>>>>>Why do people get arrested for DUI or loitering ? If somebody is DUI, take his keys away and he can pick it
>>>>>up next morning or 24H later, and who is victimized by loitering ?
>>>>>What am I missing ?
>>>>
>>>>DUI is a crime and, in the last 20 years or so, we've gotten serious about it, since folks who drive drunk once tend to do it again, and sooner or later, someone gets hurt or killed. Around here, they have a "diversion" program for first-time DUIs that lets them avoid jail time by doing, I think, a mix of community service and classes. But after that, you go to jail.
>>>>
>>>>Tamar
>>>
>>>You'd have to be convicted of drunk driving several times to go to jail in the UK. Usually its a one year ban. More if you're far over the limit.
>>
>>In Norway you get a minimum of 21 days in jail and lose your driver licence for a minimum of 18 months the first time you get caught driving, or attempting to drive, with more than 0.2 ppm of alcohol in your blood. If you get caught a second time, you get 36 days in jail and lose your licence for five years. Normally you get to serve the jail time in special work camps making pallets or some other trivial corporale work, but you are behind a closed fence the whole period.
>
>Is 0.2 ppm the same as what is called a blood alcohol content of .20 in the U.S.? If so that is pretty darned drunk. AFAIK the threshold for drunk driving in most states is around .08.
>
>I would like to see consequences that severe here. You are never going to keep all the drunken idiots from getting behind the wheel but you have to think it would certainly act as a deterrent to many. Deaths caused by drunk driving are truly senseless deaths. According to this site, there were 33,808 of them in 2009. That's more people than we were losing in Vietnam (way more).
>
>http://www.edgarsnyder.com/drunk-driving/statistics.html
>
>PS -- I have a UT / HTML question. How could I have made the words "this site" a hyperlink to the statistics URL instead of posting the link separately?

Use

<a href = "http://www.edgarsnyder.com/drunk-driving/statistics.html"> This site</a>