Does Excessive Drinking Cause Accidents Or Are They Both Symptoms Of Risk Taking Behavior?

My comment I posted on Jeffrey Miron's Blog "Libertarianism, from A to Z" in response to Miron's discussion of New York State legislature's attempt to pass a tougher DUI law and make it a felony to drive while intoxicated with a child in the vehicle. Additionally, the proposed law would require first-time convicted drunken drivers to buy a device that prevents them from driving their cars if they have been drinking.

My comment:

Your [Jeffrey Miron] paper, "Does the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Save Lives?" showed that MLDA laws have a minimal impact on teenage drinking. Do DUI laws decrease the incidence of drunk driving? Or drunk driving accidents? Are alternatives such as the designated driver campaigns more important in changing behavior?

As you mention, police will and are currently letting some offenders off with a warning, offenses are bargained down and offenders continue to drive.

Additionally, there is a cause and effect issue. Do people who have aggressive, asocial, risky behaviors, such as tailing, speeding, ignoring stop signs and red lights, turning without signaling, etc. get into accidents and they also drink because it is a risky behavior or is it the drinking that causes the accidents? While I am in no way approving drinking and driving, I think it is more often a concurrent behavior and not a cause.

The law is probably more punitive than preventive. It is also a law that provides more comfort to the general population by the public's perception that the government is doing something than by the law actually achieving any reduction in the aberrant behavior.

Some people regularly take more risks in their daily lives and engage in more anti-social behavior than others and have more negative impacts on themselves and society than the average person. Of course, it would be very nice to avoid or at least minimize the negative societal outcomes.

Often, some risky behaviors are looked at as the causes of the harm, when in fact the risky behaviors are really manifestations of the same underlying psychology that caused the harm and are not the causes. These behaviors occur concurrently and are often seen as causes because they are associated with the harm, but prohibition of these actions will not stop negative effects because they are concurrent manifestations and not causes.

Excessive drinking and risky, accident-prone driving are probably caused by the same psychological characteristics and one probably does not cause the other.