Texas drunk drivers will now have to pay child support if they kill a parent, guardian

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?
- Also, why just drunk driving? Why not you pay child support for murder?
- Moving from A to B can still be a good thing to do, even if there are some remaining problems at B.
- 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
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...
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.
- Indignity of receiving child support? Are you kidding?
  We're talking about a child/children's parent being killed, and you think it's somehow unjust that they're receiving the smallest amount of financial restitution from the person who killed them. I'd love to hear you explain how this is somehow stupid or insulting to a single parent and the surviving children.

Really, shouldn’t this apply to all manslaughter and murder cases?

Totally. But the US is obsessed with punishment rather than reparations.
- And rehabilitation
- More like obsessed with superficiality
- 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.

you know what prevents drunk driving? proper public transit

From a country with proper public transport here (Norway): people still drive drunk with that, so having some proper punishment won't hurt you.
- Much FEWER people driving drunk, though, which is the point. Just because the solution doesn't take the problem from 100 to 0 doesn't mean that taking it to 20 or whatever isn't beneficial.
  Also, "having some proper punishment won't hurt you" is ridiculously wrong, based on the US having one of if not THE most punitive "justice" system and amongst the highest rates of crime of all western countries.
  Prevention and restorative justice works MUCH better at decreasing crime than revenge-based punishment.
- There's also shootings in Norway. The key difference is frequency
Or people could stop it at the source and be responsible. Probably too much too ask.
- Fixing issues on the individual level is exactly why america is the way it is. Systems solutions exist
- In the same way telling teens to not have sex will stop teen pregnancies.
- what is the source? be very detailed in what you're suggesting please.
- Yeah, you're saying the same thing, public transit.

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.
- 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
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.
- It shouldn't, but unfortunately it's a big part of our society.
- Drinking is a personal choice.
Yeah yeah, public transit good, we know. STFU already. You fuckers are worse than vegans.
- user name checks out
- It needs to be addressed. Or people are gonna keep voting for pro-car politicians

I wonder how this will work in practice since most of the time if you kill someone under the influence your life is basically over. Not exactly going to be able to pay a percent of your earnings while you are in jail.

I have an aunt with six DUIs. After the second, they all become felonies, which are supposed to be 2 years at least in jail. I don't think she's ever spent more than a day in jail. Intoxication manslaughter may be worse, but the courts treat alcohol related incidents with kid gloves a LOT of the time.
- Is it Wisconsin? People up there get like 16.
- My brother spent 3 seperate days in jail for 5 drunk driving charges.
  I mean he's my brother, but lock that idiot up for a while longer, at least.
nah, cyclist here. people "walk" on vehicular manslaughter all the time. it's super fucked up. commonly a suspended sentence is issued.
- Gee that is just fucking peachy.
- Vehicular manslaughter !== Killing someone by drunk driving. Drunk driving is clear negligence, hitting someone entirely on accident shouldn't ruin two lives. In those articles it doesn't say anything about the driver being drunk

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.

Turning jail time into spending money looks a lot like fines being a cost of business. A CEO of a big company could just kill a child's parents and not even feel the sting, as long as he's drunk and his weapon is his car.

Bold of you to assume the CEO would be convicted
- Or any rich kid:
  testified in court that the teen was a product of "affluenza" and was unable to link his actions with consequences because of his parents teaching him that wealth buys privilege
  He only killed 4 people while drunk driving 乁⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠o⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠ㄏ
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch
  He got a slap on the wrist with rehabilitation. He was only actually convicted for 2 years because he habitually broke his probation.
  In Texas!
  This is just an example, not really here to make outrage out of it, old news, but a typical example that money usually softens any blow.
- Fair
It doesn't seem like this is instead of other punishments, it's in addition. So this criticism doesn't really make sense.
In many parts of the US, not sure about Texas, child support is based on the parent(s)'(s) income/wealth. The same should apply here, but for the drunk driver's income/wealth.
- The spirit of the law would be to ensure that the change in the money available for the development of the child changes as little as possible after separation of the parents. Under that assumption, the killer would only have to provide as much as the victim would have if they had separated.
cars the best weapon
https://lemmy.world/post/1685223
Already a thing.

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.
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).

Actually one of the few sane things that Texas has done.

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.
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

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?

Fuck drunk drivers

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?

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, free 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.
- Ah yes, the programs that are so broken that they mainly serve as a cudgel against any form of criticism, rather than actually effectively lift people out of poverty.
  Not to mention that politicians won’t let any opportunity go to waste to try and break down those programs further.
  Don’t take my word for it, look at the child poverty ranking amongst the 34 OECD countries where the US is placed 31st, with 1 of every 5 kids you see growing up in poverty.
  Meanwhile many other countries just plainly periodically give parents a bag of money in the form of child allowance, eliminating the need for free school lunches and teachers burning their meager paychecks on classroom essentials.
  The closest thing that comes to this is the Child Tax Credit, still meager in comparison, but nevertheless eroded to a joke because we “care so much for the children”.
  To call it a Dickinsonian nightmare might go a bit far, then again, you dragged that straw man in here, but the fact that child labor is back on the rise in the US suggests that those times are far from behind us.
- i take it you haven't been truly poor for any significant period of time.
- Most areas? Try 8 states.
  https://apnews.com/article/free-school-meals-0c927f491b2ee9d4ce7e04b44da79e51

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.
- And if their assets are basically worthless too?

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!

Correction, this is Texas, so you'll have to pay if you're poor or not right wing politically connected. If you can afford proper counsel, you won't.

Don't mess with Texas.
Texas is too busy messing with Texas for anyone else to fit in.

I mean sure, but they still should go for a long time to jail.

I don't know, being in jail means they won't be able to pay for the child support.
I'd say the better option is a driving ban, with a hars punishment if broken. Making them live on the verge of poverty is IMO better as a punishment and it's better for the child / society in general
- There's nothing more scary than a person with nothing to lose
  So, person that just screwed up their life. Who wants to hire a felon? How is a felon supposed to get to work in Texas without transportation? You're going to now take a large chunk out of their paycheck?
  People are struggling in Texas that aren't a felon, can drive a car, and get to keep all their paycheck.
  How is a person realistically supposed to overcome basically losing everything?
  Driving without a license is this person's last concern, and probably some alcohol will make them feel better...
- Agreed. A drunk driver proved that he/she is a danger who takes no responsibility. Permanent revoked driver's licence is the solution here.
  Along with heavy child support should they kill someone's parents/guardian.

This, unfortunately, makes hit and run the most viable strategy in Texas.

Why? A drink driver was already going to be in a world of trouble before, this just doesn't leave children hanging for their bull shit.
- Because this goes from a 10k-50k fine and a few years in jail to a million(s) dollar fine. Suicide is the only viable out unless you are uber rich.

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.

will it turn into a chinese model where the driver is now looking to run over the kids too?

Damn. You found the loophole.
There is that risk. However, they would have to stop, get out, get the victims wallet, find out where they live, drive there, and murder all the children.
I think the risk of that is pretty low, all considering
- Plus it's Texas, if they did that they'll be facing the death penalty.

makes sense lmao drunk drivers are evil

I'm theory I like this idea, make the person that killed the parent and remove that support try to replace it. I just don't know how well it's going to work in practice. Like, I don't know how many drunk drivers have a high enough income that any meaningful amount of child support would be derived from this. Not that a drunk driver being poor or not should get them out of consequences. But like my dad weaseled his child support payments down to $25 a month and it was just ridiculous. It didn't help at all. But some nice karma on him was that all those years of working under the table to lower his child support meant that when the piece of shit got injured and needed to try to get disability he hadn't gotten enough work credits in the previous ten years.

I feel like it would probably be better if the state established a fund that they could use to pay out to those kids that they could fund at least partially with fines brought against drivers convicted of DUI. That way we could guarantee some level of support for the kids that lost parents and still force the drunk drivers to at least partially fund it but a kid won't get screwed just because the drunk driver that killed their parent particularly happened to be poor.

I suspect it will just end in a lot of "Well, the guy that killed your dad was poor, so you're not getting any child support".
- Not to mention…. Manslaughter. Vehicular homicide with a dui modifier. Not sure about Texas but some places that becomes a felony.
  So most duis that lead to the death of someone else…. Are absolutely going to jail.
  Which is very much not conducive to paying child support.

Punitive damages for killing a person have to be a hell of lot more than paying the cost of child support.

Good move by Texas.

Wow good job Texas! What if they never graduate high school though 😂

I read the bill. It cuts off at 19 regardless.
- Ahh figured it would cover that lol. Thanks!

Alright this will sound controversial af, wouldn't that make it easier to choose if there is a scenario where the driver is about to hit a child and its parent, has the ability to swerve and avoid one of them, and choosing the child to avoid paying child support?

Drunk drivers do not have the reaction and focus span to make that sort of choices when they are driving through people, you know. Generally you tend to avoid pedestrians until the end, because even without paying for child support it's not a good outcome. And the trolley problem never happens in these cases, because there is almost always the option of trying to brake.
I think realistic nobody will actually think about this in the moment before hitting someone. And if they have enough time to think about this and they have enough control of their car to choose who they hit, then they have enough time and control to stop.

finally they get 1 out of 1000 laws right

The majority of posts here say this is a bad law and appear to be more sympathetic to the drink driver than the victim. I suspect because the law makers are on the incorrect team

It’s good they’re trying something.
It’s bad in that it won’t have the stated effect of supporting the child. Personally, I suspect it has more to do with mireing the perp in more debt… which, they can then keep them in prison for longer. (Which is not about justice or helping people.)
Wow... 6 upvotes and 6 downvotes...

Bravo Texas! Colour me surprised.

Next we can bring back blood money. If you're wealthy, avoid that inconvenient jail time by writing a check! We can make murder another one of those crimes for everyone but the rich.

For someone who is complaining about people's reading comprehension, it's kind of weird that you seem to have missed what the comments are actually saying they don't understand.

This'll never stand. What'll be next? The price for dui is already too high and the person likely to do this won't have the money to facilitate it anyway or even further financially ruining people. We may not like druck drivers but this is too much. If the State wants to help victims of drunk drives, then get a fund going that will help them. More punishment is not the answer

I don’t understand how in your eyes a drunk driver is a victim somehow. it’s the easiest thing to avoid doing. Out of all situations it’s entirely preventable. If you don’t think it is so it’s time to go find yourself a 12 program. Cuz your life is unmanageable if you’re measuring on taking a life with a death machine. Step 1. Do that at the very least before deciding on actions that may lead to killin a person.
I don't get drunk driving. Uber is cheaper than a DUI. So is being drunk in public.
- Not getting caught is cheaper than an Uber. Nobody expects to get caught, that's why they do it.
  Even if you think ride shares are cheap, they aren't cheap enough. We need public transit level cheap, but has to feel safe for everyone, at night. This is one of the better use cases for self driving cars.
- It's a bit more than just an uber though. It's also an uber back to the bar in the morning to collect your car, but the City doesn't allow overnight parking so they towed your car, and now you have to pay a couple hundred to get it released from the tow company. If they really want to curb drunk driving, then reduce the barrier to not driving home. Stop towing cars at night and don't cite people for sleeping one off in their car.