Arkansas' Scarlet-Letter Number Plate

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't have a problem with this.

It'd be easy to spot those convicted of drunken-driven offenses under a measure proposed by one Arkansas lawmaker: Hot pink license plates, starting with the letters DWI, would be issued to repeat offenders. The proposal, by state Rep. Pam Adcock, would require anyone convicted three or more times of driving while intoxicated to display the pink DWI license plates on his or her car. 

Do you? Why?

 [hat tip: Matthew Fulvio]

Comments

[G'Kar]

I don't necessarily have a problem with it, but I'm not sure it would do much good either. I suppose it might embarrass the owners, but would that be sufficient to prevent them from going out and driving drunk yet again? Or would they decide to tie one on to forget they have hot pink license plates?

[Myrtle]

I don't get the point. Is it just embarrassment? Is the tag about the car being dangerous or about the driver?

Clearly, family members other than the convicted can and in many cases probably will be driving the tagged vehicle, spouse, minor children, etc.

Maybe it's a signal to police that if the car so much as twitches they can pull it over. Maybe this is a way around "probable cause". Pink tagged cars can now be pulled over at will no matter who is driving them and the police won't have to really justify it. So now that you went out and partied too much and made your mistake, the rest of your family members get be constantly harrassed on their way to the grocery store or work.

[Myrtle]

I seemed to have miss this glaring statement...

"three or more times of driving while intoxicated "

If they reform their insurance laws so that insurance companies are not FORCED to insure high risk drivers then this wouldn't be an issue. No insurance, no car. The private sector would gladly drop risky drivers if allowed.

[Martin Owens]

Can't agree with that!

There are too many ways to abuse this one. Why not a license plate with a warning code for child molesters, spousal abuse, drug offenders, sex criminals, violent felonies, while you're at it?

And since we'll all soon have government health programs, like it or not, what could be more logical than to use license plates for instant triage: smokers, obese, heavy drinkers, HIV positive, sickle cell...you know, let the firemen and EMTs save the " good" people first.

The urge to push other people around, supposedly in a " good cause" is a bottomless pit. I say, don't feed the beast.

[K. Dale Boley]

In Ohio they use yellow plates with red letters. In my small town I've seen this hot chic driving a firebird around with those plates. It's clear she's a party girl. I'll bet she puts out when she's drunk.

[jSpin]

Well, here we get into permanent punishment. Either the law should punish an offender (whatever the offense) and consider their 'debt to society' paid, or be changed so they can't be out there endangering the rest of us until they can prove themselves. I disagree with cutsey pink plates, but still letting a repeat offender drive. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? The plates wont keep him from doing it again. How about a five year driving suspension in the law for the third offense?

[TJ]

Embarassment, scorn, ridicule, and other social feedback "used to be" the way we controlled the behavior of the bad-boys. It is way past time that these "corrective" measures returned, "PC" be damned.

[Loren]

"Why not a license plate with a warning code for child molesters, spousal abuse, drug offenders, sex criminals, violent felonies, while you're at it?"

Because those aren't vehicle-related. There's a much stronger relationship between DWI and driving than between spousal abuse and driving. Of course, this could open the door to embarrasing plates for other repeat driving offenses, like speeding. But there's nowhere near the same kind of stigma attached to being a repeat speeder as there is to being a drunk driver.

"Well, here we get into permanent punishment."

No we don't. See the article: "The hot pink license plates would be required as long as the ignition interlock device is required, according to the measure."

[Rogier]

Damn, people. Good points here. I really WAS missing something... But since I love to argue:

Myrtle, I guess "the point" would be a little bit of shamin' bust mostly a whole lotta warnin'. When you drive behind a hazmat truck or behind a contractor's pickup with 15-foot pieces of lumber sticking out the back, there are legally mandated warning signs affixed to those vehicles (big stickers, or a flag), in effect urging you to be extra careful around them. I take it you have no problem with that. Then why would you have a problem with a number plate signifying that the driver in question has been convicted of at least three DUI offenses? I, for one, would literally like to steer clear of such homicidal a-holes.

I humbly admit I hadn't thought of the fact that the car could be driven instead by a wholly innocent friend or family member. Maybe the way around that would be (cumbersome as that is) to issue duplicate license plates. You'd have colored ones that the perp will have to display on the car when he or she is driving it, while other drivers of the vehicles may optionally swap those plates out for regular ones before THEY get behind the wheel (I know: enforcement would be a bitch). Possibility number two: a colored license plate slipcover to achieve the same effect. Possibility number three: a state-issued cardboard sign of some kind that perps must display in the rear window while driving (akin to the temporary plates you sometimes see on brand new cars).

Re: "No insurance, no car," I wish. Regrettably, and scarily enough, loads of people drive around uninsured.

Re: Dale's apparent concern that randy men will seek out female drivers sporting pink plates with intentions worthy of Glenn Quagmire (or worse): It's a creative point, but if we're supposed to be concerned about the sexual honor of recidivist drunken floozies, we should close down Bourbon Street. Maybe we should also outlaw spring break. (Don't tell any legislators I said that, though — mustn't give them any ideas!)

I find Martin's slippery-slope argument the most convincing: "Why not a license plate with a warning code for child molesters, spousal abuse, drug offenders, sex criminals, violent felonies, while you're at it?"

Maybe because, the climate in the U.S. being what it is, warning codes for sex offenders and child molesters would invite vandalism and vigilantism to a degree that drunk-driver plates won't.

Spousal abuse? Violent criminals? The difference is that a convicted wifebeater or even a recidivist bank robber typically poses no risk to other drivers. A drunk driver, on the other hand, mortally endangers literally everyone around him as soon as he turns the ignition key.

But, Martin, your analogy with drug users is more watertight (though Loren makes a good counterpoint). I'm throwing my hands up on that one. You're probably right.

And besides, just because you and I can see some nuances here, that doesn't mean lawmakers will. OK. I'm doing a John Kerry on this one, switching my position. Best to let the beast go hungry. Never mind!

The better alternative to pink license plates is stiffer sentences for repeat DUI offenders (multi-year revocations of driving privileges, as jSpin said, plus, as far as I'm concerned, jail time for offenders convicted a third or fourth time).

Thanks for all your input.

[Martin Owens]

I would like to respond to the idea that certain offenses aren't vehicle related.

Technically true, but my point is that in a society that is built around the automobile, it would not require any great leap of logic to see that possession of a car makes the offense/offender more dangerous, and so his car should be marked for attention. After all, if a drunk pedestrian bumps into you, it's not half the harm of get hit by a DUI. Just the same way, a child predator can escape hundreds of miles away within a few hours ( hence the amber alerts). An abusive spouse can't follow his victim half as well without a car. And so on.

Anyway, thanks for listening

[Matt]

I'm surprised at your opinion on this, Rogier.

Driving drunk is not a genuine crime. Sure, it's a very stupid thing to do, but if you don't harm anyone, where, exactly, is the crime?

[Rogier]

Matt:

If I understand you correctly, you believe that, in the words of Lew Rockwell,

"Government in a free society should not deal in probabilities. The law should deal in actions and actions alone, and only insofar as they damage person or property. Probabilities are something for insurance companies to assess on a competitive and voluntary basis."

OK, then let me ask you this. If I like firearms and I like discharging them in shopping malls, firing into walls and ceilings and never aiming at people, should I only be arrested after I accidentally hurt or kill someone? (For the sake of the argument, let's leave aside the property damage for a second.) Prior to my drawing blood, the police should leave me alone, free to indulge in as much reckless shooting as I like?

What's your take on this?

[Matt]

I don't think your shopping mall shooting spree analogy fits well.

Drunk driving is more similar to prostitution than perforating a shopping mall. A prostitute harms no one, unless the prostitute carelessly gets infected with something, then spreads that something to clients.

Don't get me wrong, drunk driving is certainly stupid and hazardous, but it cannot possibly be a crime unless one harms another, just as prostitution cannot possibly be a crime unless the prostitute harms the client.

Would you agree that crimes exist only when there is demonstrable damage to unwilling persons or property?

[Matt]

One more thing. Noted in your bio (http://www.bakelblog.com/about.html) is this summation of Peter McWilliams' "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do":

"Consenting adults should not be arrested or punished unless they physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other."

Doesn't drunk driving fall squarely into that description?

[goldhorder]

Drunken Driving is subjective. Tolerance and how people handle the effects of alcohol vary. If somebody is going down the wrong side of a divided highway...they are recklessly endangering the lives of others. They deserve punishment. If I have a few glasses of wine and some cope follows me out of the neighborhood restaurant...pulls me over because he gets a big bonus for the more DUIs he gets and I get caught up in the Kafkaesque hell that is the American justice system...that is a whole other story. If somebody is blowing holes with a shotgun in the walls of their isolated farmhouse...they should be left alone. If somebody goes into somebody elses property and starts blowing holes in the wall (sorry kind of hard to ignore the property rights perspective in this scenario) they deserve punishment along with reckless endanderment. I don't have a problem with a cop pulling over a swerving driver. I have a huge problem with DUI checkpoints. You give cops an inch and they will take a mile. You give the American courts an inch...they will take a mile. One of the greatest errors in human thinking is the idea that you can create utopia on Earth. The conclusion of utopian thinking always winds up in totalitarianism. No matter what rules you place in society deaths and accidents will still happen. Utopia does not exist on Earth and never will.

[Rogier]

Hey Matt:

A different way to state my core belief is to say that the freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose.

Now let's say I really, really like to swing my fist. I do it habitually, and so recklessly that I've knocked out three people in the past year. Do you still want me to keep swinging and flailing when I'm around you or your loved ones? Or do you think that the state has some legitimate interest in telling me to stop?

And sorry, my shooting-up-the-shopping-mall analogy is WAY more apt than your prostitution analogy. For starters, visiting a prostitute is PRIVATE behavior. Shooting up a shopping mall, like driving drunk, is PUBLIC behavior. It follows that if you were to visit a prostitute, no one would get hurt. The transaction clearly involves two consenting adults. On the other hand, if you pick up your TEC9 and happily go spraying bullets at Nordstrom's and the Gap, the risk of bodily harm is very considerable even if you never actually intend to shoot anyone. Do you really only deserve to be stopped AFTER there is blood all over the comfortable-fit stonewashed chinos?

To clarify, I do have some problems with drunk-driving laws. The BAC levels they set tend to have astonishingly low thresholds for impairment, meaning that they stupidly make no difference between someone who's had two glasses of wine over a long dinner and someone who's just chugged seventeen boilermakers. Beyond goldhorder's point about DUI checkpoints (where people are pulled over even when there's no probable cause), there's also the fact that DUI laws embolden cops to go out and attempt to punish private drunkenness instead of drunk driving, as these folks found out:
http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2006/04/outofcontrol_bo.html

So I'm not blind to the downsides of drunk-driving laws. But if they're carefully written and sensibly enforced, I certainly support their existence, and furthermore, I do think that legal repercussions for repeat offenders often don't go far enough.

Here's a recent quote from my local newspaper, regarding a recidivist DUI truck driver, Scott Hewitt, who killed a woman on the turnpike a year and a half ago. Note that, unlike the prostitute we discussed above, Tina Turcotte can hardly be said to have been a consenting party. Also note that she wasn't Hewitt's first victim.

"Hewitt had been driving on a suspended license at the time, and a blood test showed he had marijuana in his system. He had 63 prior driving convictions, more than 20 license suspensions and had been involved in a previous fatal accident."

http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=146091&zoneid=500

Hewitt stands to go to jail for two and a half years. I don't think that's nearly long enough, given the circumstances. YOU think that, prior to the accident, he shouldn't even have been considered as breaking the LAW whenever he got behind the wheel intoxicated. Right? And you're also happy to let him back on the street and give him his license back sometime in 2009?

I won't even ask you to explain that to the families of the two people he left bloodied and mangled. Just please explain it to ME -- because yes, you've certainly lost me along the way.

Thanks.

[Myrtle]

It's the behaviors of the driver rather than the BAC itself, the swerving and reckless driving that ought to be addressed. Let the police ticket stupid driving and let the actuaries at insurance companies decide dispassionately decide how much of a danger it poses.

I think it can be shown that it's not 100% predicatable how a particular BAC will cause a person to behave. They choose a level at which many people might make a mistake, they don't choose a level at which 100% of the people make mistakes.

Bear in mind that what is considered "drunk" is arbitrary, not based on the behavior of the driver. You could pass every field sobriety test they give you and still hauled away due to the breathalizer. Meanwhile a ditz with worse driving and worse judgment is allowed to stay on the road because they haven't been drinking.

[TC]

"so that insurance companies are not FORCED to insure high risk drivers"

GAWD insurance companies relish at the thought of getting 200% of what could normally charge anybody for insurance.

They love it so much that almost all of our rates are close to the forced charging of R-22 rates for the rest of us as well.

Oh gee it seems you got terminated by your last company, well well, WE will gladly pick you up, at R-22 rates for the next 5 years as you have NO HISTORY of prior insurance!

But they are for sure ready in court to display your NON history of insurance carriers for the last decade when it's their pocket book that might have to put out a small amount of change for such.

Test it!

[Loren]

"You could pass every field sobriety test they give you and still hauled away due to the breathalizer."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKqbq3oQ3L8

[Timothy]

I have a problem with this for the exact same reason I have a problem with sex-offender registries. It'll be misused, innocent people will be tagged, and pretty soon they'll start not allowing tagged cars on the highways or some other equally odious thing.

1) Breathalyzer's don't really work all that well*.

2) The legal limit for driving while intoxicated is pretty stupid. .08 is going to affect different people differently, and there's no evidence that you're more intoxicated at .10 than at .08. The lower standard is completely a product of the neo-prohibitionist movement.

*http://www.duiblog.com/

[damaged justice]

As Frank Zappa said, "Ingesting a substance does not bestow upon you the right to act like an asshole." And neither does it absolve one of responsibility for the consequences of one's actions.

[Matt]

I find this discussion intriguing, because I've never put this much thought into the matter of drunk driving. This discussion has been the catalyst for a realization for me.

The whole thing depends upon how one defines a genuine crime. I see two categories of genuine crime. 1. Certainly causing harm to another person or their property is a crime. 2. I think there can also be crimes where no harm has been done, but where there is an imminent threat of harm to others or their property.

I think those definitions encompass the concepts of both, "Consenting adults should not be arrested or punished unless they physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other", and, "my fist ends at the tip of your nose." I use the term "genuine crime" because it's possible for an action to be illegal, but not morally wrong.

The mall shooting spree example clearly falls into the first category, because you're damaging the property of the mall owner. That's why I don't think it's good fit. (I also don't think my prostitution analogy is a very good fit, either, now that I think about it some more.) Driving drunk without causing harm cannot fall into the first category. If it's a genuine crime, it must fall into the second category. So the question becomes, is a drunk driver an imminent threat of harm to others? I suspect that in the vast majority of DUI convictions, the answer is no, however, that does leave open the possibility that in some cases, a drunk driver is an imminent threat.

So that leads me to the realization that it *is* possible for driving drunk without causing harm to be a genuine crime. I think it would depend a great deal on the circumstances, but I think it's possible.

"Hewitt stands to go to jail for two and a half years. I don't think that's nearly long enough, given the circumstances."
I agree. Hewitt *killed* someone. He should spend a substantial portion of the rest of his life attempting to compensate for that death.

"YOU think that, prior to the accident, he shouldn't even have been considered as breaking the LAW whenever he got behind the wheel intoxicated. Right?"
Hewitt was certainly breaking the law, but don't make the mistake of equating legal with right. Given the description in the news article, it sure appears Hewitt committed a crime in the second category, i.e., he was an imminent threat, and that threat was realized when he committed a crime in the first category, by killing Tina. The fact that he was drunk should result in a harsher penalty than if he hadn't been drunk.

"And you're also happy to let him back on the street and give him his license back sometime in 2009?"
Nope. The punishment for repeated harm should be extremely severe.

Thanks for precipitating the new light bulb in my head, Rogier.

[Arcanum]

On what planet is Drunk Driving a victimless crime? If you were slightly (or more) intoxicated waving around a loaded gun on a public street, where you MAY kill someone, depending on your mood and current state of inebriation? Why shouldn't the cops arrest you? - Well they haven't killed anyone yet, whats the problem? - Yeah right.

How many people have to die, or get seriously maimed, for some people's right to have a drink be satisfied? How hard is it to have a designated driver? How hard is it to stop at two drinks and switch to soft drink?

Locally this is set to 0.05 Blood alcohol which, while I wouldn't be effected, I know some people who would. They needed to set the limit somewhere, if you have a problem where they set the limit, its not the same arguement has setting the limit at all.

No one said you can't have a drink, no one said you can't drive, you just can't drink and drive. Its not so hard.

[markm]

I've got just one problem with that: someone who's truly been caught 3 times driving while drunk enough to seriously impair him shouldn't have license plates or a car to put them on.

For the rest, yeah, BAC of .08 is too low, and drunk driving checkpoints are neither an effective method of removing the really dangerous drunks from the roads nor consistent with a free society. If the cops see someone driving dangerously, the breathalyzer can serve as confirmation, but stopping someone who's driving apparently safely for breathalyzer tests is nuts.

[Phil]

Everybody does idiotic things sometimes. Repeat offenders are an entirely different matter than the guy who gets caught once doing something stupid.

Rog's example of the nutso 63-time offender cannot be something we base *any* kind of law on for average people. The fact that people like that are on the road is sufficiently scary that it can be used for all sorts of ill-advised lawmaking.

The definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. That guy's obviously not fit to be driving anymore, and wasn't long before that.

[K. Dale Boley]

Why not just laws against Willful Reckless Behavior? DUI enforcement is, as Matt and others point out, not a science. It's political art. But Willful Reckless Behavior is just that. It rises beyond the level of simple negligence. Punish it as such. It shouldn't even be segregated into "Traffic Law". It's a law of man really. The plates are bad policy. DUI laws are intrusive and used for the basis of many lost freedoms.

[Rogier]

Phil:

You're quite right that we mustn't make laws based on the most extreme cases of lawlessness. And if you check the context, you'll see that that wasn't why I gave that example. My point was to refute Matt's claim that drunk driving cannot be called unlawful until someone gets injured, or worse. Mr. Hewitt is just a very stark example of of why I disagree strongly with that viewpoint.

[Dakota]

A state, any state would be smart to clearly separate DWI's into categories. Set a standard BAC at like .10 and give out smallish tickets with reasonable penalties. Any one who exhibited poor driving, failed field tests and a blood test should be severely punished.

They do this in most states for "hard" crimes. Assault & Battery for instance. A "light" DWI say .10-.08 could be considered like a simple assault. Fine and revocations of license.

FYI this would also covers the mall example as well. Most states have "causing others to have reasonable fear of bodily injury" on the books for a simple assault; a misdemeanor. Which I think is pretty safe standard of jurist prudence.

Note: likely because it involves a deadly weapon it would be upgraded to a felony aggravated assault.

.10>.08 could be a misdemeanor.

Cop spots poor driving pulls someone over, tests at .18, fails 2 other field tests, actual blood test yields same result. Felony comparable to aggravated assault.

Some guy hits and kills or injures another driver, tests @ .20 BAC, confirmed by blood test. Felony comparable to aggravated assault & battery.

Anyone have any problems with the above? Besides MADD nanies, I mean.