The Sevenoaks School Journal of Philosophy - Volume Two APORIAii_digitalversion - Volume 2 | Page 16

13
C IRCUMSTANCES AND C ONSEQUENCES
The problem still persists no matter the outcome. Statistics show that driving
while drunk has reduced by a lot over the past few decades by 74.2%, 16 however
statistics do not account for the people who drive under the influence that are
not checked. It is probable that most cases of drink driving go unnoticed and
people are willing to drive because the chance that they get caught are too
miniscule to be considered. They assume that since they are barely over the limit
of drink driving, the small possibility of a fine, imprisonment and sanctioning of
license that is imposed, or even worse, causing harm to others, does not out-
weigh the benefits gained from getting to another destination.
Therefore, a stronger measure of punishment must be enforced to ensure
that we minimise the chances of any harm happening because based upon our
deterrence principle, a possibility is an opportunity for damage to be caused; a
possibility is therefore something we cannot afford. The proposed solution, al-
though not exhaustive but more fruitful, is to provide a harsher sentence sen-
tence for any driver under the influence relative to the current penalties that are
in place.
CONCLUSION
The current system of punishment offers up to a year of imprisonment on the
first offense. The second offense reaches three years of imprisonment. This level
of deterrence does not seem to prevent the issue from occurring so the level of
punishment must be raised. 17 Perhaps, instead of providing a prison sentence of
up to 6 months on the first offense, we can increase the disincentive to commit
an offense to a minimum of 6 months. Instead of providing a limit of 10 years to
commit another offense, we abolish the limit altogether and raise the ban of dri-
ving from a minimum of 1 year to 2. If this does not decrease the number of
drunk drivers, we raise the punishments incrementally, again and again until we
see progress and know where the critical point of deterrence lies. To ensure that
the penalty works, we have to make the disutility of the punishment outweigh
the utility of driving drunk for the driver.