Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 25, 2013 2:19 PM

Whilst I would agree repeate DUI drivers have issues with addiction, I don’t agree with shaming them as it will either have little effect or as others have noted cause them to re-offend.

The next problem is banning convicted drivers is often counter productive as well, as the knock on effect quite often is for loss of livelyhood etc which has knock on effects on other people (family etc).

A better way to deal with the issue is to try and resolve the issues that underline the ediction. However that is in reality impossibly expensive.

One country actually tried aversion therapy, where the offenders were injected with a drug that caused very unpleasant side effects (nausea and vomiting) if alcohol was ingested. It was shown to have little effect longterm and was expesive to setup and run.

There is technology available that can detect exhailed alcohol that has been experimentaly connected to a vehical ignition. Basicaly it prevents an intoxicated person driving but has the downside of not allowing a sober person to drive if a passenge is sufficiently drunk.

Over time I’ve come to think of the solutions as being longterm and thus expensive to the state or short term and ineffective.

I don’t know what the answer is but with DUI I suspect we may be asking the wrong questions.

Clive Robinson • January 27, 2013 7:48 AM

@ Michael Brady,

Think of a drunk driver’s addiction as a disease with lethal consequences for non-consensual innocents.

Sorry the analogy does not work for me, especialy with the example you chose of viral infections.

Firstly because during most viral infections if the person has not had that strain befor, it is the early stages where they are most infectious to others. And as such quite often they don’t know they have it at that point because the symptoms are minimal [1]. It’s generaly only at the point when the virus has done quite a bit of damage that the body starts producing the new antibodies etc that fevers, chills and severe muscle aches start. And as is fairly well known most annual flu strains are different each year which is why “flu shots” are so “hit and miss” [2].

Further unlike those who consume alcohol most people do not willingly chose to get themselves infected with flu or other viruses. Which is why many take the “technology route” of vaccination and anti-viral drugs to try and avoid it (even though they are either “hit or miss” or ineffective).

Now as I indicated in my post above there are technical solutions to the problems with DUI, and there have also been other measures put in place such as denying certain kinds of health care to those who do not moderate or stop their alcohol intake as there have been with those who have BMI’s over 30.

So the roots of a technical denial system for those who Drink and Drive are already becoming accepted in society.

Admittedly this is because it is easy to portray the person using negative stereotyping and thus take the “moral high ground” to “look down on them” and claim it’s their degenerate behaviour etc thus their own fault. Which is kind of what you are doing with,

If transportation issues create a hardship for his family it should be seen as his issue to resolve rather than a reason for us to relax public safety protections

There are two points to note first I was by no means calling for further relaxation in public safety protections.

Secondly I actually think a major part of the problem is that the protections are way to relaxed or weak, as it can fairly easily be shown that getting a DUI is a game of chance where the probability of actually being caught or convicted is actually very low compared to the offending rate. [Some estimates put the actual offending rate as above 90% and others a lot closer to 100%, for people during their driving career have been Driving Under the Influance of a “Social Drug” sufficient to be a danger to themselves or others.]

So realisticaly DUI is a socialy accepted norm engrained into society of which “only the unlucky / careless get caught”.

With such endemic problems there is the so called “Chinese Solution”. In China they had a significant drugs problem which those in power considered endemic and had to be removed from society (even though many of them indulged). The solution they came up with was to shoot those who grew, processed or used the drugs in the town square and then bill the family for the bullet and disposing of the body as rubbish.

You can see from a couple of comments above that this is not going to be a popular solution no matter how effective.

Further we know from the US experiment with “Prohibition” that there are strong causal effects with significant secondary effects related to the use of this particular “social drug” (as there are with other legal social drugs such as caffine, tabbaco and various prescribed medications). Which get considerably worse when they become non-legal causing significant harm to society at levels that dwarf those of the legalised use.

The only thing that can be realy said about alcohol DUI is all that has been tried in the West so far has either been ineffective or very expensive. Thus we either live with it, spend the money or try alternatives. Such as technical preventative measures where the offender knows that every alcohol consumption offence is going to be caught and prevented by their vehical not starting and thus the cost can actually be put back onto the consumer through the purchase price of the vehical via legislation not taxation (as with exhast emmissions and safety features).

And yes I’m aware that some percentage of the population will either “hot wire” around the technical measure or switch to other social drugs legal or otherwise…

At the end of the day it’s societies call…

[1] There is published information that results from some neurological research which suggests that “Man Flu” is not actually a myth, even though it’s “in the mind” not the body (as all pain is). Basicaly men feel the effects of a rise in body temprature more quickly due to a different relative structure in the brain caused by puberty,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9824136/Man-Flu-might-not-be-a-myth-after-all.html

And as a result take to their beds more quickly and are thus less likely to spread viral infections to as many others as women are. And yes there are good evolutionary reasons as to why these structures differ in men and women.

[2] The US is way more susceptible to failurs to deal with flu epidemics than many other Western nations due to hospital bed shortages. The US is now something like 43rd on the list of hospital bed to patient ratios behind some nations that are regarded as 3rd World. Various people have looked at this and have concluded it’s as a direct consiquence of the Health Insurance Industry. Obviously come flu season this lack of beds has a knock on effect on other areas of health care and some have argued that this causes secondary deaths and a greater cost to society as it is the economicaly productive not the young or infirm that tend to suffer the secondary deaths [3].

[3] Some US based “journalists” have actually posed the US bed criticality issue as one of people not getting [4] or paying for flu vaccination in ways that blaim those who don’t get a shot each year as being responsible for these secondary deaths. Thus apparently trying to pass the “hot potato” from the Health Care industry and it’s low re-investment rates in hospitals etc.

[4] Flu vaccination and the use of anti-viral drugs is a controversial subject. In the US even though there is body of evidence that flu vaccination or use of anti-virals in the economicaly productive is ineffective due to the “hit and miss” results of new strains etc, there is considerable peer preasure to get one [5].

[5] Of interest to those who are more susceptible to the effects of viral infection, more recent evidence suggests that the anti inflamatory effects of the newer heart related medications such as statins are actually more effective than the vaccinations or anti-virals. Further in other countries where the vaccines are subsidized from taxation they prioritize the infirm, the elderly, children over the healthy economicaly productive as this is where the evidence suggests the spending is best placed for society in general. It has been sugested that actually getting “down and dirty” and having various infections is actually good for us due to the way the bodies immune system works. Which might account for why an increasing number of GP’s don’t actually get vaccinated.

Clive Robinson • January 28, 2013 12:57 AM

@ Jason T. Miller,

Seems to me that publishing the names of the individuals and establishments who served the intoxicating elements of the crime

The problem with this is how do you know who’s name to use…

First of the person getting drunk may not have be purchasing the alcohol drink by drink, they might have been round at a friends house, or gatecrashed a party. I’ve also seen people bring their own drink to a bar and top their drink up from a bottle of cheap vodka etc under the table where the bar man/keep does not see them do it.

Secondly it’s unlikely that the drunk person has “gone to the bar” to get the drinks, it would been more likely one of their more sober companiions who will A, get served and B, not spill the drinks on the way back.

Thirdly the drunk might have visited several different places so who do you shame, the bar where the first drink was purchased and the drunk was actually sober or the bar where the person cannot even remember purchasing a drink…

The simple fact is places that sell alcohol are in the business of selling a legal product.

Depending on the jurisdiction the places are licensed to do so by license or permit. The local civic authorities are responsable for issuing and revoking licences. Therefor (in theory) if a bar gets to many complaints made against it to the civic authorities it loses it’s licence/permit and goes out of business. So (again in theory) there is already a workable remedy against places that repeatedly sell drink to those already past their reasonable capacity.

But as I’ve indicated above your drunk may not be visible to the bar man/keep as they may not have served drink to the drunk.

Stoping people drinking to excess is difficult at the best of times, but trying to stop a person who has decided to be sneaky about how they do it is well neigh impossible. Shaming those around them is unlikely to work in either the short or long term as the drunk will just go some place else or change the way they go about getting drunk.

A perhaps sobering statistic is that the US transportation agency figures show deaths due to alcohol in 2010 as 10,288 and slightly under one third of all road fatalities. They also showed that for economic calculation a human life was worth 6million USD* which means that according to the transportation agency the economic cost of alcohol was a fraction under 62billion USD or 205USD out of every living US citizens pocket…

• I’d take this figure as being quite variable as it’s about two thirds of another US Gov agency (EPA) figure for the value of a human life and other figures put a human life as little as 1.4million USD.