A new law in Texas requires convicted drunk drivers to pay child support if they kill a child’s parent or guardian, according to House Bill 393.
The law, which went into effect Friday, says those convicted of intoxication manslaughter must pay restitution. The offender will be expected to make those payments until the child is 18 or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later,” the legislation says.
Intoxication manslaughter is defined by state law as a person operating “a motor vehicle in a public place, operates an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride, or assembles a mobile amusement ride; and is intoxicated and by reason of that intoxication causes the death of another by accident or mistake.”
Damn Texas. Sometimes you do manage to do something right.
Two things in a row it seems. This is weird.
Really, shouldn’t this apply to all manslaughter and murder cases?
Totally. But the US is obsessed with punishment rather than reparations.
More like obsessed with superficiality
it’s all theatre, take something people love (children, mothers) & something people hate (criminals), now they can justify passing any legislation & continue expanding their control over time without fixing the underlying issues like lack of public transportation. but hey, guns are legal…FOR THE CHILDREN!
Maybe. You would basically be created a two-tiered system of punishment. If you kill me you have to pay for my kids, if you kill someone childless you don’t pay.
I am not sure what the repercussions of that would be.
The fact someone can kill anyone, intentionally or not, and expect to be free soon enough to get a job and pay child support is nuts.
Should, yes. Does it already exist, yes. It can just be time consuming. Kill one parent surviving parent or guardian or state placed guardian is then supposed to go to civil court and a judge will rule the person pays support. Some would say that is costly but the court fees will end up having to be paid by the person the judge rules against. (Which many attorneys will pick up pro bono because no judge is going to rule that killing a parent(s) didnt cause at LEAST financial/ impact on the child/family.
The real headline here is Texas being in the news for something that isn’t shitty.
It’s new law day here in Texas. Typically because of the weird way our state works, laws passed in the once every other year legislature only becomes effective on September 1st of that year.
So good stuff like this, the tampon tax thing, etc yes it’s all good headline news.
But the vile, anti queer, christostate nonsense goes live now too.
you know what prevents drunk driving? proper public transit
From a country with proper public transport here (Norway): people still drive drunk with that, so having some proper punishment won’t hurt you.
Much FEWER people driving drunk, though, which is the point. Just because the solution doesn’t take the problem from 100 to 0 doesn’t mean that taking it to 20 or whatever isn’t beneficial.
Also, “having some proper punishment won’t hurt you” is ridiculously wrong, based on the US having one of if not THE most punitive “justice” system and amongst the highest rates of crime of all western countries.
Prevention and restorative justice works MUCH better at decreasing crime than revenge-based punishment.
The highest incarceration and punishment rate in the world. If you went by the statistics, Americans are, “apparently,” 4.3 times more likely to be criminals than Chinese citizens, and it just gets worse from there, as every other country in the world has even fewer people incarcerated per 100,000 people.
Our punishment system is broken.
There’s also shootings in Norway. The key difference is frequency
Or people could stop it at the source and be responsible. Probably too much too ask.
Fixing issues on the individual level is exactly why america is the way it is. Systems solutions exist
In the same way telling teens to not have sex will stop teen pregnancies.
what is the source? be very detailed in what you’re suggesting please.
Source of what? Drunk driving? That would probably be the individual, who knowing that the only mode of transportation for the night is to drive themselves and still decided to drink and then drive. Is that specific enough for you or are you still struggling with the concept?
Yeah, you’re saying the same thing, public transit.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. That’s what you want me to say, but you are very incorrect.
Punishing drunk drivers is well-deserved, but as long as car-dependent infrastructure encourages drunk driving, it is considerably more difficult to actually decrease the rate of it. Taking a taxi is expensive and being a DD is no fun, so people take stupid risks. If you know you can take public transit home, there’s no reason to take such a risk at all.
Could take a Uber/Lyft.
I deal with this issue, the big bus station and my house are divided by a highway. So me and my buddies go out it either has to be very local or I have to take a rideshare for a five minute drive home.
not everyone can justify that every time they go out with friends
People need to live within their means. It’s not a human right to go get drunk every weekend. If you can’t afford it, you stay home.
Or get drunk at home
This honestly reads like a defense of drunk driving, blaming the lack of infrastructure for bad decision.
Edit: or something very close to that.
But if you’re just saying we should design around stupid, then I guess I can agree there.
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“No offense, but you’re fucking stupid.”
Like that kind of thing?
I mean, you said it.
lol
Anything said before the word ‘but’ can be ignored in these instances.
Explaining is not forgiving.
You have to design around stupid, because this is the real world. People can only expected to be rational sometimes, and in aggregate, you need systems that expect people to take whatever is the most obvious or easy choice available to them, whether it’s actually a good idea or not.
If only there was something to do besides getting drunk. Or if only there was a way to stop drinking before you get hammered.
Car dependent infrastructure has very little to do with people making bad decisions. Getting drunk shouldn’t be a given.
People can enjoy a drink responsibly, but you shouldn’t drive even if you’ve only had a couple of drinks. Even a small amount of impairment is unacceptable when you’re controlling a machine that could easily kill other people by mistake.
I’d argue anyone drinking and getting behind the wheel is making a conscious enough decision to make it murder. And I hope that more cases end up going that route of prosecution
That’s an interesting take, that going drinking without a plan to get home without driving drunk would considered premeditation. I don’t think I agree with it exactly, but it certainly should be an enhancement to manslaughter.
There’s actually precedent, like they’ve actually convicted someone of murder for drunk driving before. Maybe a few times, but I’m sure it’s exceedingly rare.
A little philosophical, but the drunk person who decides to drive is a different person than the sober person who decided to drink in the first place. Punishing the sober person for the decisions made by the drunk version of themselves is maybe misguided, except for as a deterrent that says “don’t turn into a drunk person that can make stupid decisions”
I’m not sure what the right answer is to this problem. Just some food for thought
That’s just about the least convincing take I’ve ever heard. You can absolutely punish the person who made the decision to impair themselves beyond the ability to make rational decisions. They came from the same decision to get drunk by the sober person. A person who has a propensity to get drunk and drive is a danger to everyone and needs to be dealt with accordingly.
I think you missed my point. My point is that the crime the sober person makes is deciding to become impaired. That’s different from saying the sober person made a decision to drive drunk - the drunk person made that decision, not the sober person. There are 2 different people here in this scenario. Whether the law should treat it that way is a separate discussion. It would have some similarities with a “temporary insanity” defense.
I did not miss your point. I thought it was entirely unconvincing. The other person is the same person just with the disadvantage of being fucked up.
Edit. Furthermore, I believe that the drunk self is just an amplified version of the sober self. My theory is that if your drunk self is capable of doing bad, so is your sober self.
I’ve thought about that before, personally, drunk driving is SO UNTHINKABLE to me, it’s never even occurred to me at any level of drunk. All the way down to near blackout drunk.
If the thought of killing someone doesn’t deter you that much, then maybe definitely ruining the rest of your life will have that effect. And if you really can’t trust your drunk self, if drunk you is so much more stupid, then yeah, society needs to scare you out of drinking in the first place.
The crux of the issue is they think they won’t hurt anyone. They give 0 thought to the idea they would hurt some. That’s how this happens. Any person who thinks they might hurt someone won’t drive. They gain false confidence by drive many times without incident.
I don’t think a single drink drive ever considered that they would hurt some or get hurt.
Yeah, exactly. It’s the same reason why punishment is only a deterrent to crime to certain extent, and it doesn’t work absolutely.
You could make the punishment for shoplifting be summary execution, and it would still happen on a regular basis. Because people think they won’t get caught, even with evidence of lots of people having been caught before.
It shouldn’t, but unfortunately it’s a big part of our society.
i would go further and say it’s a big part of human culture generally.
Those poor murderers, they couldn’t help themselves.
Drinking is a personal choice.
Yes, I agree people are allowed to do absolutely idiotic things without consequences.
Drinking is a personal choice. Getting drunk affects more than yourself.
Yeah, people should have the right to choose to drink, and then choose to drive, and “accidentally” kill someone.
That isn’t what I said and you know it. Drinking is not something a person should have to justify to anyone but themselves. This is not an endorsement of drunk driving and no one assuming good faith would have assumed I was making one.
You have a right to put a chemical into your own body. It only becomes an issue for those around you when A leads to B and B is other people either getting hurt or very nearly getting hurt.
Well, I didn’t get what you were saying. In this context, I don’t why tf anyone is even talking about infrastructure.
And then your statement seemed like a non sequitur. So, I was just saying what my read of your statement was.
I don’t think people normally say things like what I said, legitimately accusing the other of saying that. But as a hyperbolic expression, for the sake of highlighting a misunderstanding.
Sorry I snapped at you.
No worries, jumping to the hyperbolic tone was also a bit snappy of me.
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The good news is if everyone keeps driving eventually snow won’t be an issue for you.
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Yeah yeah, public transit good, we know. STFU already. You fuckers are worse than vegans.
user name checks out
I wonder how this will work in practice since most of the time if you kill someone under the influence your life is basically over. Not exactly going to be able to pay a percent of your earnings while you are in jail.
nah, cyclist here. people “walk” on vehicular manslaughter all the time. it’s super fucked up. commonly a suspended sentence is issued.
Gee that is just fucking peachy.
Vehicular manslaughter !== Killing someone by drunk driving. Drunk driving is clear negligence, hitting someone entirely on accident shouldn’t ruin two lives. In those articles it doesn’t say anything about the driver being drunk
This guy was on drugs and frustrated because a “slow driver” ahead of him
This guy was on drugs and frustrated because a “slow driver” ahead of him.
Ah ok than should do jail time.
i 100% agree with you and 200% disagree with the judge and legal system who let him walk
criminal negligence causing death is manslaughter.
Yes for drunk driving- I agree. My issue is saying that someones life being ruined if they weren’t impaired and made what was a genuine mistake.
It’s a combination of neighbors and vehicular manslaughter.
This creates an incentive to let high earners:wealthy people :off the hook for jail time since they will have to earn money to pay for the support. This of course won’t apply to lower earners which will go to jail.
This is just a debt trap. It won’t help any kids because the kids can’t get money from someone who is in prison, but it does make it harder for people who commit crimes to pay their debt and rejoin society. If the law specifically gave these support payments priority over fines payable to the state I’d feel differently, but the real point of this is to just pile debt on someone who can’t earn money.
This is what I was thinking as well. Or they are going to garnish the wage of prison pay so the child is only going to recieve very little.
Precisely. Nothing in Texas is supposed to work as advertised. This is to further hunt poor people. Ideally brown ones. Glad I left that rotten state.
Turning jail time into spending money looks a lot like fines being a cost of business. A CEO of a big company could just kill a child’s parents and not even feel the sting, as long as he’s drunk and his weapon is his car.
Bold of you to assume the CEO would be convicted
Or any rich kid:
testified in court that the teen was a product of “affluenza” and was unable to link his actions with consequences because of his parents teaching him that wealth buys privilege
He only killed 4 people while drunk driving 乁 ˘ o ˘ ㄏ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch
He got a slap on the wrist with rehabilitation. He was only actually convicted for 2 years because he habitually broke his probation.
In Texas!
This is just an example, not really here to make outrage out of it, old news, but a typical example that money usually softens any blow.
Fair
In many parts of the US, not sure about Texas, child support is based on the parent(s)'(s) income/wealth. The same should apply here, but for the drunk driver’s income/wealth.
The spirit of the law would be to ensure that the change in the money available for the development of the child changes as little as possible after separation of the parents. Under that assumption, the killer would only have to provide as much as the victim would have if they had separated.
Why would that be the spirit of the law? If the parent suddenly started making more money, the kid would (probably) have more spent on raising them. Why would that same outcome not apply to the parent’s responsibility being suddenly replaced by person who makes more money?
cars the best weapon
https://lemmy.world/post/1685223
Already a thing.
So now drunk drivers have an incentive to claim it was intentional, not accidental.
The overall idea here is excellent, but it is fundamentally nonsensical to only apply it to drunk drivers and not all killers.
I guess… but that’s a risky move in a state that’s pretty gung-ho with the death penalty. I think most would rather pay the child support than admit to second or first degree murder
You think first degree murder would be a better financial decision than manslaughter?
Agreed with your second sentence. Though I think the state should step in to help the kids in either instance. If they’re convicted and are in prison it’s trying to get blood from a stone at that point.
This is Texas though. This isn’t about helping anyone it’s just grandstanding for votes.
That reminds me of something that may not at all be true (please correct me if I’m wrong) I was told it, many years ago, by a person who lived for a few years in China.
She said that there was a law there (in the '90s at least) that if you injured someone accidentally to the point that they were disabled, you had to pay their disability as long as they lived (or you die, whichever is first). BUT if you accidentally killed someone (not murdered) then you just had to pay their family a fine.
The fine was much less than a lifetime of disability payments, so there was incentive, if you accidentally injured someone (especially a child with a lot of years to live) to just go all the way and kill them as long as it could feasibly look like an accident.
A classic example of perverse incentives. Same for endangered animals. The most rational self-interest thing you can do is you see some endangered animal on your land is to kill it. Since if the government becomes aware of it you will lose control of your property and it will lose resell value.
You want to make things such that doing the morally correct, or at least the correct for the greater good, is always the best option for people to choose.
This is also an argument against extreme punishment for lesser offenses. For example, if you rape someone, and the penalty is death, might as well kill them too, because it ain’t gonna get any worse for you if you get caught.
What I want to know is if they have to keep paying if the kids never graduate. It’s Texas so it seems like the odds are pretty high you could be paying for some dudes kids until they either get shot in a bar or do a lethal fentanyl hit.
Child support continues until the child is no longer a child (18).
Someone might want to fix the summary. In bold it says 18 or when they graduate from high school *whichever is later *.
Actually one of the few sane things that Texas has done.
This is not a terrible law but maybe we should design our infrastructure such that injuries are rare rather than the “Accidents are common and you have to pay more if some of the people are alive after the accident” model we currently use.
these crashes are not “accidents” if infrastructure is designed that way. the design/engineering element make these crashes “features” of the design.
You’re wrong it’s a terrible law, it gets filed under creul and unusual
Fuck drunk drivers
Or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later.”
So don’t graduate and get paid for life?
You aren’t too good at reading are you?
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Correction, this is Texas, so you’ll have to pay if you’re poor or not right wing politically connected. If you can afford proper counsel, you won’t.
Don’t mess with Texas.
Texas is too busy messing with Texas for anyone else to fit in.
I’ll always be in favor of heavily penalizing drunk driving and improving enforcement to dissuade people from drunk driving.
That said, it would be nice if we could take a page out of the books of other countries where children and parents don’t have to rely on child support to ensure children get the means necessary to survive.
The current system furthers this game of hot potato which leads to children having a poor relationship with one of their parents and growing up in poverty, all in the name “personal responsibility” and “muh tax payer moneys” while children end up being collateral damage.
We have WIC, food stamps, free school lunches in most areas based on income, and section 8. It isn’t like there is nothing. It might not be enough, and I agree it probably isn’t, but it isn’t some Dickinsonian nightmare.
Ah yes, the programs that are so broken that they mainly serve as a cudgel against any form of criticism, rather than actually effectively lift people out of poverty.
Not to mention that politicians won’t let any opportunity go to waste to try and break down those programs further.
Don’t take my word for it, look at the child poverty ranking amongst the 34 OECD countries where the US is placed 31st, with 1 of every 5 kids you see growing up in poverty.
Meanwhile many other countries just plainly periodically give parents a bag of money in the form of child allowance, eliminating the need for free school lunches and teachers burning their meager paychecks on classroom essentials.
The closest thing that comes to this is the Child Tax Credit, still meager in comparison, but nevertheless eroded to a joke because we “care so much for the children”.
To call it a Dickinsonian nightmare might go a bit far, then again, you dragged that straw man in here, but the fact that child labor is back on the rise in the US suggests that those times are far from behind us.
i take it you haven’t been truly poor for any significant period of time.
Was homeless twice and my parents were failures at everything except making more kids. I have also been to the developing world quite a few times.
Whatever just keep making this about me, that seems like the way you want to go about this.
i just made the one comment - saying it’s not a Dickensian nightmare seemed not to demonstrate an understanding of what some folks are dealing with - not having a home, enough to eat, basic medical care, safety.
i’m surprised, given your own experiences, that you seemed to imply what others are going through in the face of insufficient resources is not, after all, that bad.
Most areas? Try 8 states.
https://apnews.com/article/free-school-meals-0c927f491b2ee9d4ce7e04b44da79e51
