Drinking and Driving Hypocrisy

Prior to 1974, I was "guilty" of drinking and driving on innumerable occasions. I have no idea how I escaped arrest. Having said that, I am convinced that most people who drink and drive do so because of two main factors.

a) they usually get away with it.

b) their thinking is impaired to begin with.

Should the penalties for drinking and driving be more severe than talking on the phone and driving? Isn't that for individual societies to decide? And if Kentucky decides to make drinking and driving a felony and Arkansas makes it an infraction, and you don't like the playing field, you can move.

Tyson awaits.

The argument here should be about making the penalties for "distracted driving" more severe, not making the penalties for drinking and driving more lax.

and this link shows that alcohol is still the more serious threat for driving fatalities.

 

Afaik we have accident numbers as high as in the US (so higher than the countries surrounding us), but less fatalities or injuries since most accidents occur where everybody is in cars, not in pedestrian zones, and less fatalities, since everybody buckles up and the cars are in a much better condition than elsewhere.
Waste of fuel is true, but we waste more energy on heating our homes when they are cold for example. If we were to only drive 120 now we would save ~.001% of our carbon emission, which really is not that much. Making more people use public transport, and less people using airplanes on short and mid-distance would save us much more energy. So then it becomes a question of how much people want to pay extra to be at another place fast, which I think is fine. But that's just me.

And agreed on speeding in urban areas.

 

I am aware of that. But again, we can safe much more fuel if we do other stuff, so it should not be singled out. And we'll have most cars running on electricity in 20 to 30 years anyways, so...

 

Still uses energy.

 

I think this stuff about distracted driving being more dangerous then drunk driving is a complete red herring. When we get comprehensive figures about people who drive whilst distracted THEN we can compare figures.

Until then it's all supposition.

 

we have an SUV that goes to Auto Stop when one applies the brake at a light...unless the AC is on.

 

But way less than nowadays, to a degree that it probably won't matter. Going to the supermarket 5 times a wekk uses more energy, but there's a chance it gives you fresher food. Going on vacation in a plane uses more energy than staying at home, and going on a plane to a conference uses more energy than a video conference... That is a silly argument, sorry.

 

How do you figure that? The electricity they use is still going to have to be generated in the usual way. Unless you think the cars are generating the electrical energy themselves.

 

Even if they would use energy generated by burning fuel it would be more efficient, because the generator burning that fuel would do it more effectively than the engine in a car. In 30 years Germany may well use 40-60% renewable energy sources, however. Or do you want to claim that taking energy, storing it in plants and animals, letting that sit for tens of thousands of year under the ocean, and then burning it and using a lot of it in the process is more efficient than taking that energy directly from sunbeams or from the movement of the air the sun is producing anyways on this planet?

 

The improvements in efficiency through the use of renewables is not due to the electric car, it will be due to the changes in the way we produce energy.

I've tried a cursory search for the most efficient sources of energy, but drew a blank. All i could find is the proportions of the sources of energy (coal, renewables, gas etc). Do you have the data for efficiency? I assume the renewables are most efficient, but I would also assume that petrol is more efficient than coal, which is the source of the majority of our energy currently. I doubt the coal stations are phased out in the short or shorter-medium term:

 

I don't have such data at hand (and am going to bed), but I am pretty sure I read it somewhere, so a good search may dig it up later. Anyways, if you replace cars with internal combustion engines with electrical cars that draw power from a power grid that uses mainly renewable energy of course that will use less fossil fuel than if you would change the powergrid but not change the car. This makes the change of the car a piece of the puzzle to make cars more efficient in using energy. But the rest of the puzzle also comes about how the powergrid works, and where it draws it's power from. And since we were talking about making cars more efficient this is what should be discussed.

Of course the amount of energy drawn by the car does not change if you use nuclear power, gas, coal or hamsters in wheels to power the power grid that powers the car. However, since renewable energy wastes less energy when powering the powergrid than the others (coal and gas waste energy in the forms light and heat when turned into electricity, nuclear and hamsters are not an option for Germany) it still matters if you want to make a total sum of energy used to propel the car. So if you use a coal power plant to proppel a car 100m you are going to waste more energy to produce enough electricity than if you use wind or solar, even though the amount of energy drawn by the car is the same. Provided that the transimission and tires and so on work similairly on both kind of cars and they weigh and look the same (and wind is the same and yada yada), the amount of energy used to propel the car that runs on petrol is the same, too. It uses more energy however, because it wastes more energy, and it wastes that energy in the engine, not at the power plant, like the electrical car. I am a bit puzzled that this a point of contention.

 

The engine in a petrol car is less efficient than an engine in an electric car, but the electric car has to have the efficiency of the ultimate power generator taken into account.

I wasn't sure whether electric cars were more efficient once you took the losses from the grid into account. I've done some more browsing and apparently the efficiency of a combustion engine is around 20%, whereas the efficiency of an electrical car is around 80% without taking into account the grid losses. But if you take into account the grid losses, it drops to about 28%. So still a difference, but not as huge as one might imagine.
http://pbjots.blogspot.com/2008/07/electric-vs-combustion-engine.html

 

"Not as dangerous" and "not as common" are not the same thing. That incidences of drunk driving are less common now, and thus less common than driving while distracted, does not necessarily make it less dangerous.

This is a fact.

This is one of the oddest instances of planting one's flag and defending it, come what may, as any I've encountered in my eleven years on the site. It is the combination of issues that confounds me. I can't decide if you advocate lesser penalties for drunk driving because it isn't that dangerous after all, or you want harsher punishments for people who drive while distracted or texting. Linking these together has led to some confusing posts and general lack of clarity.

In as succinct a post as possible, what do you want to happen?

 

he wants to be granted summary probation for his 3rd drunk driving arrest?

 

That's not true. the "not as dangerous" claim has nothing to do with prevalence. It's a direct comparison of the efficacy of driving while intoxicated vs. texting. Texting is really ********ing dangerous.

How about having the punishment fit the crime? Adding extra an penalty for the moral "badness" of drinking alcohol is irrational, emotion driven stupidity.

 

So do you want lower penalties for drunk driving, or higher penalties for texting and driving?

I haven't seen anyone arguing that texting while driving is not dangerous, or should not be punished.

 

since it's much harder to prove that texting or talking on the phone ( or eating or... ) was the proximate cause of the driving calamity, it's pointless to create court battles that cannot be won, or would you rather have long trials on texting accident driving?

your reaction to a perceived inequity is completely emotion-driven.

 

bullshit. these studies have been done ages ago. there's absolutely no supposition, we already know that distraction is very dangerous. it's just that they have been done in a context which can be controlled, being a scientific study and all. measuring radio or mobile use is obviously difficult, so what is measured are the things by the side of the road which can and do distract drivers. what was found is that even well intended traffic signs can cause more harm then good. and that's just distractions by the road, i.e. at least people have an eye on the road, you don't need a diploma to know that texting is gonna have far worst consequences.

 

Ok, so now you want us to determine the legality of an act and its relative punishment based on how easy it is to prove? Perhaps we just need more traffic cameras? Then we could catch toes testers and lock them up for good!

Or we could care more about the actual harm done by an irresponsible driver, regardless of what caused their poor driving.

All due respect, but go ******** yourself... You and your dying moralistic worldview don't know the first thing about how i think.

 

I'm not 100% sure about it, but I don't think that's true anymore. AFAIK for modern cars even the aerodynamic sweet spot is somewhere around 120kmh. it's all about the aerodynamic design of the car, and you can use the increased airflow to increase the down-force and therefore efficiency. F1 teams constantly adjust the aerodynamics according the track they are racing, trying to find the best average setting. it's no different with street cars, you can set them up for higher speeds. and given that our cars and roads are safer these days, and the normal speed on Europe's motorways is around 120-130kmh, the cars have been adjusted to that.

 

Drinking and Driving

Looks like stilton pushed at least one correct button.