Long-time Austinite here. This is indeed a sad day, and our thoughts are of course with those who were affected. At the very least, I hope that this situation will cause us to make real strides toward improving the currently deplorable state of public transportation in this city, as it's now proving to be a real danger to human life.
I've lived here 12 years, and the only improvements to public transportation infrastructure in that time have been the addition of a single train line and a few of those long buses that bend in the middle. As the fastest growing city in the country, a city that relies so heavily on the tax revenues generated by the ~2 weeks of debauchery that is SXSW, we'll need to seriously improve the ability to move folks around without automobiles or the maddening traffic and inability to safely be on the roads (or, indeed, standing near the roads) between 1:30AM-3:30AM will continue to plague us.
As someone who has lived in Los Angeles (which has actually horrible public transit in that it doesn't exist really and is expensive), and now Austin - while our public transit here is sub-optimal, it's far from the worst in the country, and you actually can get most places with it (I lived here for 18 months with no car, so I am intimately familiar with it).
True, but "far from worst in the country" and "capable of dealing with the city's growth" are two different things. I'm originally from Arlington, Texas, which actually held the distinction until very recently of being the largest city in North America with absolutely no form of public transport whatsoever. I've seen both ends of the spectrum, and Austin still falls far short of where we need to be.
There's also the problem of finding a ride home after the bars close, which is far less doable given our current system. We also need to rapidly expand the light rail system, but efforts to do so seem to be floundering at City Hall.
When I think of all the money spent in the name of improving and enriching the lives of human beings, it troubles me that we don't have a reliable solution for ending DUI. I know many companies fund research to end cancer or improve the quality of life for those with various diseases. While this research may help save or improve lives, it's motivated in part by a potential return on investment. Why can't we do something to prevent self-inflicted suffering? Those people did not need to die. While I don't consume alcohol I don't see why a person that has consumed alcohol should be transformed into a homicidal idiot after getting into the driver's seat. Since we can't seem to limit DUI, perhaps we can we make a car that won't operate when the driver is incapacitated? Although, I would oppose any legislation that forces such technology on everyone. To be sure, this remains a tough problem to solve (1). Rather than working around the problem (removing drivers or reducing the need to drive, limiting/controlling alcohol, etc) how should we address the issue? If we could stop alcohol-impaired driving the United States could save USD$51 billion per year and prevent over 10,000 deaths annually.
Well, I'd love to see some tech a la "Ghost in the Shell" that can just break down all the alcohol in the bloodstream on command, or otherwise maintains the euphoria without getting to the point of "I'm going to go drive my car through Red River tonight." When you're ready to go you just activate the tech and poof, you can drive again. And you avoid the hangover too.
But in the meantime, it certainly seems that the best we can do is prevent others from getting behind the wheel at all. Which really only works in an environment of peer pressure, backed up with at least one person that will go beyond words and physically restrain the would-be driver if necessary. Avoiding the bystander effect is difficult enough as it is, but when the person is drunk at home and decides that they want to go get some McDonalds...
The problem is letting people with DUI back on the roads. The punishments for negligent murder is only a few years; the punishment for just getting caught is often not even jail time, just a short suspension of license. (This guy had 2 DUI arrests already before murdering two people: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020640576_nseattleac... ) The punishments for violating license suspension are minimal. Want to get serious about DUI? Make this the punishment:
1st time: 10 year suspension of driving privileges, monthly random police tailing to make sure you don't drive that day (funded by the violator); if you drive, the rest of your sentence is spent in jail
2nd time: 10 years in jail, permanent driving privileges revoked, monthly police tailing as above.
3rd time: Life in prison
You ever kill or injure someone while DUI: Life in prison
Life in prison has got to be one of the worst ways to deal with a criminal. If you think that the danger posed by DUI is worth life in prison, then it should apply to texting/phone use too.
It is people who knowingly put themselves in a situation where they kill people. It isn't about dealing with them, it's about protecting the rest of us from them. Typical prison may in fact be wrong -- an isolated island without vehicles where they can work and participate in society remotely would be okay for the ones who haven't murdered anyone yet.
I don't know about the jail punishment, but I see no reason that DUI punishment shouldn't be equal to phone/text punishment (and it should certainly be a license suspension of massive length).
Preventing DUI is a difficult problem. A much easier problem would be to prevent speeding. Put a GPS in every car that prevents the car from driving faster than the speed limit. All the technology exists, and this would doubtlessly save lives, but somehow I doubt anybody would pass the required laws.
I always wonder why we make cars that can go so fast. Even my car with a 1.4L engine making 100 HP can easily do 100mph, even though there's almost no place in the US where that's legal, and no place in my state where it's legal. The fastest speed limit in my state is 70mph. Why not speed-limit cars to 70mph by default, with an option to disable this limiter in a controlled fashion if the person wants to go out on a racetrack where these speeds are legal?
There are obviously arguments in favor of personal liberty that would make some people uncomfortable with this, but they shouldn't be. No one should be. If the speed limit on the road is 70mph, there is no reason for your car to be doing more than 70mph on the road, period. I don't care that you want to pass a vehicle that is only doing 69mph, you'll either lower your speed or pass them at 1mph (which, at least in my state, is also illegal. To pass someone, they must be doing at least 5mph under the speed limit, and you can't break the speed limit in order to pass someone).
Now, it wouldn't help in this situation, but it's something that's always bothered me. As we make better and better performing entry-level cars, we can't change the laws of physics. 90mph isn't unheard of as a common cruising speed on a road where the minimum speed limit is 45mph. That's just stupid and dangerous.
I always wonder why we make cars that can go so fast.
If you are actually questioning why car engines have enough power to do that in the first place: An engine capable of hauling a heavy load uphill at the speed limit is capable of exceeding the speed limit on a flat surface. Ditto for an engine capable of accelerating quickly to perform a merge in a short space.
If you are asking why cars don't come with interlocks preventing those kind of speeds: Because they're not required, and they're not a marketable feature.
I understand more power. What I was trying to get at was "why is it not required to speed limit cars to 70mph". That's common with semi trucks; the trucks at my company are speed limited to 65mph (the semi speed limit here).
Maybe, maybe not (I don't know), but two things come to mind:
1) Speeding is illegal. This is a law that is broken every day by millions. Obviously the law and the punishments aren't working as a deterrent, and the next steps usually involve control rather than deter.
2) Do you know how reaction time and braking time change for every 5mph faster you're going? It might not make you cause an accident, but it sure doesn't help trying to avoid an accident.
That is a pretty bold statement. Pretty much all fatal accidents I've heard about involved speeding in some way. Now, anecdotes aren't reliable, so do you have some numbers to back up your claim?
"Q. Aren't most traffic accidents caused by speeding?
A. No, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) claims that 30 percent of all fatal accidents are "speed related," but even this is misleading. This means that in less than a third of the cases, one of the drivers involved in the accident was "assumed" to be exceeding the posted limit. It does not mean that speeding caused the accident. Research conducted by the Florida Department of Transportation showed that the percentage of accidents actually caused by speeding is very low, 2.2 percent."
I would love to have a device like that, kind of a reverse cruise control The only times I've gotten speeding tickets is when I was unaware of a drop in the speed limit. Maybe something that combines GPS, plus a dash cam that recognizes road signs (so that it can pick up construction zones, etc).
Only one major problem with this -- many areas are funded in large part by speeding tickets. If it is impossible for a car to speed, what will these areas do for revenue?
Agreed. My $100 Garmin GPS tells me what the speed limit is, an what speed I'm doing. I've often wondered why this wasn't just built into cars to ensure they throttle lock at the speed limit.
Breaking the speed limit to pass another vehicle is against the law. At least in my state, you can't legally pass unless the other car is going 5mph under the speed limit, and then you can only pass at the speed limit, not over.
Sure, the device is mentioned in the link I cited. It's a remedy applied after the fact. It limits drunk driving after someone has already demonstrated poor behavior. While I earnestly want a safer world for everyone it must not be like the dystopian Gattaca.
I wonder how self-driving cars would impact this situation? Also: what would happen to a self-driving car that went through a sobriety checkpoint with the drunk person as a passenger?
DUI is a problem, and any human loss is painful, especially when avoidable. All that said, I feel like DUI is an overblown problem, in a way. 8 people dead per 1 million estimates incidents of DUI with a max. toll of 10k lives is not insignificant, and human loss is always bad. However, I disagree with your thesis. Curing cancer, raising the standard of living for the poor, and the death toll to obesity are all much more impactful things on society, though DUI is more 'senseless' and painful for victims.
I think limiting the need to drive is the only feasible option.
* You won't stop people from drinking in places where they can't sleep. Drinking at a bar costs 5-6x as much as drinking at someone's home, and yet people are constantly going out to be in a public drinking environment.
* Hopefully, we won't see mandated technology on vehicles requiring alcohol inspections for driving. Privacy, constitutional and technological issues all exist there. Yes, I know the devices exist, but they're clumsy, frustrating, and in the US are only used for people convicted of a 1st time DUI.
Solution: Incentivize people to walk or taxi home, or have a designated driver.
* By far the biggest immediate change that could be made: Make taxi services as cheap as possible. Stop limiting competition like Uber and the pedbikes in Austin from competition; while there are public safety concerns regarding drivers, I think the economic and safety benefits outweigh the risks. Cheap, responsive drivers = less drunk driving, period. ESPECIALLY in places like Texas, or most of the US, where public transit isn't ubiquitous.
* Allow mixed development and stop making suburban islands. If the hip bars are a three block walk from the houses and apartment complexes, fewer people will need to drive. Or, if you're making a suburban neighborhood, build the bar/drug store/grocer right into the town!
* The following thing is a dangerous and controversial thing to say, because it might imply that DUI is "okay": If you're going to drive after drinking, be honest with yourself. Don't say "I'm totally fine to drive". When you're exhausted on a trip, you don't just say you're fine and keep driving. You either pull over and sleep (get a cab) or you recognize your state and roll down the windows, turn on the radio, splash some water on your face, get a Red Bull, etc. If you are inebriated, say "I am drunk, don't speed, check my mirrors, watch out at all the intersections." That is a big cause of accidents, I'd be willing to bet. Whenever you see government propaganda about the dangers of DUI, it's the couple stumbling to the car, kissing each other, and not paying attention to driving. It's not good to drive when your body is impaired in ANY way, but the big problem is not recognizing your impaired state and focusing on the road.
---
Postscript: DUI checkpoints are shit, and I don't care what the Supreme Court says. It's an invitation for the police to create probable cause and search your entire self and vehicle, your insurance, and if you piss them off, your cell phone. Even if you're sober, avoid them/fight them whenever possible.
"All that said, I feel like DUI is an overblown problem, in a way."
Drinking and alcohol, and their impacts on our society.. and family.. and work, are not overblown. It's completely underestimated. Those who are dealing with the direct impacts of addiction and abuse in their families feel like they're in a bubble, and yet it's absolutely everywhere.
Everyone knows an alcoholic, and drinking&driving&death is only a very small data point in a massive societal issue.
The leading cause of death for people under 35 are automobile accidents. About 1/3 of automobile accidents involve alcohol. With those two figures, I'd say it's pretty likely that it's not an overblown problem.
>At a mid-morning press conference Thursday, officials said eight people were still in the hospital. Five were in critical condition, and three were listed as serious.
I just... I just... WTF. Just WTF. We've had injuries and incidents at SXSW before, but nothing like this. Normally it's just busy nights for paramedics filled with minor injuries. A diabetic might get too drunk to remember to take insulin, or someone might just dehydrate and pass out. The worst I remember is bicyclists hitting pedestrians. I'd like to think the driver was just completely and totally blacked out, but his behaviour certainly seems to indicate at least a modicum of awareness of what he was doing, what with stopping at the gas station as though he were complying with the stop before deciding to tear down the Red River district.
>He was facing two counts of capital murder and 23 counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle, Acevedo said.
We'll be hearing about this case for the next year at least.
I don't want to take away from how awful this was, but in 2010 there were 10,228 people killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes[1] - that's 28 each day.
So no, I don't think we'll be hearing about this case for the next year - it's actually depressingly typical. It just happens to have occurred at a large event that Hacker News has a strong connection to.
The incidents definitely are depressingly typical on a long enough time scale and with a large enough area. Maybe self-driving cars will eventually solve this problem, assuming they don't come with their own problems too. Granted, we felt the same way about airplanes, but it certainly seems that far more airplane crashes are a matter of human error than something the pilot couldn't have controlled. I would love to be able to just nap while my car chauffeured me between San Marcos and Austin every day though...
Seeing as I live in Austin though, I suspect we'll all hear about this on the news occasionally, if only for summaries of the proceedings as they unfold over time.
What I believe was meant was that we in Austin will be hearing about this case for the next year, which we undoubtedly will. Thankfully the crime rate in Austin is such that capital murder cases tend to grab the headlines for quite some time.
I was two blocks away at Stubb's when this was going on, and I walked through that area many times already during SXSW. I very rarely realize how fragile my life is, but events like this make it real.
"The suspect was asked to pull over at a sobriety check point and instead sped away from a police car. He smashed through a police barricade and then plowed down people, some of them lined up outside a nightclub, over a span of two blocks."
This should still raise the question: do sobriety checkpoints save lives? Even though this was the fault of the driver, and obviously an extremely rare event, would those people still be alive if the driver had just gone home?
It's clear that sobriety checkpoints aren't killing people left and right (that's preposterous). But it's not clear (edit: to me) if they actually save any lives for the effort.
At least in CA, an increased checkpoint effort saw a stall followed by an increase in drunk driving fatalities. But this data obviously doesn't account for a lot of variables.
Here in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), they saves lives. People are afraid to go out to drink driving and lost the car (with stay with the police) and the driver's license (1-year without the license and have to go through all the classes to get the license again) plus a fine of R$1,915.65(around US$980).
It works here, a lot of people are preferring a cab over the car to go out to places they know they will drink.
The original distinction, in Texas, was between arresting someone for driving drunk and arresting them for another crime discovered during a sobriety checkpoint. The first was legal, the second was not. However, in Lujan, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that the latter was acceptable.
Should it? Is baseless conjecture informed by essentially no facts, in the echo of a just-happened tragedy, ever useful?
I am going to say no, it is never useful. Many misinformed words are spilled, blame is heartily doled out liberally and easily by keyboard warriors, and everyone feels like they've done the world some good, when they've done nothing of the sort.
Sorry if this comes across as overly cynical, but with barely a couple of posts in, the blame has been casually blamed on high-speed pursuits (no evidence of one, but throw it in there regardless), sobriety checkpoints (in response to a freak incident in a nation with 11,000 impaired driving deaths yearly)...and restrictions on Uber. I expect a Thanks, Obama to appear soon enough.
Don't follow FOX news style "who's to blame!?" thought processes.
"Police said the incident started when an officer on a drunken-driving patrol tried to stop the silver Toyota sedan at a gas station a few blocks away. The car took off, weaving between parked cars then driving at high speed the wrong way down a one-way street.
The driver rammed through police barriers — three wooden pieces held up by metal poles — set up on Red River Street on the northeast edge of the entertainment district. It'd had been packed with revelers just minutes earlier, but officials had cleared the area to create a fire lane."
Well, "impaired meta-consciousness" is the problem. It's a fact of human life that when drinking, a person reaches a point where they are no longer able to make rational judgments. Not only about their actions but also about the level of impairment they are experiencing.
This is why drunks are dangerous - after X drinks they look at their car and think "I've got this" when in fact they are so drunk they don't know what they have anymore.
I've been drunk enough to loose consciousness my fair share of times, but I have never been drunk enough to do something like get behind the wheel of a car. If that point of drunkenness exists for me, it exists beyond the "alcohol poisoning, facedown on the floor" point.
Alcohol is often used as an excuse for poor behavior, but in practice with most people it does not have the power to induce most of the behavior that has ever been attributed to it. For example, I might run my mouth and be inconsiderate of other peoples feelings when too drunk, but when I am drunk, I don't start fist fights. The difference? Being inconsiderate of the feelings of others is something that I sometimes want to do but hold back on while sober; starting fistfights is never something that crosses my mind while sober.
For most people, alcohol does not turn them into a different person. It distorts aspects of who they are, blowing some out of proportion, but it doesn't completely replace their set of priorities and desires with ones alien to them.
This is almost certainly not this persons first time driving while drunk. Almost certainly, this person has driven drunk before, sobered up afterwards and realized what the did, and then did little to nothing to prevent it from happening again. A person who drives while drunk is a person with a carefree attitude towards drunk driving even when they sober.
My experience has been similar to yours, but I am not confident that there isn't enough variation in human cognition and physiology that wouldn't still wind up with a lot of drunk drivers if every instance of driving drunk was as described above. This is not inconsistent with the notion that the predominance of effects of drinking on personality/behavior have more of a social basis than a chemical one (as studies have suggested, IIRC).
Oh, I definitely think that there are people for who might tend to drive drunk after drinking. I'm just saying that "but I made the decision to drive drunk while drunk" doesn't get any sympathy from me.
Even if that sort of behavior while drunk caught them completely off guard the first time it happened (which I think is very unlikely, though not impossible), they later made the decision while sober to drink again. The made that decision while sober and with the knowledge that when drunk, they do things like drive drunk.
Edit:
Brief responses, since my commenting appears to be limited at the moment:
justin66: I am not like the person that did this. I do not steal cars. I don't drive while drunk. I don't flee the police when pulled over. I would never flee on foot after crashing into other cars and people. People who drive while drunk typically do it frequently. I never have.
Codhisattva: "meta-consciousness impairment occurs well before losing consciousness from alcohol poisoning." I am not saying that I have never been impaired. I am saying that despite being impaired many times, I have never been impaired in such a way that I had any desire to drive while drunk, or any delusions about my ability to do so.
unclebucknasty: "Yet, you are questioning the judgment of someone who, instead of repeatedly drinking himself into a potential coma, stops somewhere short of that and decides he can operate a vehicle." You bet your ass I am. I may have endangered my life while having a little to much fun in college, but I never drove while drunk, and I never killed anybody.
"Well, that's the thing: the grandparent is judging people who drive drunk repeatedly, while he himself repeatedly drinks to the point of losing consciousness. I just don't see the difference."
I'm going to go with the most obvious difference being body-count. That is obvious right?
Furthermore, don't worry for my health. As I have mentioned on HN in the recent past, my current drinking is down to 4-6 nights a month. I am drawing on my experience drinking, not currently struggling with drinking.
I take exception to your implication that drunk driving is some sort of inevitable phenomenon that people who drink to the point of drunkenness are powerless to avoid through anything but luck. Drunk driving only happens if you allow it to happen. If you drive drunk, it isn't because of alcohol, it is because of you. There is nobody and no thing to blame but yourself.
I don't know, but there seems to be an awful lot of rationalization taking place in this and your previous comment.
As a person who drinks socially and is well-aware of my limits, I've rarely moved past a slight buzz. So, when I see a person state that they've repeatedly been drunk to the point of losing consciousness, I think, "now, why would a person do that?" I would have to think that there is at least some impairment when an already extremely inebriated person decides to continue drinking to the point where the only thing that stops him is that he physically cannot continue because he is unconscious.
Yet, you are questioning the judgment of someone who, instead of repeatedly drinking himself into a potential coma, stops somewhere short of that and decides he can operate a vehicle.
I just don't see the difference except that, of course, you can claim moral superiority in that you are presumably only endangering yourself vs. others. But, therein lies the rationalization. And, of course, if you repeatedly drink to the point wherein you literally lose control of your body, then perhaps it's only a matter of time before you endanger someone else somewhere along the continuum of inebriation.
It's quite a bit easier to drink to that point with some drinks (higher proof) and in some contexts than others (shots vs sipping, peer pressure, distractions). I've never passed out drinking, but I've certainly wound up drunker than I expected on occasion. For someone substantially lighter than I, it could probably sneak up even easier. That said, if someone does so regularly there is probably something else going on.
>It's quite a bit easier to drink to that point...
Well, that's the thing: the grandparent is judging people who drive drunk repeatedly, while he himself repeatedly drinks to the point of losing consciousness. I just don't see the difference. Why is one "sneaking up on you" any better than the other? Why does one demonstrate better judgment when inebriated than the other?
>That said, if someone does so regularly there is probably something else going on.
Well, that would be my take. Or at least that perhaps that person isn't in the position they think to cast judgment on others who make poor choices when inebriated.
I don't know if there's anyone alive who drinks even occasionally and hasn't gone further than they expected. But, it's generally a good distance between "drunker than I thought" and "I almost went into a coma". And, if it happens once or twice, then OK, but repeatedly? Seems like you'd be aware of the dangers you mentioned at some point, which ironically was the grandparent's judgment about repeat drunk drivers.
And that's the irony that was just a bit too much. It's weird, because there doesn't seem to be contrition or anything. Just, "yeah, I'm known to repeatedly drink myself unconscious, but look at the choices those guys make when drunk".
>Well, I do think putting yourself at risk should be judged less harshly than putting others at risk.
Perhaps when judged externally by others. But, when the person is judging himself less harshly in a way that justifies his own questionable behavior, then it comes off as rationalization.
And, again, to say he is only harming himself is part of the fallacy that he is somehow exercising better judgment. That is, I believe that someone who exercises the poor judgement to repeatedly drink himself into unconsciousness is very much susceptible to exercising equally poor judgment, while in that inebriated state, that could result in harm to others. It just hasn't happened yet.
> I've been drunk enough to loose consciousness my fair share of times, but I have never been drunk enough to do something like get behind the wheel of a car. If that point of drunkenness exists for me, it exists beyond the "alcohol poisoning, facedown on the floor" point.
One wonders what experimental technique you used to make this determination, if the driver of that car felt the same way, how valuable our judgments about our own behavior while drinking can possibly be, and so on.
You've outlined a belief that acknowledges the horror of what alcohol can bring about but allows you to keep drinking a lot anyhow. And it allows you to think of yourself as completely different than the guy who just killed those people. I'll just float the idea - as a fellow consumer of alcohol and not somebody interested in judging - that you might unconsciously be a little too easy on yourself here, and your drinking might actually put the rest of the world at risk to some degree.
(not to mention our erroneous human tendency to think of criminals as a completely different species as ourselves, which can also lead to some questionable ideas)
I agree with Codhisattva that in many cases people who are very drunk are not in control of their behavior. Moreover, an alcoholic is, by definition, not able to control his behavior. I have heard first hand accounts from self identified alcoholics of such situations, some of which resulted in a death that the person in question could not even remember. I don't mean to suggest that this is an excuse; in the stories that I refer to, the guilty parties said they were sorry, and went to prison. Of course a person could be a jerk and a drunk. This guy was driving drunk in a stolen car from the next town over -- it seems like there might have been some opportunities to exercise sober judgment somewhere along the way.
My point is that the fact that you or I believe that we can control our behavior when drunk, or that drinking does not alter our essential character (e.g. "people only do things when drunk that they wanted to do anyway) does not imply that the same is true for everyone unless you don't believe in alcoholism.
I think that not believing in alcoholism because you aren't an alcoholic is harmful.
I believe in alcoholism. I believe that anybody can develop a dependence on alcohol. I do not believe that alcohol categorically has the power to make anybody drive drunk. I don't accept "I was drunk" as an excuse for anything, unless you were unknowingly drugged.
Maybe anyone can become dependent, but not everyone _does_. I think our model of behavior ought to include the recognition that in some cases people are unable to refrain from drinking even though they know, in the abstract, that something terrible is likely to happen sooner or later. Acknowledging that alcoholism is not an excuse doesn't change the fact that some people are apparently undeterred from driving drunk by potential legal sanction. I too would hope that such people just wouldn't drink, but this seems insufficient. I admit that I haven't proposed a solution, I just think it's an interesting problem.
So, having established blame, what next? Ignition interlocks seem like a stop gap. I few months ago I watched a guy come out of a bar, and ask his friend to blow in the breathalyzer installed in his truck. No shit. A solution that is not strictly technical might be called for, but I'm not sure what a social solution looks like.
It seems like people in general are kind of bad at safely operating cars, and drunk people are just even worse. I fantasize that self driving cars. They would never get drunk, or distracted or sleepy or have road rage. Maybe someday driving your own car will seems reckless, pun fully intended.
Good thing APD is protecting the public by keeping Uber out. The driver was definitely at fault, but we need to seriously look at how we design cities and laws. If the only way to get around in a city is to drive, people are going to drive drunk. Make it easier for people to get around without driving, and there will be less drunk driving.
People will seek out jurisdictions where driving is less necessary because they are safer there.
Oh for heaven's sake, there are other ways to get from A to B besides driving yourself or taking Uber. Blaming APD for this is a cheap shot, especially as the driver appears to have stolen the car from another town an hour's drive away and was thus not likely to be an Uber customer int he first place.
This is a terribly sad, sad day out here. Your comment, while partially true, is not really appreciated.
That said, you can't really be "surprised" by the enormous amounts of DUIs around here (even by our elected officials). I don't mean to be insensitive, but this is not an isolated incident.
This is a city that practically endorses party behavior, and has absolutely miserable public transportation options and a sprawling suburb area. It's a lethal combination that is getting worse and worse.
Sadly, we deal with on a weekly basis -- driving around here at night is not safe -- and there's no true solution in near sight.
>> This is a city that practically endorses party behavior, and has absolutely miserable public transportation options and a sprawling suburb area
I used to live in Athens, GA, and we had the same problem: nightlife drove much of the local economy, but public transportation was nearly non-existent. The number of clearly intoxicated people getting into cars was astounding to me when I first moved, having previously lived in a city with good public transportation.
The correlation between drunk driving and the availability of public transportation seems pretty clear to me.
Unfortunately, one can't build a rail line overnight. Especially when Austinites themselves voted down the larger-scale project that was on the ballot in 2000. Shot ourselves in both feet.
With this city's growth, it will be very very bad for at least 20 years to come. The Mayor himself basically said so on an AMA yesterday.
I am just going to venture a guess that the kind of person who steals a car and flees cops -- first in a car and then on foot -- is not in Uber's target demographic.
You don't design city policy on the assumption everyone will behave responsibly. That assumption is false, and while education can amelliorate the issue, it's improtant to know some people will make bad decisions. Having good public transportation makes DUI a lot less appealing, and as such it's an important policy in a city where it's easy/normal to get drunk.
Uber would not have done anything to prevent this from happening. Let's put this in perspective: the problem wasn't simply that the guy was driving drunk, the problem is that he fled from the police after they attempted to pull him over for driving drunk.
Based on the judgment that drunkard exhibited (fleeing from the cops) [edit: and the fact that he apparently stole the car], it's pretty clear he wouldn't have taken Uber even if it had been widely available.
> Make it easier for people to get around without driving, and there will be less drunk driving.
So... add more car services? What!? Grade-separated rapid transit (ideally with platform screen doors), aggressive congestion charging, parking maximums, and general Copenhagenization - these are actual solutions, not more cars.
Platform screen doors are silly, faulty, expensive and pointless.
I mean, the rest of your comment stands - I don't know of anybody who got hurt on my street, but that's probably because my street is only open for cars between 8 and 11 (AM, for those of you stuck with 12h clock).
I think I've only ever seen platform screen doors once in my life, on the Paris metro, and I thought they were great. It ameliorated my own personal fears and general curiosity about the tracks. Why do you think they are so bad? What if they weren't faulty? On a cursory glance on Google, I don't see much except rare cases where people got stuck(?) in them?
I feel like they would be reduce incidents of people/things falling into the tracks as well as help with queues in front of the doors (i.e., people know where to queue, as opposed to just following the train until it stops).
Metro is a very specific case, and that line in specific - you have a limited variety of vehicles and fully enclosed platforms. Oh, and as far as I can remember, the specific metro line is fully automated.
In practice the incidents are rare (even in case of metros, it's something you read in news papers every time it happens), and the few attempts to implement them were generally underwhelming. And, if anything, the risk of a person getting between them and the vehicle means you're just swapping risks around.
So yeah, they're costly, of dubious use, they're yet another part that can break, and a general eyesore. And, if you want dense networks (and you do, trust me on that), then increasing the amount of space required for a stop is also a Bad Thing.
The incident started after a police officer began checking for DWIs. The suspect, fearing arrest, weaved his silver Toyota sedan through a gas station and sped off, driving the wrong way down a one-way street. The officer turned on his lights and pursued the suspect. A second officer stationed at a nearby barricade was forced to move to avoid being struck by the suspect, who proceeded to further accelerate, drive through the barricade and strike multiple pedestrians.
The suspect continued driving "at a high rate of speed" for two blocks before hitting a taxi and striking a male and a female and killing them both. The suspect exited his car after running over the moped and proceeded to flee on foot, where he was apprehended and tased by an Austin police officer before being taken into custody.
"As a result of this person's reckless and willful disregard for the safety of the people, we have two individuals who are now dead," Acevedo said. The entire incident lasted under two minutes.
> Good thing APD is protecting the public by keeping Uber out
Could have done without the sarcasm here, but you are correct. Improving public transit options and treating car-dependent culture is the ultimate solution here.
To be fare, he didn't have anyone in his car at the time, so Uber isn't liable.
EDIT:
So, was this a stupid local, a dumb kid from UT, or one of the startup brats from the coast?
EDIT2:
"Acevedo said officers initially tried to pull Owens over at a gas station on the Interstate 35 service road around 12:30 a.m. Thursday. Fort Hood officials tell KVUE that the Toyota he was driving was reported stolen in Killeen."
I've lived here 12 years, and the only improvements to public transportation infrastructure in that time have been the addition of a single train line and a few of those long buses that bend in the middle. As the fastest growing city in the country, a city that relies so heavily on the tax revenues generated by the ~2 weeks of debauchery that is SXSW, we'll need to seriously improve the ability to move folks around without automobiles or the maddening traffic and inability to safely be on the roads (or, indeed, standing near the roads) between 1:30AM-3:30AM will continue to plague us.