Today is the anniversary of the first known arrest for drunk driving. On September 10 of 1897, British authorities arrested taxi driver George Smith for drunk driving after he drove his cab into a building.
It took a while for the idea to catch on in the United States. New York state passed the first laws about drinking and driving in 1910. The first gadget to measure blood alcohol levels, named the Drunkometer, appeared in 1936, while the Breathalyzer we recognize today came out in 1953.
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Drunk driving remains a very serious issue. Law enforcement arrests nearly 1.5 million people in the US each year for driving while under the influence.
When I found this story (at history.com) the article also mentioned a new device requiring drivers with previous records of drunk driving to breathe into the device to prove they aren’t intoxicated before they can start their vehicle. It occurred to me that, with some states also legalizing marijuana use, perhaps this holds potential to prevent accidents from drivers who are high as well.
Importance of the First Arrest for Drunk Driving
While this post on the first arrest for drunk driving may not be the most critical event I’ve ever blogged about, it does raise a question I sometimes discuss with my students. Whenever technology comes up with a solution to a problem, it often creates a new set of problems in the process.
Consider the automobile. It solved many vexing problems, such as moving people from one place to another quickly and easily all while allowing them to carry cargo at the same time. Cars moved faster than animals and, unlike animals, don’t tire. They also allowed cities to expand and grow larger, especially in the 1950s when suburbs boomed and the US constructed thousands of miles of interstate highways.
Although the number of cars on the road today indicates that most people find the benefits of cars exceed their drawbacks, drawbacks do exist. Cars created new problems. People moving faster and in large vehicles got in dangerous accidents. Cars also necessitated spending money on infrastructure to build and maintain roads. They required traffic signals to organize the flow of vehicles, along with wider city streets that wouldn’t jam as easily. Finally, they run on fossil fuels, with the eventual environmental consequences the world faces in the present. So, we see an invention meant to make peoples’ lives easier did in some ways while further complicating lives in others.
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