Sunday, August 1, 2010

new ontario no-drink law for young drivers is ageist

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/842831--alcohol-impairs-young-drivers-more-than-experienced-ones#comments

The title:
Alcohol impairs young drivers more than experienced ones

Um... no.

And the story never does make the case.

“Is (the new law) biased against young people — yeah,” says Hughson. “But it’s not biased against them because they’re young, it’s biased against them because they’re not experienced drivers.”

Hughson describes driving as a complex, multi-tasking challenge. All at once, drivers need to concentrate on the road, their speed, other cars and unexpected events — someone cutting them off, for example. Even when stone cold sober, younger drivers do these less well than older, more experienced ones, he says.

“Younger drivers don’t have the skills older drivers have, and that’s why alcohol affects them a lot more,” Hughson says. “It’s not so much that they’re more impaired than the older driver, it’s the fact that they don’t have the experience driving to keep all the things going.”

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D: at first blush, the argument seems vaguely plausible.
Actually, the new law IS biased against young people and very specifically since they're young.
Hughson never makes the case that age is the defining factor.
Lack of experience is. Now granted, a young driver can only have a finite # of years of (official) driving experience.
But.
If experience is the issue, then the existing graduated licensing system is a much better basis than age per se.
By this I mean that ANY new driver - or ANY age - maybe ought to be subjected to the teetotaller rule.

This law is ageist against the young.

It should be tossed out because of this.

Now many will pipe up earnestly at this point that "the law will SAVE lives"!
As if this justifies sloppy discriminatory laws.
We can save lives by applying a no-booze rule to ALL new drivers, regardless of age.
This should, by all rights, save MORE lives.
So the above objection remains ignorant and ageist pap.

'Nuff said.
This sort of stuff will be a part of my thesis.

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