It's well known to statisticians and apparently unknown
to most other people that statistical predictions apply to populations,
but not to individuals. That is, it's impossible to calculate a prediction
that applies to a population of one, an individual. Only populations
greater than one are subject to statistical predictions. The failure
to understand that principle is of great significance.
In the case of drunk drivers, it's possible to predict, using statistical
methods, that within a certain population of drunk drivers, there will
be some percentage of accidents. The larger the population of drink
drivers, the more confidence we can have in the prediction. The smaller
the population, the less confidence we will have in the prediction.
However, for a population of one, the prediction is impossible. That
is, it isn't possible to predict, statistically, that a specific drunk
driver will ever have an accident. He might drive drunk for his entire
life and never do so. It's impossible to prove that he's more likely
to have an accident than a sober driver, because it's impossible to calculate
the probability for either of them. While statistical calculations
that predict a certain probability of an occurrence within a population
might justify some government policy regarding that population, it's utterly
impossible to use a statistical consideration to justify the imposition
of any requirement whatsoever upon an individual. Thus, to treat
a drunk driver differently under the law than a sober driver, based only
upon an unprovable theory that the drunk driver is more likely to cause
an accident, is unjustifiable. Furthermore, a drunk driver, by the
simple fact of driving drunk, doesn't harm anyone. Harm doesn't occur
until someone is injured. Indeed, people are injured just as seriously
in accidents that don't involve drunk drivers at all. The fact of
being drunk is irrelevant to the extent of injury caused by accidents.
Yet, such is the brainwashing that the police terminate any attempt to
logically assign blame the instant that they discover that one of the involved
drivers was drunk. He's instantly presumed to have caused the accident.
Obviously, if probability is the only available argument to the contrary
— and it is — , then we ought to leave drunk drivers alone to go about
their business. If a driver causes an accident, then he should be
equally guilty, whether or not he was drunk at the time. Although
a presumption of innocence for drunk drivers contradicts the brainwashing
to which we've all been exposed, even the establishment media have reported
results that support such a presumption of innocence. On the NBC
Nightly News With Tom Brokaw, on Tuesday, January 7, 1997, NBC's Robert
Hager reported the results of a study by the Centers For Disease Control.
That study reported that there are about 1 1/2 million alcohol-related
arrests each year in the USA but a mere 17,000 alcohol-related deaths per
year. There are over 123 million undetected incidents per year of
drunk driving that do not result in deaths, accidents, or even arrests.
Mr. Hager conceded that the number of undetected incidents of drunk
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