How the hell would you know how good you are? And there’s a first accident for everyone, ya know. Some don’t survive them, and others DO survive while their victims don’t, which may be worse.
As for why driving with a high BAC content is illegal, you don’t have a right to endanger others. If you’re drunk, your reflexes and judgment are impaired, therefore you’re unreasonably dangerous to others.
That’ll teach me to feed the trolls.
JMULLANEY says:
Wrong-o. First, “traverse” as in “to cross” is not the same as “assemble.” Neither is “travel” the same as “assemble.” Assemble means “to congregate;” “travel” means, well, to travel. Y’know, from Point A to Point B. Second the fact that there might be some travel involved in the exercise of your right to assemble does not confer the status of assembly (a right) upon all modes of travel. Third, whether or not you have a right to travel (which, incidentally, you do) is not the same as whether you have a right to drive (which you do not). If you want to exercise your right to assemble in front of the court house, you can walk your ass right on down.
Bushwa. The right to own property does not translate into a right to carry that property with you at all times and in all circumstances, nor the right to use it irresponsibly and in a way that creates a danger to others. You can own a gun, but you can’t take it on a plane or into most government buildings. Your right to own public property is subject to reasonable restrictions on its use. In any event, saying you can’t operate your car on a public way while drunk implicates your private property right not at all, since no one is saying you cannot own your car, they’re just saying you can’t drive it on a public road if you are drunk.
My side of the argument is that attempting to compare the right to assemble with some perceived right to drive drunk is not so much comparing apples with oranges (which are at least both species of fruit) as it is comparing apples with unicycles.
Do this sentence is making any sense?
Would what be okay? What do placards or bumper stickers have to do with driving?
My system of what? What the hell are you talking about?
As noted above, “assemble” means “to congregate in one place.” If you are driving down the road, you are not assembling. Ergo, your right to assemble is not implicated.
Well, believe it. It ain’t. You have a right to assemble. You do not have a right to drive. Driving does not equal assembling.
It’s not a right AT ALL. Get it? YOU HAVE NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO DRIVE. It is a privilege and if you abuse it, it can and will be taken away.
This:
Should read:
Whatever would I do without your wisdom 
I fail to see what the mode of operation has to do with anything. Are you saying the government could pass a law requiring us to skip everywhere we went and that would be constitutional? Or crawling upon our bellies?
So I have the right to travel. Good. Perhaps hopping on one foot, but travelling is a right none the less.
I agree.
I still agree.
I agree. That is a wreckless endangerment of human life. I never said people have the right to drive drunk and I’m sorry if I accidently hijacked the thread – you could say I didn’t want to travel down this road. 
I thought since you might feel moving on public property is wrong, you might think standing still is wrong unless you are explicitly making a political protest (although I suppose if they made standing still on public property a crime doing so could be construed as a protest anyway – although try explaining that to Clarence Thomas). So, it you think standing still while protesting is OK, I thought you might concede moving around (whether walking, skipping, hopping, on by some other means) would be OK as long as proper political dissent was being expressed.
You just said people had a right to travel! What does the mode of travel have to do with anything?
It has everything to do with it. The government may not generally prevent you from traveling from Point A to Point B (i.e., by restraining you). But it can certainly prohibit you from going there in a car upon the public road, if you have not fulfilled the regulatory prerequisites of exercising the privilege of driving – i.e., having basic insurance and a license to drive. You do not have the right to do whatever you want, by whatever mode you want, along the public way. I fail to see why you imagine you do.
Why, since I never said this?
Never said this either.
I can’t argue with this. Stand still or hop up and down as you assemble and protest – who cares? What does this have to do with driving?
Look, this is not that hard. You have the right to travel. You do not have the right to travel by any means you want, at any time you want, by any route you want. You cannot drive a Sherman tank down the highway. You cannot drive with your lights off in the dark. You cannot violate a lawful curfew. You cannot drive across someone else’s private property without their permission. You cannot drive across closed public property, like an artillery range. You cannot drive the wrong way down a one-way street. And you cannot drive AT ALL if you do not meet the regulatory prerequisites for exercising that privilege.
Reasonable restrictions placed upon the means of exercising a constitutional right do not, in and of themselves, constitute a violation of that right.
Jodi: *Reasonable restrictions placed upon the means of exercising a constitutional right do not, in and of themselves, constitute a violation of that right. *
Bless you Jodi, that was absolutely damn lapidary. Mind if I quote that in every Second-Amendment thread from now till forever? 
By the way, I believe that the law is actually stronger than this, at least some places. Here in NY State, they set up traffic stops with the expressed purpose of checking if you are drunk. (At least, I think that is the expressed purpose, since drinking was the only thing they asked me about the time that I was stopped at one of these.)
And, in fact, I believe that in the recent Supreme Court ruling (just last week?) in which they decided, by a vote of lie 6-3, that police could not set up such traffic stops merely for the purpose of checking for drug trafficking, the comparison with checking for drunkiness was discussed. The difference noted was that the State has a compelling interest in people not being drunk while driving their cars and thus has greater discretion there than when searching for some other law violation that is less compelling in the context in which they are stopping people (i.e., driving).
So, while you may not like this (I personally happen to think they are drawing the line exactly where it ought to be), I don’t think those who want greater rights will find much comfort in the fact that the 3 who dissented (Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist, nat.) felt there was no constitutional violation of rights in allowing the police to set up these traffic stops even for crimes completely unrelated to driving an automobile.
Of course not. If someone is not violating any laws, they should not be arrested.
How is this relevant to the rest of your post?
You are missing a very important distinction between this and drunk driving. While having a tongue does indeed increase the likelihood of your yelling “fire”, there remains an act of volition between those two events. There is no act of volition between your driving drunk and your killing someone. Once an action can cause someone’s death, with absolutely no further act of volition, it is definitely within the government’s right to regulate that action.
So what is your point? If you’re arguing against drunk driving laws in general, how is your ability relevant? Or are proposing that you get special treatment, based on the “fact” that you’re a better driver? Should we have two sets of laws, one for you, and one for everyone else? Are you really that conceited?
When you’re on the road, your responsibility is not to be as safe as the average driver. It is to be as safe as you reasonably can be.
Why is driving not a right?
We pay for the roads, after all. If a person were abusing their right to drive then it could still be taken from them. Is there any reason for privilege status other than to make it easier for governments to limit driving?
Just my 2sense
The highway is for gamblers you better use your sense - Bob Dylan
Paying collectively for something does not necessarily give you an unrestricted right to use it. You still must satisfy other requirements. For example, the means-tested programs (welfare, food stamps, …) have various requirements involving need (income, having children to support…). And, just because you pay out of your taxes for a B-1 bomber doesn’t mean you can go down to your local air force base and take it out for a spin every once in a while!
And, by the way, your driving is still being heavily subsidized at any rate, once one takes all the external costs into account…But that’s another story!
Driving is a “gray area,” and it lies somewhere between a “right” and a “privilege.”
Let’s say I have a good driving record, a safe car, and liability insurance that’s paid-up. Then I indeed have a right to drive; the BMV cannot refuse to give me a license. If it did, I would sue them (and I would win).
But let’s say I’m irresponsible, have a horrible driving record, no insurance, etc. Then the BMV could refuse to give me a license. This is where the “privilege” part comes in.
I’d just like to take a moment to thank all the fine citizens who helped pay for my first degree by drinking and driving.
I could not have made it through were it not for my part time and summer job at a funeral home. The alcohol involved multi-victim crashes brought in a lot of extra shifts – particularly the ones where families including young children were wiped out.
But then perhaps all this talk about the ‘rights’ of drivers in this thread has forgotten the right to life and how it must be protected.
The highways are intended for us to drive on. The other institutions that jshore gives as examples are not intended for use by the general public. I don’t see how they are relevant. I also disagree that the subsidation of driving is another argument. We are subsidizing it so why don’t we have a right to use it?
Muffin:
I am omitting an enthusiastic agreement with you, accompanied by a roll eyes smiley, and instead will give your hyperbole a sincere reply.
It is understood that automobiles are dangerous. If safety were the only issue then the national speed limit might be 25mph. Other factors need to be balanced with safety and emotional outbursts do not, as a general rule, aid in reaching effective solutions.
I intended the word “poor” in the “poor and irresponsible drivers could still be kept off the road” quote to mean someone who was not a safe driver and not someone who didn’t have much money. If fact, it is the lower income people that I am thinking of here. The burden of proof is more of a burden on them than on the govenment or on the rich.
2sense, I think you misunderstood my point about subsidization. My point, in response to your claim that you are paying for the right or privilege of driving, is that in fact, you are only paying a part of it and as a result those who drive less (and who drive more efficient vehicles, etc.) are subsidizing those who drive more.
At any rate, I think whether one considers driving a “right” with various restrictions or a “privilege” is somewhat a matter of definition, but given how huffy and absolute people seem to get when they think they have a “right” to do something, I kind of prefer to say it is a privilege.
And, as for muffin’s comment, I think it is more than appropriate for him/her to remind us that amidst all this lofty talk about rights, what we are talking about is an incredible carnage on our roadways. Even leaving the drunk aspect out of it for a moment, I remember going to a talk a few years ago where the speaker asked us the following: “If you were told that there was a revolutionary form of transportation that would give people unparalleled freedom to go where they want when they want but that if we chose to use it, it would cost us 40,000 lives a year in this country, not to mention hundreds of thousands serious injuries, would we accept this Faustian bargain?” IMHO, it’s a sobering question.
jshore:
You have misunderstood my question. I am not saying that I am paying for my own way.
I am saying that we are paying for the roads so why don’t we have a right to drive on our own roads?
As it happens I think that driving should be more “pay as you go”. I’d like to see roads paid for less out of income tax and more out of gas taxes, but that’s not the point here. I also agree that huffy absolutists are annoying but I don’t find that a sufficient argument for denying this right.
Let those people get huffy in court and see where it gets them.
If you are sobered by the realities of automobile travel then great; it really is a bloody prospect. Sober is fine; I have no problem with sober. I do have a problem with emotional posturing designed to affect someone’s sober judgement. I’m not certain if this was muffin’s intent and that’s why I refrained from ridiculing his/her post.
Well, we are definitely in agreement on that!
I guess I don’t really see there as being so well-defined a line between the emotional and sober judgement. I think these “I’ve got a right to do that…” arguments are just about as emotional in their own way. And, I think that arguing about the rights involved in driving in the context of drunk driving without considering the emotional devastation that the act of drunk driving brings on people isn’t “sober judgement,” at least in any positive sense of the term. If reminding us of that devastation is “emotional posturing” then I’m all for it!
Well, I for one have been in two alcohol related accidents. The other guys were drunk, not me. One has left a nice 3 inch scar in my forehead, and the other completely destroyed my 65 Ford Fairlaine (with 18,000 original miles). Thankfully, I haven’t had any serious losses to DWI.
However…
I do not think that BAC should be the deciding factor in convicting someone for DWI. From personal experience alone (yeah, I know how credible anecdotes are…), I have two friends on opposite ends of the spectrum. One is a big guy – about 6’ tall and weighs about 260 lbs. The other is a woman, about 5’ tall and 100 lbs.
It isn’t what you think. The guy drinks ONE beer, and he’s totally impared – slurred speech, etc. The woman can slam about 4 before she feels anything. Now, she has a DWI because she had 2 beers after work once (put her BAC over the legal limit). She passed all the other tests, except the breathalyzer. My other friend would blow well under the limit and drive away, endangering everyone else on the road (Okay, this might not happen because I know the officer would probably give him the field sobriety test anyways).
This is why I don’t think BAC should be used to determine drunkeness (is that a word?). I think the field sobriety tests do a better job of determining what the real problem with drinking and driving is: impairment.
So in this regard, I somewhat agree with Crafter_Man. I think that the cops should first give a driver the field sobriety test, and if the driver passes that, be obligated to NOT give a breathalyzer test.
Hmm. I think you’ve hit on something there, Lazlo.
Perhaps this would be a good compromise:
Police should not be allowed to entrap drivers, such as waiting outside bars (which is “guilt by association”) or setting up sobriety check-points. In other words, you must be doing something against the law (“probable cause”) in order to be pulled over. Examples include speeding, weaving, and failure to stop at a traffic signal.
If a police officer pulls you over (because you broke a law; see above), and if the officer has reason to believe you are not able to safely operate a motor vehicle (for any reason), the officer is allowed to perform a standardized test that evaluates your physical judgment, stability, reaction time, and motor skills. (No breathalyzer test allowed.) If you pass, you drive off.
How’s that?
Ever heard of a random stop? They are legal in many places in this country, I personally got a DWAI from one of these things.