Let me draw a corollary - and anyone posting on this thread , please raise your hands if not guilty of it
So you are driving from point A to B in a traffic laden city like a Mumbai or a Bangalore - And you see an empty stretch of road an take your eyes off the road to see which google maps traffic overlay is less congested (or to check a text or a missed call or whatever)
Does that not impact your judgment and God forbid if an accident were to happen , does that mean "you were prepared to kill somebody through yours actions."
Isn't The above is akin to impaired judgment which is what we are talking about here
Please note that I am not condoning what happened, all i am trying to say is while the gentleman in question is probably worthy of the sentence he got - Yet the fact remains that before we judge that individual, have we looked at our own choices and actions?
Sorry, That is not called impaired judgement. Impaired judgement is when some cloth comes flapping out of nowhere and covers your windshield and there by resulting in you loosing control of your vehicle all of a sudden. Its not a an accident when you decide to check your missed calls while driving at 60 or 70 Kmph and hit somebody on the road. You set yourself up for that to happen.
If someone is deliberately putting themselves in situations that result in your so called "impaired judgement", then it is not "impaired judgement" at all and they shouldn't be driving and neither do they deserve a license to drive. It applies even if they are sober. If they are looking at a google map or mobile phone is distracting them from paying attention to the road and hitting somebody, then they shouldn't be doing it while driving. If they are still doing it, then it definitely means that they are aware that their actions can hurt or kill others, but you still go though with it out of indifference.
I see this all the time in Hyderabad. Women drivers particular keeping texting or posting on facebook and doing other stuff that distracts them from the road and they regularly hurt people and often kill them. Whether or not they really intended to hurt others or not doesn't matter here. but the fact remains that they were indifferent about setting themselves in a situation that would result in injury or death of themselves and others.
As for actions done while drunk, there simply is no excuse for it. If you decide to get drunk enough to lose control of yourself, then it is you who are responsible for that situation. Personally, I would say that deserves even more punishment than normal because they put themselves in that situation and God knows what kind of morons in our judiciary decided that it is a fine excuse to be used reduce sentences.
If somebody rapes and murders a girl, he might get sentenced to life. But the guy who raped two women and brutally murdered them by knifing them over 80 times and then bragging about it to friends the next couple of days get a considerably lighter sentence because some morons in our high courts came to the conclusion that he happened to be a bit drunk when the crime was committed while ignoring the fact that he bragged about it when sober.
If actions done in a drunken state are to be considered "impaired judgement", then what about the fact that people get drunk when they intend to commit murder in cold blood?
