Question: Assuming the driver of an automobile is not violating any driving laws, should the police be allowed to arrest the driver strictly based on their (supposedly) high B.A.C.??
If your answer is “yes,” then why?
I mean, what business is it of anyone - cops included - as to the contents of my blood?
Hasn’t it been a tradition in this country to arrest people strictly based on their actions? When did it suddenly get into people’s minds that we should arrest people on suspicions of what they might do?
I mean, I might yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. Should I be arrested because I have a tongue?
Let me explain further: I am a very good driver. I’m 33 and have never been in an accident. Never. I consider myself to be in the top 5% or 10% of all drivers on the road. Now if I have a 3 or 4 beers within a one hour period, my driving performance might be degraded slightly. Let’s assume that, after drinking 4 beers, my judgement and reaction time has been slightly degraded, and I am (temporarily) in the top 30% to 40% of drivers. I could be arrested under current law, yet I’m still better than most other drivers on the road.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Arresting a law-abiding driver for “high” B.A.C. is wrong on two accounts:
You’re arresting someone who has done nothing wrong.
For all you know, a supposedly “drunk” driver might be a better driver than most of the other drivers on the road.
Accidents are called accidents for a reason, because you don’t expect them. Yeah, those past 33 years maybe you don’t have an accident, but who’s to say that you won’t end up in that first one? It’s over confidence in one’s self like this that can lead to disaster.
Uh, no, you did do something wrong. It is ILLEGAL to drive with a high B. A. C. everyone knows that, you know it’s illegal. So you, whether you like it or not, did do something wrong.
How is an officer supposed to judge how good a driver even if he’s had a few? Can you imagine the guilt that officer would feel if he said “Oh, well you still seem like a good driver” and then you go down the road and kill someone?
Bottom line: There is a limit on how much alcohol you can have in your system, it’s not like this is sprung on you. Innocent people die because people are irresponsible and think they can still drive after drinking. Maybe you aren’t “drunk” if your BAC is only .001 over, but it’s still over the limit and you have to draw the line somewhere.
I am grateful for these laws. If you want to drink and don’t want to worry about getting pulled over, then drink at home. If you want to go to a bar and don’t want to get pulled over, get a designated driver. It is no one’s fault but your own if you decide to do something stupid because you’re arrogant about your driving skills.
As such, the chance of getting caught while driving legally drunk (two or more beers in a two hour period) (according to the founder of MADD in Massachusetts anyway) is about one in a thousand. I believe it is slimmer than that.
However, if a cop pulls you over and you have been drinking, he has to arrest you no matter what because if you drive off and kill a bus load of nuns everyone and his mother will sue him for it.
The secret is to refuse the breathelizer. Then unless you are videod as drunk out of your gourd, you spent the night in jail, pay for the tow, and get on with your life. Your licence may be suspended pending trial though.
Assuming you’re not violating any (other) driving laws, why would you be stopped in the first place? Aside from that, since driving while legally drunk is against the law, why wouldn’t they be able to arrest you for just that?
Because the contents of your blood (your BAC) is the best way to determine whether or not you are legally drunk and therefore breaking the law by driving. It is therefore almost by definition the cops’ business.
You lost me. In this country, it is illegal to drive drunk because that activity is deemed to be inherently dangerous and irresponsible. Driving drunk is an action. If you are caught you will be arrested, not based on some suspicion of what you might do but based on what you did do – drive drunk.
Assuming that were an arrestable offense, then no, you would not be arrested for having a tongue but for the action of yelling – just as you would be arrested for driving while drunk (an action), not for owning a car.
The person being arrested has obviously done something “wrong” – he has driven while drunk, an arrestable offense. I assume you mean that he hasn’t done anything else wrong, but since the act of driving drunk is itself illegal, he doesn’t have to do anything else before he is subject to arrest.
I think it’s clear from all the available scientific evidence that a person driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol is statistically far more likely to be a worse driver than non-impaired drivers – and a lot worse. Dangerously worse. That’s why driving drunk is illegal in the first place. Not to mention that there is no feasible way to distinguish between drunk drivers who manage to drive okay and drunk drivers who don’t – except that drunk drivers who manage to drive okay probably won’t get stopped in the first place.
JMULLANEY says:
This is not necessarily correct. You can be pulled over for suspicion of drunk driving if the police officer has a “particularized suspicion” of drunk driving – this is a lower standard than “probably cause.” (This is in my jurisdiction; YMMV.) You can also be pulled over for a routine traffic stop unrelated to your driving skills – like failure to signal or a broken taillight – which might then turn into an arrest for driving drunk if the stop unfoldsin such a way that the cop forms a particularized suspicion of drunk driving – like you’re slurring your words or you smell like booze.
This would obviously have a lot to do with the degree of impairment of the driver. Is his BAC .08 or .20?
This is incorrect. A cop may only arrest you if he believes, and the evidence as he assembles it tends to show, that you are driving with a BAC over the legal limit. Merely admitted you had a beer or two is not enough to get you arrested if you are not in fact legally drunk.
People should know that this may be bad advice. There is in my state and in most states an “implied consent” law, which means that by driving upon the roads of this state, you impliedly consent to perform a certain tests, including a breathalyzer, upon demand by a police officer. If you refuse, your license will be taken away for a period of time – I think it’s three months here, but I’m not sure – not for driving drunk, but for violating the implied consent law by refusing the breathalyzer. So since the confiscation of the license is triggered by the refusal to cooperate and doesn’t have anything to do with whether you were in fact drunk or not, you won’t get your license back for that period of time, even if you can prove you were not in fact drunk.
Moreover, it is perfectly possible (if more difficult) to convict someone of DUI or DWI without the evidence of a breathalyzer. The officer can testify that, based upon his professional knowledge and experience, you were acting and testing in a manner consistent with legal impairment, and you may well be convicted upon that evidence alone.
You’re right – I forgot you loose automatically for refusing to blow here too. But, driving with a suspended license here is a $20 fine (plus another tow) so the suspension period doesn’t pose much of a risk. My advice was for people who are sober enough to know they are in fact guilty. (I also should have said 2 beers in an hour plus one additional beer per hour will generally maintain .08).
As for arresting, cops in Mass. err on the side of caution – but you are right there too. Thanks for correcting me.
OLDSCRATCH, no offense to you, but that article is utter bullshit IMO, because:
It does not acknowledge that driving drunk is itself an action that is illegal, and that therefore a particular action, not a probability, is in fact being punished. You will be arrested for carrying a bomb on a plane, too; not because of the probability that you will blow the plane up (maybe you’re just transporting it for a friend), but becasue the action of carrying it on the plane is itself illegal. Presumably, this man would wait until the plane was blown out of the sky and then try to set about punishing such pieces of the bomber as he could locate.
It does not acknowledge that there is no way to simply pull a person over based on “the contents of their blood.” There must be a particularized suspicion based on observable conduct – like weaving, or not having your lights on, or excessively braking – prior to a stop for suspicion of drunk driving. Therefore, the reason you are stopped is not because you are drunk but because you are driving erratically. You will be arrested for driving drunk, but that’s not why you’ll be stopped. It is therefore obviously not analogous to DWB (driving while black) where the only reason a person is stopped is because of race. If you are stopped on suspicion of drunk driving, it will be because you have already done something else to attract the cop’s attention.
Contrary to the implied subtext of the article, since you don’t have a constitutional right to drive at all, you certainly don’t have the right to drive drunk – not even a little drunk. Therefore, any government constraint upon the condition you must be in to drive is not an infringement on your “rights.” Driving is a privilege, not a right.
What falls apart around these “I have a right to drive drunk/not wear my seatbelt or helmet/drive like an asshole” arguments is that you’re NOT DRIVING ON YOUR OWN PROPERTY. It’s the State’s road, so the State can decide how it’s to be used.
Since Jodi handled, in her usual perfect way, most of the OP, let me take on the last little bit:
If I read between your lines correctly, what you are postulating is that since you, personally are in, say, the top 10% in driving skills (based, no doubt on some objective test that we all could take) , that if you imbibe alcohol and cause your BAL to raise, you’re ‘merely’ diminishing your driving ability to a level roughly equivalent to the rest of us lower classes of drivers, and therefore, since you’d now be roughly equivalent to the skill of the average driver, we should give a pass, and thank our lucky stars that you’re usually driving at an above driver level.
Ok, so maybe that was sarcastic, but.
The problems with your scenario are:
Most people actually believe they are good and safe drivers. Lack of tickets, lack of accidents do not necessarily prove this. (For example, my father thinks he’s an excellent driver - the rest of us think he’s a menace), so even if your individual, and particular claim could be proven, this only opens the door for those folks who really think they’re great drivers to drive under the influence.
The amount any individual skills deteriorate while drinking is not a static figure- while there are many studies that give rough approximations of the effects of BAL on driving, there is no way to determine that in each and every case when you drink one beer, your abilities lessen by a factor of 3, two beers factor of 6 etc. it doesn’t work that way.
And, even if you could determine this, how is it correct for you to choose to raise other people’s risk at all? You seem to acknowledge that even you, the ‘excellent’ driver, is affected by BAL, but that it would only make you into a roughly average driver (with a higher BAL), so what? So, you, with a higher BAL might get into an accident that you, the excellent driver would have been able to avoid had you not been drinking?, but somehow to you, that’s ok, 'cause if it’d been another, regular driver they woulda gotten into the accident anyhow???
Some would argue that the Constitution does provide for the freedom of peaceful assembly on public land regardless of the reason behind such assembly. Not Clarence Thomas, but some others.
This is why arguing with you is so (un)fun. You analogize two totally different things (driving on a public highway and assembly – an analogy which is, parenthetically, ridiculous). Another poster points out that you have made a stunningly poor analogy and queries whether you mean it (“are you arguing that driving equates to assembly?”). You then accuse that poster of saying something he manifestly did not say (“are you arguing that people have no right to be on public property at all?”, simultaneously ignoring what he did say and refusing to clarify your own position.
So let’s back up. Are you saying that the right to travel is the same as the right to assemble, or that the Constitutional right to free assembly somehow translates into a right to drive? If so, please elucidate how this could possibly be. That was the point you appeared to be making, so let’s see you explain it.
No. Where on earth did you get that idea? I just want to know if you hold that driving, drunk or sober, is a right covered by the first Amendment protection of assembly.
(Well, the Beltway in the mornings resembles nothing so much as a long, unmoving line of people all trying to get into the same show…)
I’d like to point out that whatever the law states about “probable cause,” the fact of the matter is that police in Northern Virginia pull people over first and manufacture excuses later. When I got my DWI, the officer wouldn’t write me a ticket for crossing over a double yellow (his excuse for pulling me) because I had a witness with me. Had he tried to give me a ticket for that, he would have risked having both charges overturned.
I’d like to think I was a good, safe, and completely blitzed driver. I drove other people’s ultra-high-line cars for a living, so I was down with all of the traffic and safety rules, and when I was drunk, I drove my Subaru like I would Jack Kent Cooke’s Mercedes. I drove drunk at least twice a week and often more for ten years, and never hurt anyone.
I was also a complete and utter fool.
When I consider the possible consequences of my actions, it makes me shudder. There is no way that I could have lived with myself knowing I had seriously injured or killed someone. That cop may have broken the law to bust me, but it was the best favor anyone ever did, and who knows who is still alive today because of that favor.
The right to traverse public property is inherent to the right to assemble upon public property. If you can not travel upon public property, you can not assemble upon it either.
People have the right to own property. To demand, unreasonably, that people can not have said property in their possession at said time they traverse public property would be a violation of this right.
So what is your side of argument? Do such traversing upon and with property which has wheels is a violation? Or would that only be OK if you have a placard out your sun roof demanding political action or perhaps a bumper sticker of some sort? Does your system apply to people in wheelchairs, bicycles, scooters, or only vehicles which operate without the application of manual power (electric wheelchairs might still pose a problem)? Law regulating how such traversals might occur for the purposed of regulating traffic are OK in my book to ensure such ersatz assembly remains tranquil is fine, but I can’t see any stretch of understanding to say operating a car on public property, especially property designated particularly for that purpose, is not a right. A right which may be lost upon the commision of a crime, of course, like many others.
