So, today I woke up to the news of four innocent kids passing away in Sydney due to one perons's drink driving. May their souls rest in peace. I believe one of the big reasons behind this is weak judicial rulings. These judges give stricter punishments for downloading pirated stuff but much weaker punishments for traffic offences, drug / alcohol possession charges, sexual assaults etc.
Do you think there should be much more severe punishments for these as well?
I think this guy should get a life sentence. Easy as that. Although I hate the thought of my taxes keeping him alive for the rest of his life.
Saying that I agree with the others. Even with stricter penalties this would have probably still happened.
The sickening thing is, he will get about 10 years per death, then be allowed to serve the sentences concurrently. Will get a reduced sentence because of "diminished responsibility" (substantial impairment) due to being as dense as a house brick. Another reduction to sentence due to "time already served" waiting for trial and a further sentence reduction by pleading out, and let's not forget "good behaviour" and "parole"…
While I want to see this guy do eternity in prison, reality of it is 5~6 years. The best we can hope for is that the kids family have brothers/relatives already in the prison system to administer some "justice".
If you believe prison movies there's a mob already waiting with their… implements ready.
Even though 5-6 years is not going to be real justice going by the numbers, most people don't understand the effect of prison time on one's life. Unless lucky enough to have huge family support while in prison, inmates lives completely fall apart. When they get out, life is so overwhelmingly difficult to restart that prison life seems much better. Without realising, such people commit another crime and end up back in prison. So don't discount the effects of 5 to 6 years prison time just yet.
No matter how many years this guy gets, the 4 kids are never going to come back to life. Which means prevention of such crimes/accidents is much much better than prosecution. The solution to that is going to be technology, not just stricter laws.
We have enough technological power right now to make cars smart enough to not work if driver is under the influence but it's not yet implemented. Self driving cars is another solution, but that's decades away and I really doubt they're going to become the only way of driving a car. Implementing alchohol check devices for cars is also not going to be a smooth process, people still use 15 years old cars which will have to get these devices fitted, people will find ways to hack it etc, but legislation could eventually make this happen. We did it with emissions regulations so why wouldn't this be done too? I would support such a legislation. Why no one does it, I don't know.
Which means prevention of such crimes/accidents is much much better than prosecution.
Couldn't agree more … but, once the crime (this was not an "accident") has been committed, the law must deal with such offences harshly. There is surely no worse broad category of crime than those against the person (i.e. assault, rape, manslaughter, murder, etc.). These matters must be dealt with accordingly.
Well self driving cars are already available in America and legal so not decades away and cars in Australia do have the self stopping mechanism when there are objects too close to the front of the car. The government needs to make a law to subsidise buying cars that are 5 years old or less which will also help with emissions and be safer to drive
@Milk tea: Any meaningful subsidy of that scale would be financially untenable.
A far simpler and possibly a net positive financial exercise is to make licensing standards higher. It would reduce incompetence related collisions (termed "accidents") and hence affect overall road incidents.
Of course, this would piss a whole lot of people off and would be a kink in the electoral armour.
To anyone still reading this, I started a petition.
https://www.change.org/p/everyone-make-alcohol-ignition-inte…
Would you be so kind to sign and/or give me your opinion.
Alcohol devices aren’t going to work because people will just get some random to breath in
Don't forget he'll also get two other reductions on the sentence thanks to:
1) His Lawyers carefully crafted capypasta statement of apology from Reddit, where he'll feign regret for his actions and the effect it's had on the family and friends of the dead kids.
2) His lawyers request to spend a part of the sentence in a fully tax payer funded court ordered rehab facility, that won't even require he stay or live on the grounds of the facility to complete it.
I believe he will get 10 years not including time served.
A message needs to be sent. Clearly, losing your license isn't enough.
I'd be happy at the thought of my taxes keeping him in jail.
This guy knew that drink driving was illegal, but he still got behind the wheel. He just assumed he wouldn't get caught, so it wouldn't have mattered if the fine and prison time were doubled or tripled. While these measures will deter most people, there will be a minority of the population who just won't care.
What's equally as worse is that his passenger did nothing to stop the driver from drink driving …
Yep, this case is the perfect opportunity to send a message. The passenger should be prosecuted with prison time as well. He knowingly sat aside and let an extremely dangerous situation occur without doing anything to stop it. In fact by being with the driver you could argue he was acting as a form of encouragement or assistance.
Perhaps we can't reach the idiots stupid enough to drink drive, but we can reach the people who willingly associate and empower them. Imagine if everyone who had a drink driving friend suddenly got scared of being sent to prison. They would disown their friends or socially pressure them to change.
What if the driver isn't visibly affected, but is over the limit?
How about if the driver JUST drank a whole bottle of vodka, and hasn't started affecting them when they got in?
I mean, there's some scenarios that just makes it really hard to write laws for…
@CMH: Sure, which is why we'll always have due process and trials to determine if the law was broken and to what extent.
What if the driver isn't visibly affected, but is over the limit?
the test for blood alcohol isn't a visual one.
How about if the driver JUST drank a whole bottle of vodka, and hasn't started affecting them when they got in?
you would probably be over the allowable limit if you drank 3 shots of vodka let alone a bottle.
your mentality is "its only cheating if you get caught" is very wrong
@Archi: I was talking about penalizing the passenger for getting into a car driven by an intoxicated person.
Please read the post that the reply is for before making such comments.
your mentality is "its only cheating if you get caught" is very wrong
He will get a lenient sentence as he was drunk and "didn't know what he was doing".
Which is the opposite of what should happen, he chose to drink, he must take responsibility for his actions. This is part of why we need weed legalised, it hasn't killed millions or caused untold amounts of human suffering.
Having weed legalised would've had as much effect on this event as it would've been to introduce a shark cull.
Oh sorry you were soapboxing? Ok I'll leave you to your irrelevant commenting
It is the opposite, but as spackbace pointed out, weed being legalised has nothing to do with this moron killing those kids.
What is it with stoners and needing to preach about weed solving all of life's problems (never mind that a drug affected driver is no better than a drink driver)? You're as bad as vegans and crossfitters.
A lady crashed on Sydney Harbour Bridge during morning peak while high on pot a few years ago. Trust me, it caused a lot of suffering.
Drunk driver kills innocent people
Legalising weed
I'm trying to find it, but that connection seems to be so tiny as to not even exist
*Allegedly
That's because the weed back then was bush weed. These days it's grown and cut with crap that's far worse.
Yep, Jimmy Hendrix did pretty well on weed…
/s
When someone tells you that their parent 'used weed a lot' when they were growing up you don't immediately picture abuse.
Da fah?
No because there is no relationship between punishment time and whether these crimes occur or not. Other factors cause the behavior.
Prison time is not only extremely expensive for the tax payer, it creates hardened criminals at the end of it where they wouldn't exist otherwise.
The private sector runs the jail system. So it's inhabitants are treated like animals in an effort to cut costs and promote reoffending (so that they get paid again). The formerly non-violent criminal leaves the jail system far more likely to be violent offenders due to psychological damage.
It also tuns them to communism.
So let's just give this guy a slap on the wrist, tell him to behave and send him off on his merry way for killing 4 kids because he CHOSE to drive while drunk?
Nah, Christmas Island isn't getting much use these days……
We need a new penal colony island…
I wonder what Indonesia is doing these days…
You make some good points - skip the prison system entirely and give him no chance to commit any further crimes by immediately executing him
Lethal injection should provide some cost savings. This is a bargain site after all.
You don't want to go too cheap on those lethal injections. Just a slightly wrong mix of chemicals in drugs and those things could kill someone.
I'm really struggle with this type of argument. What are you proposing? Should we remove the prison system entirely for non-violent crimes, heck let's do it with violent crimes as well because we believe everyone can reform?
I can guarantee with you that a lot of people will stop drink driving if the punishment was jail time instead of being fine when they blow over the limit (doesn't matter how much).
I think we should have seperate prison system for first time offenders, to keep them away from the hardened criminals.
Same conditions etc, just only first time offenders inside.
The harsh punishments are there already. The judges just don't dish out penalties that are up to society's expectations.
Life.
But it isn't going to stop people from drink driving (oh I only live 15 away. Oi nah, I feel fine etc.)
Drinking is a huge part of Australian culture so preventing people from drinking isn't going to work for awhile.
Getting around is what needs to be easier, costs me $60 to get home from a night out the other night. Uber/Taxi was the only option as trains and buses had shut down. And not just to/from inner city, getting around the suburbs needs to be easier as well. Thankfully a lot of pubs/rsl's have pickup/dropoff services but you're still SOL if you're just trying to get home from a mates. Better public transport, cheaper taxi/uber, more emphasis on cycling and making cycling safer etc.
Yes the costs will likely be prohibitive but harsher sentencing isn't going to prevent this.
Why not push for a change in Aussie culture away from heavy drinking?
Way too difficult.
Alcohol lobbying, ingrained in our culture and people are going to do what they want.
I still know pack a day+ smokers despite all the campaigning and prohibitive price hiking.
We can probably reduce it and it would probably largely be a generational change but it's still going to be around.
I still know pack a day+ smokers despite all the campaigning and prohibitive price hiking.
Actually, I must say anti-smoking campaigns are working.
Smoking rates are plunging and smoking is generally seen as a filthy habit, even to some smokers.
We could use the same tactics for alcohol…
@CMH: Yes they are working but my point is that it won't ever hit zero. Even if you take it off the shelves and outright ban sales of either, people will find a way if they want it.
Smoking has been proven to be cancerous, they're selling packets with pretty horrific images and there has been constant campaigning against it. Numbers have dropped significantly compared to what they once were but there is still a sizable amount of the population still smoking despite everything trying to work against it. People will do what they want.
Even if you reduce the drinking population in Australia to one person, all it takes is for that one person to get drunk and decide to drive home for this to happen again.
@GUYANDSON: For every person like the guy in the news, I'm sure many more are driving drunk. These other people won't be caught, or have an accident.
If we reduce the overall numbers of people actually driving drunk, there will be fewer cases like these happening.
Will it stop them completely? Probably not, but like I said if it reduces the numbers significantly it's a win.
@CMH: And I don't doubt it would reduce fatalities and the number of people drink driving.
However it is much easier said than done. Look at what tobacco companies did back then and what sugar companies are doing now. e.g. NY's mayor tried to limit the sizes of the cups you could buy from certain retailers in 2013 in an effort to limit soft drink consumption. Not a limit on how much you could buy, just the portions they came in and it was met with insane animosity. You will 100% be able to expect the same here.
@GUYANDSON: https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/alcopops-tax-cuts-drinkin…
So it was of course repealed.
Doesn't mean it's futile to do anything though, just because you don't fix something 100% isn't a great reason not to fix it 10%.
@[Deactivated]: Again, I'm not against reduction, but do you remember the backlash against this tax as it was being introduced? It was wild from what I remember. Initially blocked and then passed some time later. Now multiply that backlash, criticism etc. as you try to double down.
An effort in reduction will be a multi-decade process, we aren't going to be able to tax the daylights out of alcohol (more than we already are) tomorrow. Anything that will be pushed will be met with severe opposition. Maybe 20-30 years if we're lucky.
A cultural shift away from drinking will likely be 50-100 years, maybe some more, this is something I believe will happen naturally as people focus more on their health.
If we want to actually tackle this problem of people drink driving, why not tackle the reasons as to why people want to drive home first?
@GUYANDSON: Tough shit. I enjoy the friendly drink once in a while but there's no reason alcohol shouldn't be taxed. It can still be purchased very cheaply. That's why you see so many junkies drinking.
We should raise the price of alcohol to make people think twice about every drink they have. Only how much is necessary for a good time - never overboard.
@CMH: "For every person like the guy in the news, I'm sure many more are driving drunk."
As someone who has worked in bars for 15 years, I guarantee it, I see it all the time. And their mindset is, until they have a crash, is that it is a victimless crime, therefore they don't care.
@AdosHouse: I worked hospitality for almost 10 years and can confirm. “I’m not hurting anyone…” until they do.
I'm hoping this is another problem tech can solve for us either through self-driving vehicles or through vehicles that have enough sensors to determine erratic driving behaviour or even passively test for impairment in other ways. People won't like the idea of the choice of driving being taken away from them but if the accuracy is there, then I'm on board
The trouble with Aussie drinking culture must stem from
a more aggressive aspect of our culture, not the alcohol itself.
I've been in other parts of the world where everybody seems to drink way more regularly, often to excess, with almost none of the violence we see.
Instead everyone is out for a good time, where alcohol helps them relax, even get a little crazy, but always as fun drunks loosening up to destress.
In Aus we have people who wanna get into fights to destress, and the alcohol just helps them let that out. It's hard to imagine the same people punching out others on weekends are model citizens the rest of the week. And many of us can drink plenty without becoming violent maniacs.
Getting people to drink less would be a decent start, but there's something else there that needs to be addressed.
A lot of public transports close between 1 to 5 am in Sydney. There'll be a lot of risk takers.
Where the drunk driver was driving as well, not very well serviced compared to the inner west for example
It's illegal to drink and cycle too btw
Ah yes. Another public outcry for harsher punishments.
Where's the public outcry regarding prevention?
How do you prevent a person from doing something completely stupid, when it is common knowledge that it is stupid and dangerous to do it?
As someone above pointed out, requiring all new cars to be fitted with breathalysers would be a technological solution. Limited cost and largely on people who can afford it.
Breathalyzers work because they're administered by a cop watching you. If it becomes mandatory you're going to have people just attach a plastic bag to it and be done.
@HighAndDry: I assume they can work something that takes more effort than that to fool. Measures other things in breath as well.
Obviously not prefect, but intentionally circumventing the device would have very strict punishments.
@U4333439: Yes, but the harder it's to circumvent, the more inconvenience it causes in the case of a malfunction. And if every car has it fitted, even a minor inconvenient becomes a major usability issue.
(Edit: it's the standard IT security vs convenience trade off).
Ban Alcohol like they have banned Weed, Coke and Heroin.
Yes banning drugs definitely extinguishes use. Banning alcohol in particular has proved effective in the past. Awesome thinking. Considerable knowledge of history.
@ozbjunkie: I guess you misread the context.
It was the opposite of what you were thinking.
I was trying to convey how stupid it is to ban some substances like Weed, but allow others like tobacco or alcohol.
Either Ban it all or unban it all IMO.
Weed is less destructive IMO than alcohol or tobacco.
@blawler05: If only I could assume a general level of intelligence, your sarcasm would have been clear. Alas, it is not safe to assume such things.
I just finished watching narcos Mexico, and was wondering, as I often have, why Mexico won't just legalise drugs to kill the industry. Turns out their current president is pushing for exactly that. Will be interesting to see whether that changes, given that both criminals and criminal justice profit from the war on drugs.
@ozbjunkie: I'm not holding my breath ( I wish they will succeed). I just failed to see how the drug crime will stop when hard drugs are " legalised" - meaning once the drugs can be bought and sold in supermarkets and convenience stores, all current criminals will change their jobs to retail store manager or warehouse supervisors? Obviously the druglards don't care about that..they only care about their excessive profits, and will do everything to protect that.. illegal or otherwise. The drug crime issue over there is not about drug itself only - it is more to do with the economy, the corruption and other social issues, the drug is just a vehicle how these problems come together to create the situation. Of course again, it might be a right thing to do to tackle the problem.
@Maxxjet: In terms of availability, I should probably have said that I support medicalisation rather than legalisation. We probably don't need hard drugs available 24/7 at convenience stores, but through pharmacies, using prescriptions. That sort of thing increases addicts exposure to healthcare and potential intervention.
Meanwhile, there would be more money available for intervention and treatment without the huge costs of policing and imprisoning addicts. Most places that legalise or medicalise drugs do not see a large increase / higher prevalence in use. Some theorist propose that drugs being accepted reduces uptake by young people as it's no longer rebellious or transgressive.
Regarding criminals changing their occupations, it depends who you are talking about.
The serious criminals working in cartels probably won't get day jobs, but a decrease in profitability of drugs will decrease the cartels power in general. It's a relatively uncontroversial claim that there used to be organised crime factions which refused to deal in drugs - these factions were ultimately swept away by the power and profitability of the ones that dealt in drugs. In short, existing cartel members won't quit, but it may reduce recruitment rates if there's not so much money flying around to pay new workers.
The petty criminals who steal and rob for a fix will have less reason to do so, as their drugs may be cheaper. More importantly, legalisation or medicalisation reduces stigma and makes more resources available for rehabilitative services, which together mean people have a greater chance to re-enter the workforce.
The fears / risks appear to be increased prevalence or intensity of use, but that doesn't seem to be justified by observations from other countries. Most people that don't take drugs and also cannot get drugs, could access them with a little effort. The reason most people are not junkies isn't because it's hard to get heroin etc.
@ozbjunkie: Yep ban alcohol the Yanks tried that in the 1930s and 40s I believe the years were all it did was spawn a massive criminal empire of crooks selling alcohol. There were fights and murders between various crime gangs. Alcohol was still available in certain places for a huge cost. Australia at the moment is catching up to certain countries in the world where alcohol is hugely expensive because of this tax that incresses the price every six months same as petrol.
By giving them something to live for. People don't go taking insane risks because they fulfilling lives, they do it because things suck and they want to feel alive.
Sometimes, if you really want to hurt someone, you gotta give them something to care about first
As a parent your a jerk
The kids fault the were out at 8pm..
The most idiotic thing.ive ever read
Why not. At 8pm in summer it is still realatively light.
Why shouldnt they be out on their own at 8pm Playing?
Holy f-k this is one of the worst cases of victim blaming i've read on this site.
You guys missed his previous comment that is now deleted. This one is bad, the other one was sickening. The description for the removal says it all.
Hate speech against….? Reasoning has to be more specific than a generalization…
what a fking sad human being Sage is. I hope he's just not in the penalty box and be removed from this site all together.
Goodness me. You took dumb to a whole new level
I find it ironic that hard labour, which can be helpful to society, is deemed inhumane in this day and age but locking them up all day in a cell isn't.
Don't even have to be hard labor. Just get them to sort through the recycling. It smells and people wish cycle stuff like used nappies. Then get them to do 3 minute videos telling people how bad the job is and run it as ad spots on TV.
Or in a similar theme have them attend to hospital waste that has been used on victims of drink drivers.
Rip such a sad story
He will get 5 to 10 years
The justice system is a business faster your out the faster you can reoffend so everyone keeps getting paid .
I hope he has an opportunity to kill himself in prison and takes it.
You're assuming they're remorseful and sorry for what he has done.
He could be thinking that he's been hard done by for a small mistake and the kids shouldn't have been there.
He needs to epstein himself
Epstein was killed dude he had dirt on some pedos
Driver:
It's cool to drink and I gotta get home.
There's no public transport. Good luck everyone when I drive!
I don't think I will hit anyone when I drive home. I'm a functional drunk!
Don't forget the "I've had a nap for x hours it should be fine now"
Personally, I think humans should not be in control of any motor vehicle.
It's not just drink driving cases … It's also things like road rage incidents and accidents caused by driver fatigue.
Hopefully, cars will be fully self-driving soon.
it's kind of hard to get blotto and run down another pedestrian when you are locked in jail away from any cars