Friends don't let friends drive drunk... or they face penalties

The latest step in a series of drunk driving crackdown, new national laws have been issued to punish DUIs. Besides harsher restrictions on "light" penalties and a lowering of the legal level of blood alcohol content (BAC), the laws now say that people who are willing catch a ride with a drunk driver can face penalties themselves.

Like many regulations in China, the actual wording of the law was vague. We think the lack of specifics makes this new clause boil down to two situations:

1. Offenders will easily get away with the offense simply by denying they knew their driver was drunk - especially since the allowable BAC in China is lower than what it would be in several other nations.


2. The law will be a way for police officers to levy more fines on a whim. Didn't want to lubricate relations with a little slipped cash? Well, we guess we'll just write you down as lubricated then.

Our skepticism aside, we do hope that the stringent laws will make people think twice before driving drunk... or letting their friends do it. Despite our skepticisms as to the success these new regulations will have, we hope that these laws make people think twice before driving drunk. As we previously reported, Shanghai has twice the rate of fatal accidents related to DUIs compared to the national average.