[Phanuthier]

I think there's a few problems here, Dion.

1. There is a difference between punishment and prevention. The assumption being made with the proposal is punishment is prevention, and as ken pointed out, thats not the case. Very little to no correlation, unfortunately. The plan is not a forward thinking plan; rather, it looks like a reactionary and emotional plan. If more severe punishment does not mitigate the issue (and I don't think it does) then its a useless plan.

I can think of a few ideas to actively remove the issue, but it will be costly and near impossible to implement. For instance, driver licenses or ID must be recorded (ala new clubs that take a picture of your ID) before you order a drink, to record who was where... yes, Big Brother, yes difficult to implement. Next, cameras in parking areas to record won is driving. I'm pretty sure you could get someone like Nvidia to whip up some software to record which photos in ID correlate to who was entering the car. Yes, I see alot of holes, but its a idea to start on.

Or ... better public transit, which I think works really well.

2. We have a broken legal system in North America, and I can see there being so many challenges. You can bet if we drastically change the fines in any way, there's going to be alot of push back and alot of these criminal convictions challenged. What do you do when you get a ticket? Challenge it in the coarts and it usually gets discounted or just plain thrown out; thats been suggested on CP many times. They probably do something similar with a DUI. If you want to throw people in jail with long sentences, to convict them is going to cost alot of money. Remember this isn't someone else's money, this is your money - tax payers money. This money has to come from somewhere. Apperently in North America, there are larger fines for trying to save someone's life then taking someone's life. Sort of embarrassing.

3. ty social structure of driving. Bad drivers, irresponsible drivers, reckless drivers. If we extend the consequences to similar issues/threats, then I see no reason why we shouldn't have the same (crazy) consequences to those driving while talking on their cell phone or texting. I'll bet cellphones / texting sit pretty high on the accidents and death causes, but it doesn't get the same press as DD. (For the record, I'm not excusing DD here. Just showing the many issues we have with the whole social structure we have of driving.) I think whatever consequences and prevention we have for DD, we should have for cellphones and driving. Way too many jackasses here that that are preoccupied on their phones while driving. And we haven't even talked about the just plain bad drivers in Calgary, like the grandpa who decided to blow 3 straight stop signs and I almost smoked him on the first one today. Nor have we talked about the self-rightous self-governing drivers who probably cause more then a few accident, see Left Hand Lane thread (aka 4x4 and REDVANs thread).

All in all ... a very convoluted problem we have in Canada and North America.