Passengers Are Jointly Liable with Drunk Drivers!
2018-02-15
CCTV News reported that a certain province (name forgotten) has passed a law holding passengers in a drunk driver's car jointly responsible for drunk driving! What a brilliant piece of legislation! Imagine this scenerio; a traffic poliiceman pulls over a driver on the highway, breath-test him and finds him over the limit, the officer then tickets all the passengers on the spot! It forces passengers to self-police and prevent any drunken friend from getting behind the wheel! That would most certainly reduce the number of drunk driving cases, which have mounted this festive season, and also bring down the number of deaths and injuries resulting from drunlk driving! Passengers always know if the driver has consumed alcohol; now the law holds them responsible if they failed to stop him driving! What a powerful deterrent against drunk driving, and all because passengers are held legally liable with the driver!
This is a very smart piece of legislation, and should be implemented in all provinces throughout China! This is probably the first law of its kind in the whole world! The traffic police should be given a medal for such an ingenius idea! Who says the Chinese are not innovative?
You example is rarely encountered, most passengers know their driver well, whether he has been drinking, many in fact go drinking with him, so no excuse for not knowing he is half drunk.
Whatever the case, I support this law; it forces passengers to check on driver.
I hit a mid size kangaroo with him in the car at about 140kmph and it was coming across the road in front of me but away from me not towards - and it went up in the air in front of car to side higher than a house. I think it might have landed in a tree. It looked funny. That one scared him. He went - "AHHH!". I didn't even blink and I said - " $%$% I'm sick of kangaroos. " But almost right away I saw the funny side of it - because of how it went up in the air like something from a cartoon - and because it scared my buddy Christian.
I did hit a number of kangaroos with him in my car - and always over speed limit.
180kmph for 65km in the dark with bad headlights. And he says nothing.
You could take it further and give passengers tickets for speeding. I had to give this guy a lift to work for a while a while ago and I would often speed because we were late. The trip was 65kms and a few times when we were very late I would drive pretty much the entire trip at 160kmph. One time I drove most of the trip at 180kmph. It was also very early in the morning - between 4am and 5am - and dark, and I had bad headlights. This is in Australia and we get a lot of kangaroos and hitting one at 160kmph would be potentially quite dangerous. I told him once that he should not get in the car with someone that is speeding and I asked him why he never said anything about how fast I drove at times. He was a very timid kind of guy. He told me that he thought I was a good driver. I am not a good driver at all you know. Well I'm not too bad but still. What if the passenger is a timid guy like this guy I was giving lifts to work to? And what if the passenger really doesn't know if the driver is over alcohol limit? I agree the idea is good if it is obvious the driver is drunk but sometimes it isn't.
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