I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
“Why driving drunk is equivalent to premeditated murder”
October 15, 2008
Peter Hitchens — the sane, rational Hitchens brother — presents a grim, but agreeable, proposition:
To climb into a powerful car, when you have been drinking beer and Sambuca all night (so much so that hours afterwards your blood still contains twice the legal maximum), when you are jet-lagged and when you have had only two hours sleep, is in itself a criminal act…To continue driving, once you are aware that your performance is erratic and that you are suffering from lack of sleep, is doubly criminal. To drive at such a speed under such conditions is, likewise, a premeditated homicidal act in which the only unknown is the name, or names, of the people you can reasonably expect to kill. If you don’t kill them, it won’t be any thanks to you. Does the fact that the killer doesn’t know or care whom he kills make it better? I can see no reason why the law could not classify it as a premeditated homicidal act. The roads are never empty. A drunk and sleepless driver who ventures on to those roads has a strong statistical chance of causing a fatal accident. I call that premeditation. In a way it’s worse than an ordinary murder, since in this case the killer does not even mind whom he kills. The motive, however, is ultimately the same as that of all murders - an arrogant belief that our own pleasure or convenience is more important than the life of another. Also, getting drunk ( as I’ve pointed out in other contexts) is a voluntary act which adds to the criminal’s responsibility for whatever crimes he commits while drunk. It’s the opposite of an excuse. It makes it worse.
Certainly, making steeper the punishment for impaired driving would be, I think, a good idea. Slaps on the wrist simply do not deter people from climbing behind the wheel of a car in a state best described as ‘plastered.’ Nor do advertising campaigns, for that matter; drinking and driving is a problem which is becoming more prevalent in Alberta, not less.
Only hard and steep penalties, I think, will really work. That or some manner of steep economic disincentive, like the permanent (e.g. lifetime) loss of one’s driver’s license, or some scheme by which people who have been convicted of impaired driving necessarily pay, until their dying day, higher insurance rates and higher per-litre rates at the gas pump.
But personally, I rather like Hitchens’ suggestion — charge impaired drivers who kill with first-degree (pre-meditated) murder; charge impaired drivers who are caught before their actions become lethal with attempted first-degree murder. If nothing else, it would communicate the true severity with which society ostensibly frowns on impaired driving; to fail to communicate this severity by some mode of punishment only communicates that society, as a whole, does not in fact take the issue seriously.
