Ways to Prevent Drinking and Driving

Drunk driving cause massive financial, personal and bodily injuries every year. Are there ways to prevent drinking and driving? If so, what are they?

Most people don’t really think through the problems caused by drinking and driving. Let’s assume you get pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. You are looking at spending $5,000 to $10,000 or more on a lawyer just to start. If you lose or plead, you will face another big fine. In many states, you’ll be looking at months or years in jail. That also means you lose your job and probably have to file bankruptcy since you will not be able to pay your bills. If you hurt or kill someone in an accident while driving drunk, you can petty much kiss off five to ten years of your life or more because you are going to jail. In short, it is a disaster.

So, are there ways to prevent drinking and driving? The primary method at the moment involves enforce draconian penalties. Most states try to make a drunk driving conviction so painful that people will think twice about drinking and driving. In addition to the consequences mentioned above, you are going to lose your license and your car insurance rates are going to go through the roof. We are talking major problems.

The statistics bear out that the penalty approach to drunk driving has only partially worked. Are there other ways to prevent it? Yes, but all are fairly controversial. Perhaps the most interesting is a technological approach. This is known as the blow test. Yes, it is essentially the same breath test you take when pulled over by an officer, but with a preventive approach. Let’s take a closer look.

The key is a breath alcohol ignition interlock device. This is a mechanical device that is wired into the ignition on a car. As you can probably guess, the driver has to blow into the device before the car will turn on. If the driver blows more than a certain alcohol percentage, the car will not turn on. In this way, the “BIID” prevents drinking and driving.

There are problems with the BIID approach. You’ve probably already figured them out. First, there is no guarantee that the DRIVER is actually the person blowing into the device. You could have a second person who has not been drinking do it. Who would do this? You’d be surprised. Friends, family and even parent’s kids have been found to do it in the past. In short, the BIID is not a perfect answer.

At this time, there really aren’t sure fire ways to prevent drinking and driving. Severe penalties help, but it really comes down to personal choice and people will often make bad decisions.

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