Driving the message home

The Original Article
Source: The Straits Times
Day: Wednesday
Pub Date: 16/05/2007
Page: 26

Headline: LAWS ON DRINK DRIVING-
Make it legal duty to stop drivers
By: ANDY HO
Page Heading: REVIEW

DRINK driving has been in the news too much recently. The number arrested for the offence jumped from 2,929 in 2004 to 3,733 last year, say the Traffic Police.

Whatever the reason for this spike, there is a case to be made that your drinking buddies – and bartenders, bouncers, valets or those who ride in your car – are morally bound to stop you from taking to the wheel after you have had a few stiff ones. But since they do not seem to be doing that frequently enough, why not impose a legal duty on them to do so?

Bartenders could be empowered to hold on to a patron’s car keys before he starts drinking and refuse to hand them over at the end of the night. This might require such establishments to have breathalysers, for instance. The law could require valets, bouncers and friends to even pull car keys from the ignition if an intoxicated fellow were to try driving off.

Some lawyers, however, caution against passing a law that requires a person to do something to help another, even if it potentially prevents people other than the helped one from getting maimed or killed. In contrast to laws that forbid murder or rape, for example, such a law would punish not an act of commission but one of omission, something not traditionally accepted in common-law countries like Singapore.

Yes, taking a life is different from failing to rescue one, but do the two differ so much that, while capital punishment is justifiable in the former, no legal condemnation is acceptable in the latter case?

Detractors say criminal law punishes individuals for what they do, not for being selfish, callous, uncaring or for thinking bad thoughts. Whether or not to do a good deed is something you decide as your conscience dictates. In a pluralistic society like ours, there is no consensus on the moral values on which a duty to rescue might be based, so the Government should take no stand on the issue. Moreover, the Government should not be in the business of monitoring the religious and moral system, opponents argue.

But it seems to me that no Singaporean would vigorously disagree that your drinking buddies, say, have a moral duty to stop you from driving if you are quite intoxicated. The only disagreement is whether to enforce this legally.

Most of us, in fact, have no problem with the legal enforcement of shared moral values. For instance, we can all agree that parents are morally obliged to protect and provide for their children, so legally requiring them to do so is uncontroversial. Also, criminal law assumes that I do not rape, murder, or rob because I (should) know that it is (morally) wrong to do so.

This is true even where the law requires me to do something instead of merely refraining from an act. For example, the law requires me to stay put at the scene of an accident in which I have been involved, call for aid and assist law enforcers in their investigations. Just to be sure I do, there are penalties in place – including jail time – to ensure there is something else to deter me from evading my responsibilities if my moral restraints are weak.

We also ask of a person accused of a civil or criminal wrong not just if he had committed the act but also whether he was blameworthy. That is, the ethical quality of his actions determines whether he is to be blamed.

But if the law focuses on not just if an act was carried out but also if the actor is ethically worthy of blame – that is, if moral culpability is the real basis of legal responsibility – we should also be moving away from distinguishing between whether harm resulted from a person’s act or his willful non-act, to asking, instead, whether failing to act is equally blameworthy.

Sure, it takes a lot to stop your friend from driving off but doing nothing takes some effort as well.

Opponents of such a law also say it would infringe upon the individual’s right to liberty. But when the liberty to choose is agonisingly sullied by bad conscience, it must be a liberty worth little.

At any rate, there are times when the moral duty to act supersedes our freedoms. Thus, we pay taxes so that, among other things, the poor can be helped and we do not flinch from prosecuting those who evade taxes.

By analogy, requiring friends and bartenders to prevent the intoxicated from driving off is yet another situation where the duty to help others – including potential victims of the drunk driver – is arguably more important than our own liberties.

Finally, some opponents even suggest that any action that is not freely chosen is not truly virtuous, so a law that imposes the affirmative duty to act does not bring out the best in us. Surely no one who could be saved by such a law should have to lose life or limb while the rest of us good folks ascertain if our altruism is truly beyond reproach.

The problem with these objections is that they are raised in the abstract, so that failing to help means simply a lack; that is, a lack of response to someone else’s problem.

But in real life, there is no telling who your inebriated friend might run into down the road.

The concreteness of such situations – of which all are morally significant – justifies a law to compel people to stop the inebriated from driving.

andyho@sph.com.sg

Some background information:
“On May 9, the court saw ex-show host Benedict Goh, 37, being charged with two counts of drink driving. The next day, actor Christopher Lee, 35, was sentenced to four weeks in jail and fined $4,500 for drink-driving and hit-and-run offences.”

“At roadblocks in Outram and Tampines roads between 11.30pm on Friday and 4.45am the next day, one in four of the 39 motorists tested were arrested for drink driving.”

“Till March this year, 914 motorists – 141 of whom were involved in accidents – were held for drink-driving. In the same period last year, 753 people were held, including 134 involved in accidents.

“Last year, 25 people died in crashes involving drunk drivers, up from 20 in 2005, and 336 were injured – a 50 per cent jump from the previous year.”

—all adapted from “1 in 4 fail police drink- driving test”: Straits Times on Monday, 14/05/2007

My Response:
In light of the recent spate of drink driving cases, this writer makes an interesting proposition of institutionalising a mandatory law for bar establishments to stop inebriated people from driving. He manages to present both sides of the coin succinctly, synthesising points into a full argument in a convincing manner.

Drink driving concerns not only a driver’s life, but also the safety of potentially imperiled pedestrians, car drivers, or property that may cross his path. The enormity of the situation cannot be ignored, and preemptive measures must be taken to prevent the unnecessary ramifications caused by this offence.

A law with moral grounding is by no means a strong one. When an intoxicated person is unaware of the exact implications of his actions, the bystander is morally bound to guide him into act desirably and harmlessly. A legal duty will serve to strengthen what is already a moral action by imposing a punishment onto those who disobey it.

Detractors would of course lambast the law as an impeachment of (democratic) choice and freedom. This view is entirely valid, as the action of preventing others from committing offences is ultimately voluntary, implying that inaction is an offence, a debatable point because inaction almost never considered criminal in today’s judiciary. The severity and scope of the law is also questioned, as the majority of drink drivers are not involved in accidents.

Although opposing stances are dealt with, I feel that the writer has failed to delve into the more practical aspects of the law, which is as important as its moral components. Regarding this, I do have reservations on how the laws can be enforced. When a drunk drives away undetected and gets involved in an accident, the only person we would accuse as culpable is beyond doubt the drunk. This loophole allows bar employees to escape punishment, even though they have failed to stop the driver. But even if bar employees are held responsible, they can merely deny all charges and succeed; by sheer prosaicness of the “crime”, potential witnesses would not, for example, notice anything wrong in a boxer’s lack of interest in a drunk, hence the lack of eye-witnesses. Without eye-witnesses, a judge would rather believe an accused bar employee who is perfectly capable of discernment than an accuser who is “not in the right frame of mind” at the time of the “crime”. Come-what-may, the offender would always get away scot-free with the crime.

Perhaps I am too skeptical, and being a pragmatist, believing practicality to be priority. Being a conservative Singaporean, I believe that freedom is a façade, that strict laws must be implemented to ensure the betterment of society. But much as I applaud the writer’s insights into this very pressing issue, I must accede that the law, this time round, cannot solve this issue. Rather, I suggest the government astutely educate the public not only by “scare tactics” of an accident’s “crippling” effects, but also the moral consequences behind the irresponsible offence of drink driving.
(500 words)