Man on trial for killing Drunk Driver that killed his sons

[houndawg]

............and our "justice system" fails again.

You finally get back from Bundy's ranch?

[JohnStOnge]

I can understand the reaction but there is a need to understand that we don't know that, all other things being equal, what happened would not have happened without the guy having been drinking. As I've written in other threads the population has been programed to think that a person having alcohol in his system when that person is involved in a vehicle accident means the alcohol in his system "caused" the accident. And that's just not the case.

That's not just me saying that. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports on "Alcohol-Impaired Driving" consistently include the caveat that alcohol in an accident involved driver's system does not mean alcohol caused the accident. An example can be seen, for example, in the 2012 NHTSA Alcohol-Impaired Driving report at http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811870.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . The first two paragraphs of the report are as follows with the standard reference to cause and effect (or lack thereof) underlined:

Drivers are considered to be alcohol-impaired when their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher. Thus, any crash involving a driver with a BAC of .08 or higher is considered to be an alcohol- impaired-driving crash, and fatalities occurring in those crashes are considered to be alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities. The term “driver” refers to the operator of any motor vehicle, including a motorcycle.

Estimates of alcohol-impaired driving are generated using BAC values reported to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and imputed BAC values when they are not reported. The term “alcohol-impaired” does not indicate that a crash or a fatality was caused by alcohol impairment.

Unfortunately, even though the NHTSA consistently and correctly includes that statement in its technical reports, it also consistently works in concert with public health and safety extremist groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to create the impression in the minds of the public that, in any particular instance of traffic fatality associated with alcohol impaired driving, alcohol impairment DID cause the fatality.

It's quite possible that two kids pushing a car could be killed by someone with no alcohol in their system accidentally hitting them. It's an accident. A tragic accident. But an accident. And if you change the scenario so that a person with an alcohol level sufficient to result in an impaired driving charge accidentally hit them it's still an accident. And it's an accident such that we don't know it wouldn't have happened if the driver hadn't been drinking.

[JohnStOnge]

But if that driver were sober everybody would still be alive in this situation...

See, there's an example of the problem. You don't know that. Nobody does.

If you know the BAC of the driver you can establish a confidence level of sorts. But let's say it was 0.08. That would make you roughly 50% confident that the accident would not have occurred if that driver had been sober.

That's not a real high confidence level.

I tried looking for the guy's BAC so I could get an approximate confidence level for this particular case. But it's never going to be 100%. There's never going to be absolute certainty that the accident would not have occurred if the driver were sober. I'll qualify that by saying that as a practical matter there are some instances in which you can essentially be sure. Like somebody who has a very high BAC and gets on the interstate going the wrong way then weaves all over the place and hits somebody. But this incident we're talking about isn't like that. It looks like it was somebody pushing a car down a road and getting hit from behind. That kind of thing can happen just from a driver taking their eyes off the road to look at a sign or something. I also read one comment that indicated it was dark. So on and so forth. We do NOT know in this instance that those kids would be alive if the driver hadn't been drinking.

MADD and it's allies sure have been successful in brainwashing people on this issue.

[mrklean]

Karma