This is about changes that you think need to be made to drunk driving laws. I’ll give a personal example, one that was just resolved today by the Missouri Supreme Court.
Years back, I was driving home from a party once when, shortly after leaving, I realized I was too drunk to drive. Since the party hostesses had already turned in for the night, I simply pulled over in a residential neighborhood. Middle of the night, and I had no cell phone, so I took a two hour nap to sober up. Since it was the cold of winter, I had the keys in auxilliary and the heater on as I napped. I woke up sober enough to drive and made it home safely, potential tragedy averted.
Until recently, you were considered to be “operating” a vehicle under Missouri law if the keys were in the ignition and you were in the drivers seat. So technically speaking, I might have been considered to be driving while intoxicated, even though I was attempting to do the “right” thing, the safe thing, by pulling over like that. Just today, the Missouri Supreme Court finally resolved that question in a case with facts very similiar to mine, by ruling that the state could not prove drunk driving on that fact pattern. So I wasn’t a lawbreaker after all, as it turns out.
This was a small issue, but one that I feel needed resolution. What other changes, large or small, do you think the courts or legislatures of the various states should make to drunk driving laws?
But you were driving while intoxicated. That you stopped driving hardly renders you innocent of the offense. Moreover, if you conceptualize the crime as operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, you were guilty of that even if you’d flipped on the engine and gone to sleep in your host’s driveway.
In my state it is now illegal to have an open container of booze in the car even if the driver isn’t drinking. No one can take a “to go” cup even if the driver is 110% sober.
It use to be that it was legal for people in the car to be drinking as long as the driver could blow a 0.0. If the driver had been drinking anything he was charged. This prevented someone from just passing a beer to a buddy when being pulled over. I was fine with that law.
I just don’t see what is wrong with me having a drink while my husband drives us to a party.
Regretably, the laws are pointless in this regard. In the words of Sri Frank Zappa, America drinks and goes home. The liquor industry makes the bulk of its money on alcoholics. Laws that bring to bear penalties that would deter a rational person are useless in dealing with a drunk, its like throwing popcorn at a tank. When a person drinks, they stop being the person who would be detered. They become the guy who is sure he’s fine, who laughs and says “Good thing I’m driving, can’t walk like this!”
Not claiming innocence here, its been years, but I’ve driven impaired any number of times. But I drove cab for years, I could drive behind a frontal lobotomy. Besides the habitual drunk, there’s the kids (from my perspective, anybody less than 25) who havent got that much driving ingrained into thier instincts, they can’t operate on automatic pilot, they have to think about what they’re doing. Plus, of course, they’re immortal.
Keep the laws, raise the limit, lower the limit, you wont accomplish much. Not until liquor ceases to be the drug of choice for Americans. Can’t we all just get a bong?
On the other side I would like to see people who get caught seriously drunk while driving lose their license many years on the first offense. I can understand someone making a mistake and blowing the legal limit getting a less harsh punishment the first time. But, I think that seriously weaving hitting a tree falling down drunk people have serious judgement problems and can’t be trusted to drive at all.
That’s all well and good, except people that lose their license like that just drive anyway. I could see someone not driving for a month or so, but years? Come on, what are they supposed to do? Bum rides for an indefinite period of time?
Er, also, my comment wasn’t meant to mock those who don’t own cars. However, to back up my point: public transportation in the US, unless you’re in a major city, pretty much bites. You’re expected to have some sort of access to a car, if you intend to travel more than a short distance.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound so curt. But really, if they get stopped driving really drunk then I don’t care what they do. I think they should lose their license for years and have stiff penalties if they get caught driving.
This is kind of an IMHO: why don’t we change them around so that if you drive drunk, and don’t wreck, no harm, so no foul. However, any crimes commited while drunk (hitting another car) would be prosecuted as if the person had intended to do them.
Since you knew that you could end up hitting a car full of kids if you drink and drive, why not prosecute as if they meant to?
While were wishing for stuff…I would change the law so that I am immune from prosectution for any crime committed while I was under the influence of any amount of alchohol. Including driving under the influence of alchohol or public intoxication.
How about a drunk driving test given in a safe environment? Take one drink, then take a test. Take another drink, take a second test. Keep going until you cannot safely drive. Then, blow. This will be your own personal blood alcohol limit for driving. The number will be put on your drivers license. When you get pulled over, as long as you blow below your personal limit, you are legal.
In Conceivable, I think the point is you can take their license away if you want, but if they need to get somewhere, they’re gonna drive anyway. 21st century America just isn’t the kind of place where everything you need is within walking distance.
A more pragmatic approach might be more effective.
This is only tangentially related to drunk driving, but personally, I would change the laws to treat marijuana intoxication differently. While a stoned driver is still somewhat impaired, at least he knows he’s impaired so he can take extra precautions, as studies have shown.
So, you are only 20/100 in both eyes and you accidentally broke you glasses. You have a sick child at home needing help. It is dark and you think you see something like a child on the road. You swerve off the road and in to a tree. There was no child.
:: farfetched true but you have met the conditions of irresponsibility that YOU outlined, so, xx years without an license for you too?
Has to have alcohol involved? So you can swerve and damage things because of your known impediment is not alcohol?
Be very careful of what you wish for and make into rule books, they can cut both ways.
What more pragmatic approach are you suggesting? If they can’t keep themselves from driving drunk we could put them in jail. I doubt you like that idea more.
Huh? We were talking about drunk driving not sick children eye glass losing strawman.
Besides, this thread is about changes we would want in drunk driving laws. I am just telling you the changes I would want. Several people have listed more crazy changes then me and aren’t being challenged.
A few years back some news program (20/20 or Dateline, probably) showed these cars that had a breatherlizer installed in the car. The car would not turn on if you a. didn’t blow in the tube b. pass the test. I think these might be a good idea as a condition for getting your license back after a DUI conviction. If you want to drive, every car you own needs to have one in them, and you’d need to buy it, not have the cost for it subsidized by the state. Sure, there are ways around it working as a fool proof system- borrowing someone’s car that doesn’t have one, or having some not intoxicated friend take the test- but I wouldn’t be surprised if, even with the loop-holes, it reduced the number of fatalities caused by people who repeatedly got DUIs.
This is done in Oklahoma now. They know that to LIVE without driving is an real hardship on the parties, like wives and kids and that people who have to turn to crime to live because they can’t get around are not really good for society. Does not Sweden have this now, a DUI = walking for a year, and #2 = forever?