The twist in this story?
The woman knew she was too intoxicated to drive, so she asked her boyfriend if he could drive for her. He said yes, had a car accident, and now she's at fault. The logic here is that the boyfriend was too drunk to refuse to accept the car keys, so the law holds the other drunk person at fault. The worse part here is that if the woman had driven her own car and gotten into a car accident, she would be facing less severe penalties.
I wonder if we, as a society, could get more screwed up over drinking and driving.
In my opinion, the problem is that we view the decision of whether to drive or not at the point of departure. But the real decision point is not after a person drinks, but before. A person is responsible for arranging transportation to and from a bar (or house or wherever) before that person takes a single drink. If a person chooses not to make arrangements, then it doesn't matter what the circumstances are afterwards. It doesn't matter whether a bartender serves them several drinks. It doesn't matter if that person downs part of a keg. By not providing for transportation while sober, that person is guilty of drinking and driving. Period.
Totally agree; honestly, that should be common sense. A person whose judgement has been impaired in whatever way should not be making decisions. I guess part of the problem is that many people don't plan ahead.
ReplyDeleteThe other part of the problem is that we don't hold people accountable for their own actions because we let them use alcohol as an excuse for poor judgement. I think we should be saying that they exercised poor judgement before drinking.
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