Thoughts on policy and reducing the drinking age
From the Tulsa World:
SAND SPRINGS — Alcohol apparently played a part in a deadly crash that claimed the lives of two bicyclists and seriously injured a third Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
The cyclists were riding east on the shoulder of Oklahoma 51 near 161st West Avenue when a woman in a sport utility vehicle veered off the busy highway and crashed into them from behind about 4 p.m., Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Brian Warren said.
A woman and a man, both in their early 30s, died from traumatic injuries. Medics took a third man, also in his early 30s, to St. John Medical Center in serious condition, EMSA spokeswoman Tina Wells said.
Warren said the driver tried to leave the scene but was eventually stopped by other motorists. Authorities found an open container of alcohol in the SUV and detained the woman while they took a blood sample for a toxicology test. She likely would then be arrested, Warren said.
This story seemed appropriate after all the comments on the post below concerning the manslaughter charge for the driver who struck and kileld Drake Okusako. I haven’t decided how I feel about punishment for these crimes, and I have watched many families of victims, or victims themselves, struggle with the same question. The Rincon family was pretty much in agreement for what they wanted for Glenda Rumsey, but it hasn’t always been that way.
I think any fatality that stems from the use of drugs or alcohol deserves a prison term, but not necessarily one that destroys the life of the driver and his or her family.
I am a lot more interested in stopping this stuff before it happens. Safer bike routes, a stronger emphasis on safety that is targeted not just at cyclists but at drivers too, and a recognition on the part of city planners and authorities everywhere that bikes are a valid and sensible form of transportation and they are here to stay. I would like to see the minimum driving age in this country increased.
I also believe it is worth considering decreasing the minimum drinking age. Right now kids turn 16 and start driving, but have to wait five long years before they can legally drink. What if it was the other way around? What if you had five years of drinking experience behind you before you could drive? What if you had spent five years learning how to get to a bar and back without driving before you were even eligible for a license?
Is drinking or driving more dangerous to a sixteen year old and those around him?
And I think a single DUI should probably warrant a long, long driving ban. A second should make it for life.
–Erik Ryberg
June 10th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
That picture is nauseating. Ugh.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
This isn’t a new idea, Europe has the same intentions with much better results. Let them drink and then let them drive. Another added benefit people will choose not to drive a car if they wait till 18.
I would like to see a zero tolerance for everything.
Currently you can smoke pot two weeks prior and be considered high at the time of an accident. Of course you only will get 5 days in jail per Tucson standards.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
i wouldn’t shy away from harsh prison terms. what’s harsh in a case like this? 20 years? they get to see their families again, full time, in a few years. no biggie.
if it’s proven that appropriately stiff sentences don’t deter drunk driving, then by all means — let’s let them walk away as easily as possible, but otherwise, throw the book at them all.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Europe also has some of the strictest drunk driving laws on the planet. Much stricter than this country’s.
June 11th, 2009 at 11:02 am
It’s hard to know what would change the culture of drinking and driving that exists here. I have to say that in a lot of small towns in the west, drinking and driving seem to go hand in hand.
For example, on our recent tour Jared and I stopped at a gas station and saw a guy pull up and put his open beer up on the dashboard. Guy filled up his car, then got back in and pulled away sipping his beer. Others would pull up to a gas station and throw away a box full of empty cans. This type of thing happened over and over.
It scared us how nonchalant and blatant people would be about it. As if it was not only acceptable within the towns, but was also something to be celebrated. It was really disconcerting to get back on the bike after you’ve just seen that.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The thought of making it legal to drink at an earlier age than drive in an interesting one. Most drunk drivers don’t start their night by saying, “Yay, I’m going to drink and drive tonight.” Many people enjoy going to bars, they drink while they’re at them, and they don’t know how to get themselves home without using their car.
I don’t think harsher penalties will do much to slow down the amount of drinking and driving. More alternative transportation options and a less car-headed society would.
Just one more reason why there needs to be a major shift in how we get around in our modern day towns.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
There are a lot of direct and indirect
positives to raising the minimum
driving age. But, man, in this car
culture could we ever really pull
that off?
There was a lengthy presentation
on bike boulevards at last night’s
BAC meeting. They are a direct effort
at safer bike routes, designed with
bike emphasis and car de-emphasis
with routes that have desirable
destinations. They are the best
thing you’re gonna get in Tucson
for a calmer alternative to the
major transportation routes. All
contributing factors to their
completion are positive and I
expect to see progress on them
soon.
Someone could write a thesis or
dissertation on the resistance to
the bicycle in the American car
culture…it would be fascinating
reading. Recognition from govern-
ments, developers, employers and
law enforcement is the focus of
our various efforts. But car
headedness is automatic.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Why should alcohol be legal for anyone at all? It’s expensive, foul-tasting poison. It alters your mind and kills your liver. In large enough quantities you can become dependent on it and destroy relationships with your family and friends. The only reason it’s legal is because the government is depending on it for revenue (alcohol excise tax, sales tax, liquor licenses, corporate income tax, etc).
Making alcohol more available to immature teenagers is a stupid idea. The UK has a very low drinking age and they have a huge problem with binge drinking among youths, particularly in the uneducated lower-classes.
Forget lowering the drinking age: ban the stuff entirely and humanity would be better off.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Pretty sure we tried that once already . . . .
EBR
June 11th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
In America we have or had a lot of civil liberties, yet very little personal freedom.
Basically the majority (democracy) dictates what personal freedoms you have (gambling, driving, prostitution, drugs, TV, etc)
June 12th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Just found out that Matthew Edmonds is a friend of a friend. I knew there was a reason that picture got to me like that. Damnit.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Mike, the last time we tried banning alcohol sales we invented organized crime. I’m with Eric on this one, lower the drinking age to 16 and raise the driving age to 21. That’s 5 more years of life experience before they start using WMDs as transportation.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Hello Eric,
I am from Tulsa and know the route these cyclists were on quite well. The side of the road is wide, and really I’ve never had any problems on this hwy.
I believe this shows that people with drinking problems eventually kill someone when they get behind the wheel of a car.
I’m very sad to see these photos and read about what happened.
Thanks for your blog and keeping us informed.
Cheers! Bruce
June 12th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
As long as we’re tossing around ideas that’ll never fly, I’ve got a long-time favorite. I also ride a motorcycle for interstate travel and/or carrying passengers. We structure our MV licensing exactly back-assward in this country, kids start driving cars around 15-16 – younger in farm states – and have a few years to pick up all the bad habits they can before they qualify at age 18 for the *option* of getting a motorcycle endorsement on their *car* license and finally being forced to learn how to operate a motor vehicle safely. I say this because on a motorcycle – the worlds most efficient evolutionary catalyst – you learn safety and awareness fast or you die, and typically alone, unlike in a car, truck, or SUV where if you’re an idiot behind the wheel, it’s the poor innocent people you plow into who die. (Yeah, I know – we’ve all seen an occasional idiot on a motorcycle – those are the ones who are on their way to die.) I say that in order to qualify for a license to drive a larger vehicle that is a potential hazard to others and not just yourself, you must first spend at least two years demonstrating safe operation of a motorcycle, a vehicle where if you screw up, you’re the one that pays direct and drastic consequences. Imagine what the roads would be like if all the idiots got weeded out of the gene pool *before* they were allowed behind the wheel.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Prohibition worked. Alcohol consumption dropped to under thirty percent of what it was pre-Volstead Act (and organized crime already existed before Prohibition — ever heard of The Black Hand? The Five-Points Gang? The Irish Mob? They existed before Prohibition, and they’re still alive today.)
The Senate recently took it upon themselves to go after the tobacco industry. Everyone knows that smoking is bad. Smokers know that smoking is bad. Even Phillip-Morris knows smoking is bad (and they’re finally starting to admit it.) We are rapidly approaching the point where nicotine/tobacco products might be outlawed entirely within our lifetimes, and hopefully with good results for public health. So why don’t we simply apply these same ideas to alcohol, which poses a much more serious public safety risk?
June 12th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Hi Mike,
You are right. My last comment to you was too flippant. I still disagree though. Shouldn’t the law/justice apparatus be invoked to proscribe behavior that hurts other people, and not behavior that hurts only the actor? For example, I am completely on board with harsh punishments for drinking and driving. But if somebody wants to sit in his kitchen and drink beer, even a whole lot of beer, what do I care? Frankly, I don’t care, until that person starts attacking people, driving, or doing something else that is dangerous to others.
I agree it might be more efficient to go to the source and outlaw everything that might cause danger to others — alcohol, guns, cars, violent video games, books that advocate violent revolution, unprotected sex, and so forth — but I am not sure I want to live in that place.
Anyway, as Scott says, all this is pie-in-the-sky anyway.
But I sure wish we could raise the driving age, at least. Maybe some day.
EBR
June 12th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
A gun cannot induce someone to kill another person, or a car to run into another driver. Alcohol is different in that it is a drug that has been documented to have a negative effect on cognitive ability and reaction time.
A person can sit in his kitchen downing can after can of PBR and not hurt anyone I suppose, but there is nothing preventing him from grabbing the keys to his Silverado and playing chicken with oncoming traffic — the drug is in control. Higher penalties don’t work as a deterrent since alcohol throws judgment out the window — a person doesn’t think “What happens if I go to jail for the rest of my life if I hit a guy?” while drunk. They simply don’t have the ability.
Lowering the drinking age will just make more drunk teenagers. Do a search at the BBC website for ‘binge drinking’ and see what the combination of youth and alcohol brings.
The Congress has learned from the political failure of immediate Prohibition (the Volstead Act’s main flaw was that it took effect too quickly.) Steadily increasing tobacco tax, putting new restrictions on companies, introducing health care/education programs to prevent people from lighting up and helping those addicted to quit has worked well to reduce the number of smokers and deaths related to smoking. Those ideas should be applied to alcohol as well.
Back to the main topic: I’m in full agreement that the driving age should be raised. It should be 17 for a permit, 19 for a restricted license, and 21 for a full license.
25% of Arizona’s currently licensed drivers couldn’t pass a driving test if it was administered to them again. That’s crazy.
Potential drivers should have to train with a professional driving instructor with state-enforced curriculum for a certain period of time. People who have received their licenses they should be retested at various times during their driving career. And drivers licenses should only be good for ten years instead of fifty!
June 13th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Mike: “Prohibition worked. Alcohol consumption dropped to under thirty percent of what it was pre-Volstead Act (and organized crime already existed before Prohibition — ever heard of The Black Hand? The Five-Points Gang? The Irish Mob? They existed before Prohibition, and they’re still alive today.)”
Yeah – I’m gonna need to see something verifiable to back up that 30% claim before I take it as anything other than a made-up “internet” number. I’m betting that 30% was the number that got caught. Alcohol prohibition was as big a failure as drug prohibition is today, and criminal gangs may have predated either prohibition, but nothing funds organized crime for exponential growth like a good popular black market consumable.
June 14th, 2009 at 6:13 am
“Statistics show that Prohibition reduced the annual per capita consumption from 9.8 liters (2.6 gallons) of absolute alcohol during the period before state laws were effective (1906-1910) to 3.7 liters (0.97 gallons) after Prohibition (1934). Moreover, no striking statistical evidence of a crime wave during the 1920s exists, although the crime rate did rise.”
“Prohibition,” Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009
http://encarta.msn.com
June 14th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Mike, are you a recovering alcoholic? Just curious. Oh, and please do people a favor, and let them say on their own what is good and bad for their bodies. Comments like ‘Everyone knows that smoking is bad’ are false unless you qualify them by saying that ‘everyone that knows smoking is bad for themselves, knows that smoking is bad’. You deal with your health, let others deal with theirs.
The stricter a state regulates the conduct of statutory citizens, the more likely people are to chose not to enter into contracts with the state that require them to abide by statute. Telling people not to do something because you have statistics showing that X out of Y times the action has a specific consequence is absurd. Is there anyone that can predict the weather? Did one of the cyclists predict that the lady would smoosh him or her that day?
Are you implying that your rationalization is so sound that you can make-up values for events that have not happened and accurately tell me what will happen in the future? Because if you cannot (which I’m betting is the case), it seems it would be wise of you to not speak with certainty especially about what people should or should not do tomorrow based on what you think you know today. You may be certain of your logic, and not see the need to consider everything in order to come to conclusions, but this will only get you caught up in the process of fixing problems today that you caused yesterday because the values you made up for yesterday turned out to be wrong today, oops!
June 14th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Mike, That was exactly what I meant by “made up internet number.” Some unknown author with unknown agendas wrote an article for Encarta without supplying any actual verifiable cite or documentation for his assertions. The only difference between Encarta and Wikipedia is that on Wikipedia there is at least a process to challenge wrong or biased information if someone feels strongly enough about the matter to do so – and *still* it’s considered a questionable source. On Encarta, you take what you get – right or wrong – which is probably why Encarta is being phased out for its lackluster hit-count.
Seriously, show me something from a legitimate peer-reviewed historical study and not just some internet opinion piece and you may still convince us that what everyone know is wrong – it wouldn’t be the first time.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:27 am
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-08/
June 14th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
If the drinking age were lowered, then I could sit down with my teenager, have a beer with them and talk to them about the difference between use and abuse. Fortunately, at this moment, my kid is completely sober and we talk about this stuff a lot. But making something illegal, that most teenagers are going to do anyway, will make them lie about and do it when you aren’t around.
I actually don’t know exactly what I would do with the drinking or driving age, but generally I think Erik’s idea is good – lower the drinking age, raise the driving age.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
I think the drinking thing is a completely separate issue. The fact is that most drivers are completely ignorant to traffic laws related to cycling, regardless of their age. While you can’t make everyone re-take driving school just to teach them to share the road, you most certainly can train the next generation of drivers to be more cyclist-aware.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Jeff in TX you can do exactly that, as long as the alcohol is served by the parent it is legal for minors to drink it. I was shocked by this too, but it helped me raise kids that don’t binge drink, except for the one daughter they hardly drink at all and they are all well over the age to drink outside my presence.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Scott, the info on Encarta came from historian Norman Clark’s book on Prohibition: Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (W. W. Norton & Company (October 1976) — which I would trust more than the anarchic mob at Wikipedia where things can be made up and accepted as fact: search for “Wikipedia” and “Maurice Jarre” and see what happens when anybody can edit information.
Tony, I never got a chance to be an alcoholic. I saw from my youth how people I knew — family and friends — were dragged down by alcohol, but I am now more concerned about alcohol from a public safety angle than from a health one.
I used to not care about other people drinking until Jose Rincon was killed, and I used to not care about young people driving until Drake Okasuko was killed. I happened to pass by both collision sites during my commute on the respective days that each of them died (if you want to, blame my zeal on that.)
The frontal lobes of the human brain which are responsible for rational judgment don’t fully develop until around age 25, so it’s logical not to allow people to drive until they’ve matured a bit.
However, what part of taking the (generally) most immature, irresponsible, hormonal people in the country and allowing them access to a depressant that hinders judgment and alters reaction time is a good idea? How can they know what the limits to alcohol consumption are when they’ve still got more maturation to do and their judgment is clouded by alcohol? How does this help public safety?
Now, can you drink and not get drunk? Sure. Can you be drunk and not cause accidents? Absolutely. But the chances of those things happening go up in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Nothing in life is a certainty. The question is whether the availability of alcohol being a contributing factor in vehicle collisions tends towards a zero (no chance) or one (absolute chance), and whether or not people’s freedom to feel-good and get buzzed is worth the risk of people being killed.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:57 am
OK, I just picked that book up from the library and I’ll give it a read – although a quick preliminary scan through shows that the author approaches the subject through a pretty heavy anti-alcohol bias from the start, what really counts are how his references and sources pan out.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
There was an interesting “Numbers Guy” column discussing DUI stats in WSJ last week… it is still/currently online for free:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124459653821000673-lMyQjAxMDI5NDE0MDUxOTA2Wj.html
What I didn’t understand was in the chart: the bar chart totals to 100%. The chart was “alcohol-related” fatalities, which is different than legally drunk-caused, and of course most fatalities are unrelated to alcohol entirely.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:16 am
[...] Prohibiting cell phone use in cars would be next. And then? Well, as long as I’m dreaming, decrease the minimum drinking age and increase the minimum driving age. [...]