit rough when they need to drive to get to the job to make the money to pay those fines. Or we're right back to jail time and an even higher prison population.
> I'd also ask exactly what you want to do with your "fast feedback loop to catch people driving without a license".
Unless the vehicle is stolen, seize and impound the vehicle. If the driver is the owner, auction it off and give them back the proceeds, minus costs.
I feel like I'm living in some different world where drunk driving is a-okay when I face these types of objections to actually enforcing the rules around it.
Taking away licenses is a bad way to enforce driving rules because so many people have to be able to drive or their life collapses. The problems of aggressive license revocation are similar to the problems of aggressive prison time.
I get where you're coming from, but it's pretty hard to be sympathetic given the crimes we're talking about and the impact they have on others.
Like that would sound nuts if we applied it to other things - e.g. "take away the professional license of a mid-career pilot/surgeon/schoolteacher/engineer because he was drinking on the job and his life collapses".
Various people can't drive because of e.g. visual impairments, age, poverty, etc. - I find it an ugly juxtaposition to be asserting that we must allow people with DUIs to drive because otherwise their lives would "collapse" to the same point as those other people who can't drive.
> Like that would sound nuts if we applied it to other things - e.g. "take away the professional license of a mid-career pilot/surgeon/schoolteacher/engineer because he was drinking on the job and his life collapses".
The analogy is closer to "take away their ability to get any job" and then it sounds even more harsh.
> Various people can't drive because of e.g. visual impairments, age, poverty, etc. - I find it an ugly juxtaposition to be asserting that we must allow people with DUIs to drive because otherwise their lives would "collapse" to the same point as those other people who can't drive.
If you can't see well enough to drive, then life was unfair to you, and you can often get help with transportation that isn't available to someone that violated the law. For age, if you're young then your parents are supposed to care for you, if you're too old to drive you're supposed to have figured out your retirement by now. For poverty, you kinda still need a car no matter what, that's just how the US is set up in most areas. And it's not ugly to make the comparison to extreme poverty, to say that kicking someone down to that level is a very severe punishment.
> must allow
I wasn't saying what we should do, just that turning up the aggressiveness has serious unwanted consequences.
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