Morendil:
Where did you get your data? I haven't been able to quickly find a chart comparing car accidents in general by cause (e.g. alcohol- vs. cell-phone- vs. fatigue-related).
My comment probably wasn't clear enough -- I didn't claim that sleep-deprived driving is a more frequent cause of accidents than drunk driving. I merely meant to say that it can pose even greater danger when it happens, and that it does happen often in practice. I would surely be far more dangerous on the road after a sleepless night than with a BAC of double the legal limit, though admittedly, there are probably people who handle sleep deprivation much better and alcohol much worse.
Now, obviously, there are no systematic data on how frequently it actually causes accidents. People who get into accidents won't just go ahead and say that they were at fault for driving tired and sleep-deprived, and nobody will check them for this, unlike for alcohol. So we have to go by extrapolating from personal experience.
Another significant data point is that professional drivers are strictly regulated in this regard, with the rationale that sleep-deprived driving is extremely dangerous. I've never seen anyone challenge this consensus.
Finally, what the heck does "status" have to do with this, as opposed to merely "public perception of the importance of a given issue"?
The latter follows from the former. In North America, drinking alcohol is a fairly low-status activity (except perhaps for some sorts of connoisseurship, but even that is limited only to certain social circles). Drinking enough to cause any sort of impairment is considered extremely low-status. Thus, cracking down on drinking and driving is easy to sell as a winning political move in these times when promoting safety is among the most important strategic patterns in politics. In contrast, the image of industrious folk who rise early, work hard till late, and have no time for the lazy luxury of a good night's sleep, invokes much more positive and high-status associations, even if their drowsy commutes impose as much danger as if they were drunk.
As another status-related observation -- but note that this one is speculative and meant more as a suggestion for thought than a definite conclusion -- it seems to me that the global trend for changing the nature of drunk driving from a peccadillo to a serious offense, even in places where boozing is looked upon much more favorably than in the U.S., is, like many other global legal and social trends, driven by following what the Americans do. Thus, it's a reflection of the global high status of the U.S., which has been among the principal forces in the course of world history in recent decades.
the image of industrious folk who rise early, work hard till late, and have no time for the lazy luxury of a good night's sleep, invokes much more positive and high-status associations
Like so many other status-related "explanations" this strikes me as a just-so story with no actual predictive power and no ready base of facts to check it against. For instance, the sayings in France "la France qui se lève tôt" (the early rising part of the country) and "la France d'en bas") (the bottom tier) are nearly synonymous in political...
The following will explore a couple of areas in which I feel that the criminal justice system of many Western countries might be deficient, from the standpoint of rationality. I am very much interested to know your thoughts on these and other questions of the law, as far as they relate to rational considerations.
Moral Luck
Moral luck refers to the phenomenon in which behaviour by an agent is adjudged differently based on factors outside the agent's control.
Suppose that Alice and Yelena, on opposite ends of town, drive home drunk from the bar, and both dazedly speed through a red light, unaware of their surroundings. Yelena gets through nonetheless, but Alice hits a young pedestrian, killing him instantly. Alice is liable to be tried for manslaughter or some similar charge; Yelena, if she is caught, will only receive the drunk driving charge and lose her license.
Raymond, a day after finding out that his ex is now in a relationship with Pardip, accosts Pardip at his home and attempts to stab him in the chest; Pardip smashes a piece of crockery over Raymond's head, knocking him unconscious. Raymond is convicted of attempted murder, receiving typically 3-5 years chez nous (in Canada). If he had succeeded, he would have received a life sentence, with parole in 10-25 years.
Why should Alice be punished by the law and demonized by the public so much more than Yelena, when their actions were identical, differing only by the sheerest accident? Why should Raymond receive a lighter sentence for being an unsuccessful murderer?
Some prima facie plausible justifications:
Trial by Jury; Trial by Judge
Those of us who like classic films may remember 12 Angry Men (1957) with Henry Fonda. This was a remarkably good film about a jury deliberating on the murder trial of a poor young man from a bad neighbourhood, accused of killing his father. It portrays the indifference (one juror wants to be out in time for the baseball game), prejudice and conformity of many of the jurors, and how this is overcome by one man of integrity who decides to insist on a thorough look through the evidence and testimony.
I do not wish to generalize from fictional examples; however, such factors are manifestly at play in real trials, in which Henry Fonda cannot necessarily be relied upon to save the day.
Komponisto has written on the Knox case, in which an Italian jury came to a very questionable (to put it mildly) conclusion based on the evidence presented to them; other examples will doubtless spring to mind (a famous one in this neck of the woods is the Stephen Truscott case - the evidence against Truscott being entirely circumstantial.
More information on trial by jury and its limitations may be found here. Recently the UK has made some moves to trial by judge for certain cases, specifically fraud cases in which jury tampering is a problem.
The justifications cited for trial by jury typically include the egalitarian nature of the practice, in which it can be guaranteed that those making final legal decisions do not form a special class over and above the ordinary citizens whose lives they effect.
A heartening example of this was mentioned in Thomas Levenson's fascinating book Newton and the Counterfeiter. Being sent to Newgate gaol was, infamously in the 17th and 18th centuries, an effective death sentence in and of itself; moreover, a surprisingly large number of crimes at this time were capital crimes (the counterfeiter whom Newton eventually convicted was hanged). In this climate of harsh punishment, juries typically only returned guilty verdicts either when evidence was extremely convincing or when the crime was especially heinous. Effectively, they counteracted the harshness of the legal system by upping the burden of proof for relatively minor crimes.
So juries sometimes provide a safeguard against abuse of justice by elites. However, is this price for democratizing justice too high, given the ease with which citizens naive about the Dark Arts may be manipulated? (Of course, judges are by no means perfect Bayesians either; however, I would expect them to be significantly less gullible.)
Are there any other systems that might be tried, besides these canonical two? What about the question of representation? Does the adversarial system, in which two sides are represented by advocates charged with defending their interests, conduce well to truth and justice, or is there a better alternative? For any alternatives you might consider: are they naive or savvy about human nature? What is the normative role of punishment, exactly?
How would the justice system look if LessWrong had to rewrite it from scratch?