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Originally Posted by zeloc  The real enemy here is drunk driving. Everyone needs to stand up for their beliefs in this area, both in personal situations and regarding legislation. Think of what could have been if there had been some reforms in the year prior to this tragedy occurring, think if this could have been prevented, and I'm not saying that it is through more strict laws because there are many possibilities, just one example would be changes in driver education with more personal exposure for the new drivers to the consequences of drunk driving, but something has to be done and the real tragedy is that there are so many preventable situations occurring every day. |
The main kind of reform I see making a real difference in this area would be auto-piloting cars so that a person's level of intoxication would no longer be of great concern, or inspire people to largely get drunk within walking distance of where they'll be sleeping that night. Or ... create/legalize a party drug that doesn't affect driving ability so greatly.
Prohibition doesn't seem to work very well, we have to provide positive alternatives rather than solely negative reactions if we want a long term solution. Also, driver fatigue is just as dangerous as drunk driving, so if this is an important issue to you, you might also look into that.
The mention of providing more information is good though. I'd like to see people having access to Breathalyzers at bars so they can know how they rate before heading out on the road, even if it'd mostly help people avoid DUIs when they feel fairly sober but are technically drunk (.08 BAC can be a fairly low level of intoxication for a lot of people). One limitation is that most youth likely aren't getting drunk at bars.
The high drinking age and prices at bars/pubs may actually make responsible drinking more difficult for many young people (they're left to drinking at parties where they may not even know what they're ingesting, without having a chance to develop good drinking habits growing up first, making binges more likely).