The Paradoxes of Drinking-Driving

Abstract

The day after I had read a dose of The Culture of Public Problems, my local campus newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, ran a front-page article headlined "Truckers Aid Cops in Traffic Arrests." As Joseph Gusfield could have told me, the "aid" seemed to be aimed at drunk drivers, not speeders or other miscreants. As the administrator of the State Patrol told reporter Dave Umhoefer, "truckers don't like drunk drivers." He did not expect them to report speeders, though, because "that's ratting on their buddy." A Rice Lake trucker said, "I hope it works, I hope they keep it going. I've reported drunks before." Speeders were another story. "No, I like to zip down the road." There is a paradox here (Paradox 1). From the standpoint of safety on the road, the fact that someone drinks is not in itself a hazard. What is a hazard is poor driving behavior, like tailgating, or weaving, or speeding. But the law and public opinion are much harsher with drivers caught drinking than with drivers who simply drive dangerously. Joseph Gusfield is an aficionado of paradoxes, and this book is filled with them. Gusfield finds in paradox the stimulus to lay bare the cultural and social processes that underlie the making and enforcement of law. He is a sociologist and enthnographer, not a lawyer. Through "sociological irony" he seeks to look at the world "from a new angle" and "create a new view of the drinking-driving problem." Ironists use paradox as lawyers use precedents, and it seems there are few sociallegal phenomena as replete with paradox as the mixture of alcohol and gasoline. Paradox 2. Many factors contribute to accidents, and many ways could be found to reduce accidents involving drinking drivers. Why do we place all the emphasis on the driver himself (or herself, but much less often) in our public consideration of the problem? For example, the auto industry could make safer cars, or cars that require passing a breath test before they could be started; or bars could be kept away from roads, or not allowed parking lots, or made responsible for preventing persons who drink from driving. We learn from this paradox the individualistic biases of our cultural way of thought, and the individualistic needs of our blame-assigning legal institutions.