Last weekend, within a period of just seven hours on the night of Jan. 20 to 21, three major drunk-driving accidents took place around Taiwan, tragically killing four people and seriously injuring one other. Taiwanese are sick and tired of drunk driving, so it is not surprising that these latest incidents have once more prompted calls for tough measures in response.
Tough measures can have an immediate effect with regard to a single social order incident, but they are not easy to implement in a democratic nation where the rule of law prevails. This issue involves questions not only of human rights, but also of proportionality of punishment.
Most importantly, making the relevant legal amendments would be a long and complicated process, and it would not fulfill the requirement for criminal penalties to be timely and certain. Furthermore, people can to some extent adapt to criminal penalties, so when society gets used to heavy penalties for drunk driving, the deterrent effect of getting tough on offenders gradually weakens. It would therefore be difficult for such a policy to be effective except by making penalties even heavier.
Criminal penalties are only effective when applied to rational people. For people who have drunk so much that they no longer know what they are doing, the prospect of criminal penalties will not discourage them from driving. Only by complementing the threat of punishment with situational arrangements that actually prevent drunk people from driving can a long-term perceptible reduction in drunk-driving incidents be achieved.
In the old days, when ideas about human rights were not as advanced as they are now, the only means available for dealing with serious crimes was punitive deterrence. However, penalties were often disproportionate, so that the punishment did not fit the crime. In recent years, human rights have come to the fore, placing limits on punitive deterrence. Consequently, modern society has seen the rise of situational deterrence as an alternative strategy for crime control.
One example of this is the widespread installation of surveillance cameras on the streets of Taiwan, and another is the visual and audio messages warning against theft and fraud that are shown and played on ATM screens. The right way to thoroughly eliminate drunk-driving accidents should therefore be to use a combination of punitive and situational deterrents.
The purpose of punitive deterrence against drunk driving is that before drinking, people are discouraged from driving under the influence. The aim of situational deterrent measures is that after people have drunk alcohol, they will not be able to drive.
The former emphasizes public information and warnings, such as enlarging the content and size of warnings on alcohol products and making convicted drunk drivers attend mandatory classes and perform social services. The latter emphasizes measures to prevent the undesirable behavior, such as offering high rewards for people who immediately and truthfully report drunk drivers to the police.
Moreover, warnings on alcohol products are less conspicuous than those on tobacco products. The existing Regulations Governing the Labeling of Alcohol Products (酒類標示管理辦法) state that warning labels on alcohol products must be printed in a font size of at least 2.65mm, whereas the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) says that warning texts and images must occupy no less than 35 percent of the front and back sides of tobacco product containers.
This is a point that Taiwan could consider with regard to improving prevention of drunk driving from the angle of situational deterrence.
Lin Tsang-song is an adjunct assistant professor at Central Police University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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