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Comment by daedalus_j | Hacker News Reader

Or you could simply make it so that the threat of driving drunk was so high that people actually thought twice.

Get caught in a DUI? You simply never. drive. again... Ever. No 2nd chance. Hurt or kill someone as a DUI? Mandatory minimum jail time.

The difference is that this encourages personal responsibility and has personal consequences, rather than attempting to police the entire population for the bad deeds of the few.

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> Or you could simply make it so that the threat of driving drunk was so high that people actually thought twice.

Every jackboot says this but in reality it does nothing because everyone thinks they're good and won't get caught.

Well, then we just have to accept is as a cost of doing business and not try to stop it, because the same could be said about anything short of a full all-knowing surveillance state. People commit murder because they think they're good and won't get caught. Some don't. Better that ten guilty persons go free than one innocent be convicted though. So we just have to decide how far down "convicted" really means, and if I need to ask the tech gods in the sky for permission to start my car every time I want to go somewhere I'm feeling rather convicted...

Personally I'd rather live in a world with consequences than live in the lowest-common-denominator big-brother world.

Why does the DUI body count need to be so low that the only options for getting there running out society like 1984 or running it like ISIS?

I don't think it does. So I think we actually honestly agree that the current situation is probably fine and that neither mandatory breathalyzers built into all cars nor mandatory loss of driving privileges are desirable outcomes. :-)

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