[ekanes]

> They used to tell me they didn't feel right "baiting" drunk drivers, for instance sitting hidden outside of popular bars and waiting for closing time. They felt like if they observed you driving impaired, you got pulled over, and if you were drunk you got a ticket. To them this was just the right way to act.

I can't understand that at all. I would agree if it were a victimless crime, or perhaps if they were actually baiting them. But this sounds like a great and efficient use of police time. Are there any circumstances where they shouldn't stop drunk drivers??

If thieves predictably showed up at a store to steal something, should the police not camp out and take advantage of their predictability?

[tptacek]

There are a lot of people (I'm not one of them), particularly movement libertarians, who believe that blood alcohol limit laws are unreasonable. Different people metabolize alcohol differently, what you want to eliminate is the actual impairment, etc. If you're one of those people, camping out to catch people just over the limit is an injustice, as it'll tag lots of people who are innocent of impairment.

[DanielBMarkham]

When I drink, I stay home.

Contrary to popular libertarian thought, I'm happy with new laws as long as they are consistent. If we want to do things to reduce risk of death while driving I don't especially like having government rules, but I'll take them as long as they are self-consistent.

The thing with drinking and driving is that, contrary to popular belief, you don't drink four beers and go run over a school bus full of orphans. Most drunk people drive fine for hundreds of trips.

What the actual situation is that drinking increases your odds of having an accident. It does not make it a certainty. Not by any means.

So as long as we equally prosecute all of those things that increases the odds of having an accident by the same percentage by the same punishment, I'm happy with a compromise. That means cell phone usage, arguing while speeding, etc. If it's as dangerous as X and society needs to intervene, it's as dangerous as X.

Of course, framing the issue this way brings up the great problem with DUI -- it's an emotional, moral issue that somebody wants the law to fix. We are "offended" by the drunk driver running over the orphan in a way that we are not by the cell phone user doing the same thing.

When people talk about "legislating morality", they are not talking about pulling words from some holy book and trying to make a constitutional amendment out of it. I wish that it were so simple. Instead, it happens when people of all faiths, including atheists, become morally outraged at some sort of behavior and seek to punish it in a way different from other behavior with similar effects on society.

I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion for this comment, but all I'm pleading for is a little dispassionate logic here. I fully understand this is a very emotional issue for lots of people. (And I sympathize with those people) In no way at all do I condone drinking and driving.

[ekanes]

> Most drunk people drive fine for hundreds of trips.

I don't know that this is true, but even if it was I don't know that it's useful information in terms of minimizing harm, just as pointing out that some people smoke their whole lives, live to be 90 and die in their sleep.

The devil is in the averages. The data shows that drunk drivers kill more people than sober drivers.

About the rest of your post, no downvote from me, you make a great point. You're right that society treats drunk driving as worse, but don't forget that texting while driving is a (relatively) new problem. Drunk driving used to be fine by society, and then values changed. Texting while driving is now undergoing a similar change, we're just much earlier in the process.

In principle you're right though, if texting while driving kills people (and it does) then we should treat that as aggressively as drunk driving.

Perhaps the difference here is that you can camp a bar, whereas it's harder to camp texters. ;)

[baggachipz]

It also causes harm to local business whose livelihood depends on selling alcohol. It's a simple fact that if a bar becomes known as a cop campground, people will go elsewhere. The law is not always black and white and cops know this.

[dp1234]

True, so we really shouldn't limit it then since it is the public's best interests. We should stop all motorists periodically and check them for warrants, license, insurance, impairment level, maybe take a DNA sample in case they have committed a crime but haven't been caught yet. Probably should also allow searches of people's home and property in case there is criminal activity going on too. Probable cause is very overrated.

[nlawalker]

I think the point is that, instead of camping out and waiting for them to get into their cars so they can ticket them, maybe something more proactive should be done to prevent them from getting in their cars at all.

There is, of course, the argument that punishing people that try to drive after drinking too much may get them to change their behavior. Regardless, doing it this way makes one wonder if income from tickets, rather than safety, is the real goal.

[ekanes]

I remember when I worked delivering Chinese food, waiting in an intersection to turn left. A police officer was sitting at the light across the street from me. I saw him, turned left and he promptly pulled me over. Turned out there was no left turn at that time of day. I was stunned that he watched me do it and then gave me a ticket rather than warn me, but my care about left turns was much higher because of it. He changed my lifelong behaviour because there was a real consequence (a ticket was very costly to me then at minimum wage). If he'd honked to warn me, I doubt I'd even remember the incident.

About income from tickets vs safety, catching people who are in the act this way is both. It's not like they get the ticket and then let them drive away. When you catch and prevent someone from driving drunk you improve safety as well.

[JoeAltmaier]

Our town installed traffic cameras so that police Could start patrolling bars etc instead of the highway.