I just don’t understand drinking and driving

@BillRM,

A DUI manslaughter, that also included reckless driving--speeding and going through a stop sign--and that resulted in the senseless death of another driver--is a violent crime. Drivers that engage in such actions, and cause the violent deaths of others, are a danger to society, and should be removed from society for a period of time.

It's not just the penalties that should deter others from actions like those of Goodman's, it's also some concern for the lives and well being of other people--something you've already shown you can't understand.

Depriving Goodman of his driver's license, and giving him any sort of community service, for acts that displayed a wanton indifference to human life, and consequently caused the loss of an innocent human life, would be a travesty in terms of diminishing the seriousness of his crime.

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Maybe you think that satisfying your blood lust and others like you is a valid reason for locking up a Drunk driver that was involve in an accident that result in a death for a large fraction of his life time and at great public expense but I do not.

Stop with the "blood lust" hyperbole. And stop acting like these are only my views. The "others like you" are most of the people in the state of Florida, the state you live in, and the state where Goodman's crime occurred, who support these laws and the harsh penalties they carry.

You're the one on the extreme fringe. And your reasons for leniency all boil down to not seeing what he did as all that bad. Big deal, he got drunk, then drove recklessly, and killed someone. You can't bring the dead guy back, so why send Goodman to jail. By that logic, no act of homicide should warrant a jail term in your mind. You're more concerned with the costs of prisons, for those who criminally kill with their cars, than you are with preventing the crimes that caused those deaths. You're more concerned with the costs of prisons, for those who criminally kill with their cars, than the cost in lost lives, and maimed bodies, those drivers are responsible for.

Thank goodness most people don't think the way you do. Or bother to take people like you seriously.

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@izzythepush,

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Overall, you show contempt for all human life, other than that of murderers, rapists, child abusers and negligent drunks.

Those seem to be the only types of people BillRM can identify with.

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@firefly,

As I said you love the idea of decades long punishment and of course you are not alone that is why to our shame we had somewhere like 10 times the total percents of out population in prison at any time then the EU nations.

That whole subgroups of our citizens are in very large numbers are behind bars such as our black citizens.

There are more blacks men living in prison cells now then was living in slavery in 1860!!

Hell one third of the total black males in my state of Florida can not vote due to having felony convictions.

We have a so call criminal justice system that is completely out of control and there is no logical reason or benefit for having a man wasting away for 16 years for an drunk driving accident that sadly resulted in death.

If having extremely long and harsh sentences for misdeeds was a useful means of reducing the overall crime rate we would have a far lower rate of criminal conduct then in the EU nations instead of the other way around.

If we had a more sane justice system we could use the funding we so cheerfully pour into the prison system to grant free college education for everyone who would wish for it.

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@firefly,

Quote:

Those seem to be the only types of people BillRM can identify with

.

I ID with the people on the lower end of society that we can not afford to aid as we are pouring funding into keeping ten times the numbers of our citizens then any other industry nation under lock and key.

Of course there are overlap between the people we are locking up for decades more then other nations do and the same ones we had short change on primary public schooling such as our black citizens.

We seems to alway have the funds to locked up a black man for decades but not to offer him the same level of public education as a child and young man as the EU countries are offer or that is given to the children living in richer communities in the US for that matter.

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@BillRM,

Funny how your alleged concern for black citizens doesn't extend to the unarmed black young man George Zimmerman unjustly targeted as being a criminal, and who he consequently wound up killing. Nor could you understand the outrage of black citizens, at the justice system, when Zimmerman wasn't immediately arrested so he could be held accountable for his actions in killing an unarmed minor.

Free college education is going to stop people from driving drunk? Or can't you deal with the topic.

Drunk driving "accident" is something of a misnomer. Was it an "accident" that John Goodman got drunk, or did he knowingly order all those drinks in the establishments he was in that night? Was it an "accident" that John Goodman decided to drive drunk? Had he made provisions for an alternate way to get home, beside driving his own car, before he knowingly got drunk? Was he "accidentally" ignorant of drunk driving laws? Was he "accidentally" ignorant of his significantly increased risk of being in a fatal crash if he drove drunk?

John Goodman took a risk that night--and the risk he took was with someone else's life--it was someone else's life he put at risk when he got behind the wheel drunk that night.

For you, given your sociopathic mindset, it's all about the risk of getting caught and punished. The lives and welfare of other people you might kill or harm, or put at risk, as a result of your irresponsible and criminal behavior behind the wheel, doesn't mean a damn thing to you.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

I ID with the people on the lower end of society that we can not afford to aid as we are pouring funding into keeping ten times the numbers of our citizens then any other industry nation under lock and key.

This sentiment is fake. Spare me your crocodile tears.

If you really were concerned about American juriprudence across the board, as opposed to rapists, paedophiles and the like, you wouldn't argue so passionately about the State of Texas' right to execute a man without examining DNA evidence that could exonerate him.

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@firefly,

Strange Firefly I had always had thought the reverse concerning you in your wishing to revenge the death of a young black man who lost his life while attacking a Latin man and yet millions of blacks sitting in prison rotting away for decades many if not most for non-violence drugs offensives you could care less about.

Of course you are not alone in being a hypocrite as such so call black leaders such as Jackson and Sharpton are in the same boat.

Here are some comments in that regards by the Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant.

“

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His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.

The epidemic is truly black on black crime,” Bryant said. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”

Bryant said he wishes civil rights leaders were protesting those problems.

“Why not be angry about the wholesale murder that goes on in the streets of Newark and Chicago?” he asked. “Why isn’t somebody angry about that six-year-old girl who was killed on her steps last weekend in a cross fire when two gang members in Chicago start shooting at each other? Why is there no outrage about that?”

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The Firefly effect locked as many people as possible and throw the keys away at whatever the human cost happen to be or the cost to the society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

Violent crime was not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States from 1980 to 2003. Violent crime rates had been relatively constant or declining over those decades. The prison population was increased primarily by public policy changes causing more prison sentences and lengthening time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release. These policies were championed as protecting the public from serious and violent offenders, but instead yielded high rates of confinement for nonviolent offenders. Nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes. 49 percent of sentenced state inmates were held for violent offenses. Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national "war on drugs." The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges. [24][25]

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2008 New York Times article[35] points out:

Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher. ... "Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years," Mr. Tonry wrote last year. "But its imprisonment rate has remained stable."

On June 30, 2006, an estimated 4.8% of black non-Hispanic men were in prison or jail, compared to 1.9% of Hispanic men of any race and 0.7% of white non-Hispanic men. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.[41]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Midyear 2010 Incarceration rates by race and gender per 100,000 US residents of the same race and gender.[42] Ethnicity Male Female Total
White non-Hispanic 678 91 -
Black non-Hispanic 4,347 260 -
Hispanic of any race 1,775 133 -
All inmates 1,352 126 732
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009.[43][not in citation given] According to the 2010 census of the US Census Bureau blacks (including Hispanic blacks) comprised 13.6% of the US population.[44][45][46]

Hispanics (of all races) were 20.6% of the total jail and prison population in 2009.[43] Hispanics comprised 16.3% of the US population according to the 2010 US census.[44][47] The Northeast has the highest incarceration rates of Hispanics in the nation.[48] Connecticut has the highest Hispanic-to-White ratio with 6.6 Hispanic males for every white male. The National Average Hispanic-to-White ratio is 1.8. Other states with high Hispanic-to-White ratios include Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.[49]

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@BillRM,

God, next you'll be dragging WWII into this thread.

Try sobering up so you'll know what the topic is--it's drunk driving.

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@firefly,

Side note DUI accidents are accidents unless the DUI driver was trying to run into someone else.

He or she might not be responsible in driving with a high BAC but it still is an accident just as if someone was careless in driving a car with smooth tires or so so brakes.

Strange we do not normally throw someone in prison for 16 years for having smooth tires even when that was part of the reason for an accident that results in a death.

But good try in trying to redefine what an accident happen to be Firefly.

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@firefly,

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Try sobering up so you'll know what the topic is--it's drunk driving.

The tropic branch out to a case of a 16 years sentence for a DUI related death dear Firefly and how wise it is to locked people up and throw away the keys.

But such a weak personal attack is one good sign that you are feeling the heat, next will be a cute cartoon.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

Side note DUI accidents are accidents unless the DUI driver was trying to run into someone else.

You're being extremely concrete in your thinking. Let's look at the definition of "accident".

Quote:

Noun: accident ak-si-dunt
1.An unfortunate mishap; especially one causing damage or injury

2.Anything that happens suddenly or by chance without an apparent cause

If DUI manslaughters were truly accidents that happened "by chance without an apparent cause" we wouldn't hold a drunk and reckless driver, like John Goodman, directly responsible for the event, and it's fatal consequences.

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He or she might not be responsible in driving with a high BAC but it still is an accident...

John Goodman's deadly collision occurred because he was drunk, speeding, and disregarded a stop sign. He caused the collision--it was not an "accidental" event, like a collision due to a sudden malfunction of the car (as his defense team tried to contend). Goodman's collision was a preventable event, it was caused by his own reckless and irresponsible behaviors--starting with his getting behind the wheel drunk. And those reckless and irreponsible behaviors turned Goodman's car into a deadly weapon that killed someone.

Goodman caused that young man's death just as surely as if he had pointed a gun into a crowd, pulled the trigger, and randomly killed someone. He failed to consider the possible consequences, to others in the path of his car, when he got into his car drunk and drove in an extremely impaired state. And he got himself into that intoxicated state knowing full well he'd be driving himself home.

Drunk driving is not an "accidental" act. People are responsible for controlling their intake of alcohol before they get behind the wheel. People are responsible for not driving over the legal limit. People are responsible for the choice to drive drunk, and for the consequent injuries and deaths that might be caused by their impaired driving abilities and judgments.

And, it's because we hold people responsible, a jury found John Goodman guilty of DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide, and a sentence of 16 years was imposed.

As they say, BillRM, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

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@firefly,

Sorry but an accident is something that was not intended to occur it does not need to be an event where bad judgment is not a component even a large component of the event.

Bad judgment in driving with high BAC, is the same kind of judgment error as driving when tired or driving to0 fast for conditions with smooth tires and sometimes had the same results.

But for the young man being tired or but for the woman driving fast in bad weather on smooth tires...........

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Police: Teen driver fell asleep at wheel, crashed into 14-year-old
Posted: Sep 03, 2012 2:33 PM EDT
Updated: Sep 03, 2012 2:48 PM EDT
By FOX 12 Webstaff - email
CASTLE ROCK, WA (KPTV) - A 16-year-old driver in Castle Rock fell asleep at the wheel, veered off the road and crashed into another teenage boy who was walking on the shoulder of the road Saturday afternoon.

Castle Rock police said the 16-year-old was driving a Dodge Caravan in the 1000 block of Mt. St. Helens Way when he apparently fell asleep.

Officers said the 14-year-old was walking with a female juvenile who narrowly missed being struck and wasn't injured.

The 14-year-old boy's injuries were serious. He sustained injuries to his head and face, and a LifeFlight helicopter rushed him to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. His current condition is unknown and police haven't released his name.

The driver of the van suffered only minor scrapes. There's no word yet on whether he'll face any sort of criminal charge.

Castle Rock police said they're still investigating the collision with the help of Washington State Patrol.

Copyright 2012 KPTV (Meredith Corporation.) All rights reserved.

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ELLENBORO — A Cleveland County woman died Tuesday afternoon when she sped around a curve and smashed into an oncoming car, according to the N.C. Highway Patrol.

Sharon White Hill, 54, lost control of her 1999 Ford Mustang while rounding a curve on New House Road north of Ellenboro and collided with a 1999 Ford Taurus driven by 44-year-old Audrey Shultz Peticos, said Highway Patrol Trooper D.R. Walker.

Hill was following her husband’s pickup truck north on New House Road. Her husband passed a slower northbound car, and Hill passed that vehicle and her husband’s truck in the southbound lane just before the road curved, Walker said. Excessive speed, slick tires and a wet road all contributed to the crash.

Read more: http://www.gastongazette.com/articles/woman-71450-wreck-ellenboro.html#ixzz266mt6cCv

1 Reply

@BillRM,

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Sorry but an accident is something that was not intended to occur ...

You really have enormous trouble with the notion of individual responsibility. That's why you like to use the word "accident" in talking about DUI manslaughter as though it were something totally beyond the individual's control, like an act of fate.'

I already pointed out to you that there was nothing "accidental" about John Goodman's fatal DUI collision. Goodman's reckless drunken driving caused the crash and he was responsible for killing the other driver--as surely as if he had pointed a gun into a crowd, pulled the trigger, and randomly killed someone. And that's why a jury found him guilty for causing the death of the other driver. The other driver died because Goodman drunkenly sailed through a stop sign and smacked into his car broadside at such speed, and with such force, the other driver's car flipped over several times and was thrown into a canal upside down.

If you don't intend to cause an accident, or want to cause an accident, then you shouldn't impair your driving abilities with alcohol, beyond the legal limit, because, if you do that, you are greatly increasing the risk you will cause an accident, you are also increasing the risk your judgment will be impaired and that you will do things like speed and ignore, or fail to see, stop signs.

And regarding those two irrelevant articles you posted...

It's bad judgment, and irresponsible, and reckless, to speed around a curve when the road is wet and your tires are slick, or to drive when so you're so tired you fall asleep at the wheel.

People shouldn't do those things either, and, in some cases, doing those reckless things does also warrant vehicular homicide/vehicular manslaughter charges if fatalities occur.

That has nothing to do with the fact that we are discussing drunk driving, which involves the ingestion of alcohol, beyond the legal limit, and then operating a motor vehicle.

Are you really dumb enough to be claiming that, because people do other irresponsible and reckless things behind the wheel that we should regard drunken driving less seriously, and/or lessen the penalties for DUI manslaughter? How about making the penalties more severe for all irresponsible driving behaviors that cause fatalities--that would be more logical. And that's exactly what they are doing now with distracted driving.

Drivers are responsible for making sure that they are in appropriate physical, mental, and emotional condition to effectively, safely, and responsibly operate a motor vehicle, before they even turn the key in the ignition, and they are then responsible for operating that motor vehicle in a safe, prudent and lawful manner, so that they can avoid collisions, and avoid causing collisions, with anything else in the path of their car.

It's all about being responsible behind the wheel--and that includes not driving drunk. It also includes being held responsible, by the imposition of legal penalties, if your irresponsible drunken driving injures or causes the death of someone else.

If you don't like the consequences or penalties you might face, don't do the crime of driving drunk.

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@firefly,

Sorry dear but fault or lack of fault civil or criminal for an accident does not make an accident anything else but an accident. You do not need to have zero fault on everyone part for something for it to be a damn accident.

A woman was backing out of a parking space and looking down on her car floor looking for a drop credit card at the same time and ran into the side of my car.

The accident was her fault however it was an accident for all of that.

A person who have an accident that harm or killed someone due to using the bad judgment of driving tired and falling asleep at the wheel is not morally superior to someone that used bad judgment in getting hammer and driving under the influence of alcohol and doing the same thing.

An both are accidents..............and it is amusing that your position is it is somehow 'better' to be killed by a sleepy driver then a drunk driver or that the drunk driver is more of a 'sinner' then the sleepy driver even when both conditions yield the same results.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

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An both are accidents..............and it is amusing that your position is it is somehow 'better' to be killed by a sleepy driver then a drunk driver or that the drunk driver is more of a 'sinner' then the sleepy driver even when both conditions yield the same results.

If you thought that's what I said, you can't even comprehend simple English. I, in fact, said nothing that resembles what you're calling "my position".

Sorry, I can't dumb down my posts so you can understand them without significantly distorting my remarks.

This topic is way over your head. And so are my posts.

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@firefly,

List of Fallacies

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Equivocation – the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time)[18]

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@DrewDad,

She should like to play games in that manner............

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@BillRM,

I'm not playing games. I'm interested in communicating something, as clearly as possible, not in playing games.

In my last few posts, I'm being very clear about how I'm using certain words, and in what context I'm using the words, and why I am using them that way, and the point I am trying to make.

You completely distorted, or failed to understand, what I was saying, judging by how you summed up "my position".

Quote:

and it is amusing that your position is it is somehow 'better' to be killed by a sleepy driver then a drunk driver or that the drunk driver is more of a 'sinner' then the sleepy driver even when both conditions yield the same results.

I said nothing of that sort. Or anything close to that.

I'm glad you find your version of my position "amusing" , but it would have been better if you had taken the time to understand what I actually did say.

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Long prison sentences, others then to make the sadists such as Firefly happy at great financial and human costs, seems to be counter produced not that fact is a big surprise to most people.

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cor/sum/cprs199911-eng.aspx

The effect of prison on criminal behavior
Adobe Acrobat version (PDF 11KB)

Research summary
Vol. 4 No. 6
November 1999

Question
Does increasing the length of time in prison reduce the criminal behaviour of offenders?

Background
Imprisoning individuals who break the law has many goals. Imprisonment shows society's abhorrence for certain antisocial behaviours and incarceration removes individuals from the community for a period of time. Most offenders however, are eventually released from prison. Thus, another goal of incarceration is that imprisonment will serve to deter offenders from engaging in further criminal behaviour.

Across North America, imprisonment has become a fairly common consequence for law violation. Canada's incarceration rate is high relative to other Western industrialised countries, although it trails the United States by a wide margin. Not only is imprisonment used more often, there is also a trend to confine individuals for longer periods of time in prison. It is commonly assumed that longer sentences are more punishing and more likely to deter individuals from further crime. The increased use of imprisonment and longer prison sentences come with significant financial and social costs. The present study examines whether longer sentences reduce recidivism and meet the goal of deterrence.

Method
A quantitative (meta-analytic) review of the research literature was conducted. Fifty studies that examined the effect of imprisonment and longer sentences on recidivism were analysed. The studies described variations in the use of imprisonment and recidivism. To be included in the review the study must report a minimum follow-up period of at least six months. For example, a study may report the recidivism rates for offenders serving short prison sentences compared to offenders serving long prison sentences. In addition, statistical procedures were employed to investigate whether prison had a deterrent effect for offenders who posed different levels of risk to re-offend. For example, is imprisonment and longer sentences more effective for higher risk offenders than for lower risk offenders?

Answer
The 50 studies involved over 300,000 offenders. None of the analyses found imprisonment to reduce recidivism. The recidivism rate for offenders who were imprisoned as opposed to given a community sanction were similar. In addition, longer prison sentences were not associated with reduced recidivism. In fact, the opposite was found. Longer sentences were associated with a 3% increase in recidivism.

An analysis of the studies according to the risk of the offender also did not show a deterrent effect. For both low risk and high risk offenders, increasing sentence length was associated with small increases in recidivism. Low risk offenders were slightly more likely to commit new offences than high risk offenders. This finding suggests some support to the theory that prison may serve as a "school for crime" for some offenders.

Regardless of the type of analysis employed, no evidence for a crime deterrent function was found.

Policy implications
1.For most offenders, prisons do not reduce recidivism. To argue for expanding the use of imprisonment in order to deter criminal behaviour is without empirical support. The use of imprisonment may be reserved for purposes of retribution and the selective incapacitation of society's highest risk offenders.
2.The cost implications of imprisonment need to be weighed against more cost efficient ways of decreasing offender recidivism and the responsible use of public funds. For example, even small increases in the use of incarceration can drain resources from other important public areas such as health and education.
3.Evidence from other sources suggests more effective alternatives to reducing recidivism than imprisonment. Offender treatment programs have been more effective in reducing criminal behaviour than increasing the punishment for criminal acts.

Source
■Gendreau, P. Goggin, C., & Cullen, F. T. (1999). The Effects of Prison Sentences on Recidivism. Ottawa: Solicitor General Canada.

2 Replies

I just don’t understand drinking and driving

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