better preemption

this new technology might make some sense:

The device is intended to deliver a quick yes or no verdict on whether a person is in a fit state to drive and works by assessing the driver's behaviour, rather than testing for particular substances.

although this behavior detector is still a form of preemption, it would be a large improvement on current strategies. it's a more direct measure of what the law is trying to get at: those people who are cognitively impaired. one major drawback, however, is that it has very vague prescriptions. it would be much more difficult to judge just how much one could drink, smoke, etc.

but preemptive anything, including efforts to prevent accidents, don't make a lot of sense to me. preemption says that there are actions that are highly correlated with certain outcomes, and that if the correlation is high enough and the outcome undesirable enough, those actions should be outlawed. i'm not comfortable with this broad-brush approach. laws based on this philosophy punish citizens for crimes they didn't commit, aren't trying to commit, and might not have ever committed. it’s true that many car crashes involve alcohol or drugs, but i'd wager that a very small percentage of "drunken" drivers, defined as those over the .0000000000001 limit, cause accidents.