A new law in Texas requires convicted drunk drivers to pay child support if they kill a child’s parent or guardian, according to House Bill 393.
The law, which went into effect Friday, says those convicted of intoxication manslaughter must pay restitution. The offender will be expected to make those payments until the child is 18 or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later,” the legislation says.
Intoxication manslaughter is defined by state law as a person operating “a motor vehicle in a public place, operates an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride, or assembles a mobile amusement ride; and is intoxicated and by reason of that intoxication causes the death of another by accident or mistake.”
Damn Texas. Sometimes you do manage to do something right.
This just seems like theater. What if you disable the parents such that they can’t support their kid? You slip through?
It’s theater. People go to prison for intoxication manslaughter. How are they making money to pay for child support? What kind of job will they really get after getting out of prison for essentially murder?
A cynical person might even say this is an attempt by the state and insurance companies to justify not having any sort of security net for victims’ families. If one person can be held financially responsible for the kids, why should anyone else have to step in?
That is exactly what it is, aimed at drunk drivers first because everyone will be on board with that demographic first. Then it will be expanded over time.
How are they making money to pay for child support?
Doesn’t matter. Seize their assets and auction them off. Use the proceeds to fund the reparations.
It’s not that difficult to think of solutions if you, you know, want to.
Ahh, yes. Assets. The thing most Americans have of course. /s
So… even if they have assets we shouldn’t seize them because… what?
Some people might not?
Also, why just drunk driving? Why not you pay child support for murder?
Because if you get convicted of murder, you go to jail for a long period of time and never really make much money again, even if you get out.
Their child support payments would be like 16.53 per month.
Then they pay it.
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Doesn’t matter. Seize their assets and auction them off. Use the proceeds to fund the reparations.
Murder is not near the problem of driving. Few people murder, but many have accidents.
Moving from A to B can still be a good thing to do, even if there are some remaining problems at B.
Better something than nothing, we can improve on something
You’re completely right. People just want to keep their blinders on and hate on this because it’s Texas. They don’t want to think critically and acknowledge a state that often does the wrong thing can also do the right thing.
I guarantee there wouldn’t be as many critical comments if this were New York or California.
I fucking hate Texas and I came here to support this move. (Most) People are less shitty than you suggest.
1,000%
In your metaphor b is closer to c than a so it’s a good thing. But if b is on a one way street to a cliff it doesn’t make it a good thing to drive there.
If someone is unable to pay the restitution because they’re incarcerated, they’re expected to make payments no “later than the first anniversary of the date,” of their release, the law says.
From the article. So seems like they thought of that too
So how long do you get for manslaughter in the us? 8 years? So at best the child gets support like 9 years later and only if the person manages to get a good enough job… Maybe the life of a child shouldn’t be a lottery but just backed by the state
So you’re saying that people can just ignore debt imposed and tracked by the government?
Are you replying to the right person?
Two things in a row it seems. This is weird.
Seems like they have come along way since the grousing about the laws in the 80s coming into effect to ban a hard working person from enjoying a couple on the way home from work…
https://youtube.com/shorts/BVk-_xhccK4?si=aMU_vedYJAYnKg0y
Mix this in with the freeway speed limits are 80MPH on the highway in. Texas and often 65 for work zones on the smaller 2 lane highways. One can’t even go that fast on the I5 in Oregon with the Max being only 60 mph without construction delays. Can’t imagine adding a couple of drinks into the mix on the way home from a 12 hour day…
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They did something that wasn’t evil, just stupid. I guess that is a win for texas. There are already systems to make people pay damages to other people without having the child go trough the indignity of getting child support from a murderer.
Really, shouldn’t this apply to all manslaughter and murder cases?
Totally. But the US is obsessed with punishment rather than reparations.
More like obsessed with superficiality
And rehabilitation
it’s all theatre, take something people love (children, mothers) & something people hate (criminals), now they can justify passing any legislation & continue expanding their control over time without fixing the underlying issues like lack of public transportation. but hey, guns are legal…FOR THE CHILDREN!
Maybe. You would basically be created a two-tiered system of punishment. If you kill me you have to pay for my kids, if you kill someone childless you don’t pay.
I am not sure what the repercussions of that would be.
The fact someone can kill anyone, intentionally or not, and expect to be free soon enough to get a job and pay child support is nuts.
Should, yes. Does it already exist, yes. It can just be time consuming. Kill one parent surviving parent or guardian or state placed guardian is then supposed to go to civil court and a judge will rule the person pays support. Some would say that is costly but the court fees will end up having to be paid by the person the judge rules against. (Which many attorneys will pick up pro bono because no judge is going to rule that killing a parent(s) didnt cause at LEAST financial/ impact on the child/family.
The real headline here is Texas being in the news for something that isn’t shitty.
It’s new law day here in Texas. Typically because of the weird way our state works, laws passed in the once every other year legislature only becomes effective on September 1st of that year.
So good stuff like this, the tampon tax thing, etc yes it’s all good headline news.
But the vile, anti queer, christostate nonsense goes live now too.
Punishing drunk drivers is well-deserved, but as long as car-dependent infrastructure encourages drunk driving, it is considerably more difficult to actually decrease the rate of it. Taking a taxi is expensive and being a DD is no fun, so people take stupid risks. If you know you can take public transit home, there’s no reason to take such a risk at all.
Could take a Uber/Lyft.
I deal with this issue, the big bus station and my house are divided by a highway. So me and my buddies go out it either has to be very local or I have to take a rideshare for a five minute drive home.
the big bus station and my house are divided by a highway
Why does this have to be a thing? In my country they have bridges for pedestrians over the road, or underground passageway.
Because america
I live in a city where taking an Uber or Lyft a few miles is like $25, maybe $50 at the last call surge. Unfortunately ride-sharing is a lot more expensive in cities that don’t also have good transit, so I keep getting reminded that $25 is cheap for a ride share across any distance.
Back when I used to go out drinking, catching the last train home or taking an Uber was my go-to choice. I don’t drink much nowadays, but the rush home in an area without good transit infrastructure is still something I think about a lot.
not everyone can justify that every time they go out with friends
People need to live within their means. It’s not a human right to go get drunk every weekend. If you can’t afford it, you stay home.
Or get drunk at home
This honestly reads like a defense of drunk driving, blaming the lack of infrastructure for bad decision.
Edit: or something very close to that.
But if you’re just saying we should design around stupid, then I guess I can agree there.
Explaining is not forgiving.
You have to design around stupid, because this is the real world. People can only expected to be rational sometimes, and in aggregate, you need systems that expect people to take whatever is the most obvious or easy choice available to them, whether it’s actually a good idea or not.
If only there was something to do besides getting drunk. Or if only there was a way to stop drinking before you get hammered.
Car dependent infrastructure has very little to do with people making bad decisions. Getting drunk shouldn’t be a given.
People can enjoy a drink responsibly, but you shouldn’t drive even if you’ve only had a couple of drinks. Even a small amount of impairment is unacceptable when you’re controlling a machine that could easily kill other people by mistake.
I’d argue anyone drinking and getting behind the wheel is making a conscious enough decision to make it murder. And I hope that more cases end up going that route of prosecution
A little philosophical, but the drunk person who decides to drive is a different person than the sober person who decided to drink in the first place. Punishing the sober person for the decisions made by the drunk version of themselves is maybe misguided, except for as a deterrent that says “don’t turn into a drunk person that can make stupid decisions”
I’m not sure what the right answer is to this problem. Just some food for thought
I’ve thought about that before, personally, drunk driving is SO UNTHINKABLE to me, it’s never even occurred to me at any level of drunk. All the way down to near blackout drunk.
If the thought of killing someone doesn’t deter you that much, then maybe definitely ruining the rest of your life will have that effect. And if you really can’t trust your drunk self, if drunk you is so much more stupid, then yeah, society needs to scare you out of drinking in the first place.
The crux of the issue is they think they won’t hurt anyone. They give 0 thought to the idea they would hurt some. That’s how this happens. Any person who thinks they might hurt someone won’t drive. They gain false confidence by drive many times without incident.
I don’t think a single drink drive ever considered that they would hurt some or get hurt.
Yeah, exactly. It’s the same reason why punishment is only a deterrent to crime to certain extent, and it doesn’t work absolutely.
You could make the punishment for shoplifting be summary execution, and it would still happen on a regular basis. Because people think they won’t get caught, even with evidence of lots of people having been caught before.
That’s just about the least convincing take I’ve ever heard. You can absolutely punish the person who made the decision to impair themselves beyond the ability to make rational decisions. They came from the same decision to get drunk by the sober person. A person who has a propensity to get drunk and drive is a danger to everyone and needs to be dealt with accordingly.
I think you missed my point. My point is that the crime the sober person makes is deciding to become impaired. That’s different from saying the sober person made a decision to drive drunk. There are 2 different people here in this scenario. Whether the law should treat it that way is a separate discussion. It would have some similarities with a “temporary insanity” defense.
I did not miss your point. I thought it was entirely unconvincing. The other person is the same person just with the disadvantage of being fucked up.
Edit. Furthermore, I believe that the drunk self is just an amplified version of the sober self. My theory is that if your drunk self is capable of doing bad, so is your sober self.
I don’t drink, but I’ve known plenty of people that can have a potent margarita, hangout for an hour or two, and then hop on one foot or do a cartwheel just fine.
I have serious doubts those folks are any more of a danger to anyone than the average driver or the average tired or emotional driver.
I guess what I’m saying is… it’s idealistic to never be impaired and always be at 100% but there’s a tolerable amount of impairment where realistically it’s not going to have an impact, and I think the law takes that into account appropriately as is; so as to say driving after a drink is not the same thing as driving while drunk. It’s not the folks genuinely having one or two, it’s the folks that had “one or two” (12) barely made it to their car and then went down the road.
I have serious doubts those folks are any more of a danger to anyone than the average driver or the average tired or emotional driver.
I think I agree with that except that I think that that is equally a problem. I don’t think people should be trusted to drive, en masse, out of necessity. There are too many things that make it dangerous when people really don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, and may have to drive when they’re not actually feeling up to it.
That’s valid. There are definitely a lot of people I bump into that I go “man how did that person get a license!?” Granted, everybody makes mistakes.
We really need to crack down on tailgating in the US though, it’s out of control. It doesn’t get you anywhere faster and it ensures everyone on the road is less safe.
There’s something about driving that innately dehumanizes - I swear I’ve actually seen studies about this. When people are behind the wheel, they don’t relate to the world around them as personally, empathy kind of disappears, it all becomes something like a game, and everything between them and their destination is just an obstacle to be overcome.
Drinking is a personal choice.
Yes, I agree people are allowed to do absolutely idiotic things without consequences.
Drinking is a personal choice. Getting drunk affects more than yourself.
Yeah, people should have the right to choose to drink, and then choose to drive, and “accidentally” kill someone.
That isn’t what I said and you know it. Drinking is not something a person should have to justify to anyone but themselves. This is not an endorsement of drunk driving and no one assuming good faith would have assumed I was making one.
You have a right to put a chemical into your own body. It only becomes an issue for those around you when A leads to B and B is other people either getting hurt or very nearly getting hurt.
Well, I didn’t get what you were saying. In this context, I don’t why tf anyone is even talking about infrastructure.
And then your statement seemed like a non sequitur. So, I was just saying what my read of your statement was.
I don’t think people normally say things like what I said, legitimately accusing the other of saying that. But as a hyperbolic expression, for the sake of highlighting a misunderstanding.
Sorry I snapped at you.
No worries, jumping to the hyperbolic tone was also a bit snappy of me.
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The good news is if everyone keeps driving eventually snow won’t be an issue for you.
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Yeah yeah, public transit good, we know. STFU already. You fuckers are worse than vegans.
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It needs to be addressed. Or people are gonna keep voting for pro-car politicians
Yeah. “One more lane” is something that a lot of people unironically think, it’s not just a meme, so trying to ensure that everybody knows how silly that is and how much harm it causes is one of the main ways that that line of thinking can be destroyed
This is just a debt trap. It won’t help any kids because the kids can’t get money from someone who is in prison, but it does make it harder for people who commit crimes to pay their debt and rejoin society. If the law specifically gave these support payments priority over fines payable to the state I’d feel differently, but the real point of this is to just pile debt on someone who can’t earn money.
This is what I was thinking as well. Or they are going to garnish the wage of prison pay so the child is only going to recieve very little.
Precisely. Nothing in Texas is supposed to work as advertised. This is to further hunt poor people. Ideally brown ones. Glad I left that rotten state.
So now drunk drivers have an incentive to claim it was intentional, not accidental.
The overall idea here is excellent, but it is fundamentally nonsensical to only apply it to drunk drivers and not all killers.
I guess… but that’s a risky move in a state that’s pretty gung-ho with the death penalty. I think most would rather pay the child support than admit to second or first degree murder
You think first degree murder would be a better financial decision than manslaughter?
Agreed with your second sentence. Though I think the state should step in to help the kids in either instance. If they’re convicted and are in prison it’s trying to get blood from a stone at that point.
This is Texas though. This isn’t about helping anyone it’s just grandstanding for votes.
For some people, prison could be a better alternative to becoming homeless due to an even smaller paycheck. I don’t think the idea of it is as outlandish as you think.
That reminds me of something that may not at all be true (please correct me if I’m wrong) I was told it, many years ago, by a person who lived for a few years in China.
She said that there was a law there (in the '90s at least) that if you injured someone accidentally to the point that they were disabled, you had to pay their disability as long as they lived (or you die, whichever is first). BUT if you accidentally killed someone (not murdered) then you just had to pay their family a fine.
The fine was much less than a lifetime of disability payments, so there was incentive, if you accidentally injured someone (especially a child with a lot of years to live) to just go all the way and kill them as long as it could feasibly look like an accident.
A classic example of perverse incentives. Same for endangered animals. The most rational self-interest thing you can do is you see some endangered animal on your land is to kill it. Since if the government becomes aware of it you will lose control of your property and it will lose resell value.
You want to make things such that doing the morally correct, or at least the correct for the greater good, is always the best option for people to choose.
This is also an argument against extreme punishment for lesser offenses. For example, if you rape someone, and the penalty is death, might as well kill them too, because it ain’t gonna get any worse for you if you get caught.
What I want to know is if they have to keep paying if the kids never graduate. It’s Texas so it seems like the odds are pretty high you could be paying for some dudes kids until they either get shot in a bar or do a lethal fentanyl hit.
Child support continues until the child is no longer a child (18).
Am I misunderstanding “until the child is 18 or graduates high school, whichever is later”?
Reeeaaally getting some Reddit vibes when the person that seems to have read the synopsis, at least, is getting down voted for it…
Someone might want to fix the summary. In bold it says 18 or when they graduate from high school *whichever is later *.
You’d have to edit the article and even the legislation too then. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/HB00393I.htm
Because they both say that too.
Lol. It’s bold for a reason. Because it’s intentionally highlighting this aspect of the new legislation.
This is not a terrible law but maybe we should design our infrastructure such that injuries are rare rather than the “Accidents are common and you have to pay more if some of the people are alive after the accident” model we currently use.
It might be a terrible law if it pushes the burden of paying for a child’s care onto a person going to prison for a while, coming out in debt and without transportation, while being expected to pay for child support while also paying for their time in prison and having to find work as a felon instead of social security and welfare helping.
Aside from that it also makes no sense. Different punishments for killing different people shouldn’t be a thing. This will 100% be a law that makes sure criminals and felons stay felons and continue to go in for profit prisons while the government ducks out of paying welfare and social security. What a farce.
I don’t really care in this case, I mean if you chose to risk other people’s lives by drunk driving then who cares if it’s difficult to afford. I honestly think drunk driving is way too tolerated. Also it could also be tied to income, so you pay more if you have a higher income.
The only issue I can see with this, is if you have killed someone while drunk driving isn’t there going to be a good chance the kid will already have reached adulthood by the time the drunk driver is released? That and this does just seem like a way for the state to avoid financially supporting those families. So for those two reasons the law is flawed I would say
It’s not a punishment in this case, it’s a form of restitution to help provide financial security to families that have lost a caretaker/breadwinner.
Restitution is a financial punishment that follows the offender for years and often decades after the fact. Many times offenders on parole or probation are required to remain on probation until restitution is fully repaid, and while on probation/parole it’s extremely easy to have your probation/parole revoked (meaning you get sent straight back to prison, often on fresh charges), plus the requirements for the probation & parole can absolutely violate their rights because “it’s a privilege to be on probation/parole instead of prison”
This is all not mention the difficulty they have getting work after they leave the prison/jail with a felony conviction. There’s a reason so many ex-cons operate businesses, it’s because it’s often the most viable path to a living income
If you are having to pay out money to no benefit of your own you can try to spin it any way you want. It’s still a punishment.
these crashes are not “accidents” if infrastructure is designed that way. the design/engineering element make these crashes “features” of the design.
You’re wrong it’s a terrible law, it gets filed under creul and unusual
Just know, all humans are terrible drivers (myself included). A drunk driver is like putting a toddler being the wheel.
We need better public transit. Period. Get cars out of human hands.
Not to disagree with more public transport, but public transport is also in human hands
Fewer, however
Yes agree. Drunk driving is bad but bad driving is also bad. Driving in general is also kind of bad. Focusing on the DUI isn’t really the solution.
Por que no los dos?
Or until the child graduates from high school, “whichever is later.”
So don’t graduate and get paid for life?
You aren’t too good at reading are you?
Later implies that both must occur to be free of child support
Seems like you’re not, Bucko.
There are edit and even delete buttons. Give them a whirl.
Fuck drunk drivers
Serious question, how do they do that, while in prison with no residual income? And if they were already near broke, how does this work?
I would like for someone to try and get corporations to pay child support when one of their workers dies from neglectful maintenance or dangerous policies.
That doesn’t seem like a bad thing per se- but I do somewhat worry that this would simply lead to corporations refusing to hire parents, firing people who become parents (for “some other reason” if necessary), or at least preferentially hiring people deemed unlikely to have children.
it probably won’t hurt in most cases. BUT if your parents get murdered by someone with money, you’re at least getting some kinda support.
Seize their assets and auction them off. Use the proceeds to fund the reparations.
Actually one of the few sane things that Texas has done.
I’ll always be in favor of heavily penalizing drunk driving and improving enforcement to dissuade people from drunk driving.
That said, it would be nice if we could take a page out of the books of other countries where children and parents don’t have to rely on child support to ensure children get the means necessary to survive.
The current system furthers this game of hot potato which leads to children having a poor relationship with one of their parents and growing up in poverty, all in the name “personal responsibility” and “muh tax payer moneys” while children end up being collateral damage.
We have WIC, food stamps, few school lunches in most areas based on income, and section 8. It isn’t like there is nothing. It might not be enough, and I agree it probably isn’t, but it isn’t some Dickinsonian nightmare.
i take it you haven’t been truly poor for any significant period of time.
Was homeless twice and my parents were failures at everything except making more kids. I have also been to the developing world quite a few times.
Whatever just keep making this about me, that seems like the way you want to go about this.
i just made the one comment - saying it’s not a Dickensian nightmare seemed not to demonstrate an understanding of what some folks are dealing with - not having a home, enough to eat, basic medical care, safety.
i’m surprised, given your own experiences, that you seemed to imply what others are going through in the face of insufficient resources is not, after all, that bad.
Most areas? Try 8 states.
https://apnews.com/article/free-school-meals-0c927f491b2ee9d4ce7e04b44da79e51
So…if you actually want to have fewer drunk driving incidents…and fewer crashes in general, we know how. You have less car centric infrastructure. Of course youre gonna have drunk driving when bars have required minimum parking when being built.
Yeah this won’t stop a single accident - and it will probably not result in more money for the kids, too since many people won’t be able to pay from prison
But at least the government won’t have to drop a penny. Working as intended!
How about just make financial penalties for traffic violation/vehicular homicide be based upon salary/net worth like Europe?
See that is the opposite of the goal here. This will be a whip on poor people. Making the fine tied to your income would punish the people writing this bill they cannot have that !
Some europeean countries do that, but it’s a minority.
This is where it needs to start.
