Sunday, October 3, 2021

Driving contagion

 "My health care is none of your business!"

To an extent, sure.

Your drinking is also none of my business - under certain circumstances.

If you drink yourself into a stupor in the privacy of your own home, that's your God-given right. If you do it repeatedly and bring on cirrhosis, I might note the cost you've thereby imposed on the medical system, but people make all sorts of choices that somewhat raise their risks of needing medical care. We don't want to go down the road of routinely policing behaviors where people increase their own risk of medical harm.

But if you get behind the wheel of a car, then your drinking is very much my business.

It's not that drunk driving is murder.

If you take a gun that you believe to be loaded, point it at someone, and pull the trigger, that's attempted murder. If the gun actually is loaded and if your aim is good enough for the distance you're at, then it will be murder in fact.

You had the intent to kill the person you aimed the gun at.

Driving drunk isn't like that.

First, most drunk drivers aren't intending to kill anyone. They simply want to get somewhere, and they tell themselves that they're not that impaired.

Second, it's pretty common for someone to drive drunk and not kill anybody. With enough luck, you can make it home from the bar with not even a scratch on your car.

Of course, you do have an elevated risk of having an accident, but maybe you just end up in the ditch with no more than some bruises.

Then again, you might kill yourself and nobody else - driving solo and smashing your car into a tree.

From here