Where are pulling this nonsense from?
Look at this link:
http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html
Alcohol-related fatalities dropped from 60% of all fatalities in 1982 to 38% in 2009.
We still have quite a bit of room for improvement. Some countries have rates as low as 20%. Only Utah is that low in the United States.
If this were the policy. Drunk driving would likely disappear. Make an example out of a few people and even the biggest idiot will get with the program.
You will be happy that nice democratic countries will put you in prison for a year or more for a DUI. It looks to me like you might end up with more jail time for a DUI than assault and battery.
Frankly that doesn’t seem creative enough to me. I’d suggest having a convicted DUI spend their weekends for 6 months picking trash off the road. You would have an assigned area to cover and they would pick you up in the morning at your home and drop you at the start up the route and pick you up 10 hours later at the end of the route. You would have a smart phone strapped to your arm that would report your location every 10 minutes. If you go off route, then 2 days would be added to your sentence. You would wear an orange jumpsuit with your name in big letters.
Notice how the curve flattens sharply around 1994. Yet the penalties continue to get more and more draconian, and the BAL level to convict has gotten lower and lower. Used to be, you could sleep it off in you car. Nowadays, even having the keys in your pocket and being NEARBY the car will get you a DUI conviction because the vehicle is “under your control”. And the neo-prohibitionists at MADD are pushing for even stricter penalties. At this point in time, you are in serious danger of getting a DUI if you have more than one glass of wine with your dinner.
I visited Utah a couple of years ago and damn near every day saw a horrendous wreck being cleared up on the interstate. I’ll take my chances back here in California. Perhaps we should enact stiff penalties for having a brood of screaming Mormon brats in the back of the minivan.
If we were serious about safety, DUI penalties would be related to level of impairment. Someone with a .08 is hardly dangerous, while someone with a .25 is much more likely to get into a collision. Yet both drivers receive the EXACT SAME PENALTIES. Have you ever asked yourself why this is so? Could it be that MADD is now nothing more than a group that wants to de-facto ban all public consumption of alcohol? The groups founder thinks so, and now speaks out against the group. Could it be that the DUI industry is more concerned with generating revenue for courts, cops, lawyers and alcohol counselors than in public safety?
And what about DUI checkpoints? When they were first instituted, the authorities promised that, honest injun, they would just be looking for the drunks. Now they check for license, registration, insurance, warrants, and God knows what else. The typical DUI checkpoint generates far more non-DUI arrests than DUI ones. But this is ok, because “think of the children!”
Do I think that it should be legal to drive drunk? Of course not. But I do want some changes:
Penalties based on level of impairment. Someone that shares a bottle of wine with their date over dinner should not be penalized in the same way as a person who hammers a few shots and drinks a dozen beers in a bar, as is now the case.
DUI checkpoints are an unconstitutional intrusion that presumes guilt, and have been morphed into a general dragnet that snares people for all kinds of offenses. Furthermore, they are a poor method for catching drunks. Police manpower would be far better deployed on general traffic patrol. They must end.
DUI citations should be issued to people who are ACTUALLY DRIVING. Sleeping it off in your car, or sitting on your front porch with your car keys in your pocket should not subject you to a DUI charge. People have been arrested ON THEIR OWN PROPERTY for simply being under the influence and NEAR THEIR CAR.
Make these changes and maybe I will believe that this whole DUI thing is about public safety, and is not just another way to generate revenue, get around the fourth amendment, and give the police the yet more discretion to fuck over people who aren’t doing any harm.
That’s exactly my point. In Scandinavia, there’s a significant risk of being pulled over for no apparent reason (except that the police are running an all-out DUI check just where you’re driving) having to take a breathalyzer test. It doesn’t matter whether you drive carefully or recklessly, above or below the speed limit, if you’re there you’ll be pulled over. My impression when living in the US was that this was totally unheard of.
Significant risk of being caught >> harsh penalties for preventing crimes.
It should NOT be done, period. What’s the point? What’s wrong with a cab? A ride from a friend? Thing is, if you have a glass of wine with dinner, (or even two glasses), I really don’t think you’re at risk any more than you are in the early morning with an alcohol free, yet, sleepless night. It’s a case by case basis, and many factors are overlooked.
Here’s a thing I always thought was a huge overlooked factor in DD: Familiarity.
Your own little neighborhood you’re familiar with, but switch that to a new neighborhood/city/town and I feel you’re at a huge disadvantage even being under the limit.
Three beers at home seems to produce less intoxication than three beers at a new house. I’m not saying it’s ever okay to drive inebriated, but feeling that surroundings are a factor, maybe the familiar surroundings can also lead to unexpected accidents.
ONe more thing: DUI checkpoints should be considered illegal and outlawed. Majority of cases here in CA are overturned, or lessened. Those who hear about an arrest made at a checkpoint jump up and down, but they don’t seem to know that’s the easiest to overturn.
Follow me, see if I speed, weave, etc. and pull me over. Process of elimination is ridiculous in these cases. People seem to think that if we check 50 vehicles at a checkpoint, we’ll get more drunks off the road. Why? In my younger days, I knew where the checkpoints were, sometimes drove through them, sometimes avoided them, but I’m sure I was at least at 1.0, if not slightly higher. Meanwhile near the freeway exit, ten arrest have been made, ten overturned in court. It is a useless waste of dollars and, hell, it takes cops off the open road where they should be, like where people don’t have to suddenly slow down and act accordingly.
That’s another point on penalties. No shit, but a friend of mine back east in New Jersey was CHARGING HIS PHONE with the engine on. He was standing outside the running and parked car smoking a cigarette. He was spending the night as planned with friends. Police came, questioned him, saw he was drunk, which he really was, but was arrested for a DUI. He never had the intention to drive, or leave his friends house until the stupid cops come along and declare him a menace to society. (NOTE: no complaints had been made in the neighborhood, only a cruise by.)
And those who think, “Hey, in his condition, he might’ve gone for a joyride!” Bullshit. You can’t blanket crimes that “may” happen. Especially when a person with no criminal record, a place to stay and using his car for other purposes BESIDES driving gets caught for being drunk, standing near a car on the street that happens to be running. What’s even funnier, this was not his car. It was another friend’s sleeping inside, also spending the night.
Shit, what if the power goes out on a Maine trip in November, I’m plastered, but need heat. So I hop in the car, start the engine, blare the heat and pass out in the back seat? If this is a DUI, then so is littering when I take a dump in my house. 
I’ll ignore your religious intolerance for the moment. Rural areas have 2.5 times the traffic fatality rate as urban areas and practically all of Utah is rural and accidents in rural areas are going to take longer to clean up. Even in spite of that the fatality rate in Utah as about the same as California, so you statement shows ignorance.
You statement is wrong. There are nearly as many people killed with .08 as higher levels, so your statement that .08 is hardly dangerous is wrong.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810996.PDF
Go to page 5 and figure 5. The graph peaks at .17, but .08 is nearly as high.
You know we have these things called courts. If you think the ticket is bogus, you can challenge it in court. We have an enormous number of lawyers that don’t do anything else.
I frankly don’t understand the whining. If you are going to operate a motor vehicle don’t drink. Period.
[ul]
[li]Have a designated driver (a good reason to be nice to Mormons)[/li][li]Call a cab[/li][li]Drink at home[/li][/ul]
Frankly I think the issue will soon be moot. Nevada legalized robocars this year. In a couple of decades, manually operated motor vehicles will seem quaint and maybe illegal. That will save 30,000 lives a year and billions of man hours that are wasted in driving.
I’m totally with you on this one. A friend of mine got a DUI because he was at a party and he went out to his car to get something. He wasn’t getting in the car, wasn’t going to drive, etc. He was just getting something out of his car, but he had been drinking and a cop saw him and gave him a DUI. That’s fucked up.
This is something that I’m confused about the U.S. On the one hand, the breathalyzer is a kind of search that requires probable cause–in theory, at least, they have to see erratic driving or something to pull someone over to give a sobriety check. (I suppose if they pull someone over for something else, and the driver is seriously slurring speech, they can do it then, too.)
On the other hand, in most states, when you get your license I’m pretty sure (though I could be wrong) you sign something that says something to the effect of: “By accepting the privilege of driving on the public roads I agree to submit to sobriety tests for any reason.”
So I guess that technically they might not have to have a reason to stop someone, and that the main reason why they follow probable cause procedure (in CA, from what I’ve seen), is that they want to avoid any legal challenges in court and have a strong case for conviction.
That, and from what cops have said to me, they really, really dislike having to make DUI arrests. It’s a big pain in the ass.
Graphs can be quite misleading if you don’t interpret them properly. Yes, the drivers with a BAC of .17 % are only responsible for 50% more fatalities as the BAC .08 drivers, at 1.2% of all fatalities but did you know that if the graph included the BAC .00 drivers who make up approximately 50 % of fatalities that graph would spike right off the page!!! :D:D
So you are okay with the cop who taps on the window of the vehicle in the pub parking lot occupied by a driver with no cab fare and who decided not to drive home. He’ll get charged with DUI regardless if the motor is running so he can stay warm.
I frankly don’t understand how that makes any sense.
That’s not necessarily true. At least 38 states use sobriety checkpoints. It is a contentious issue and TX does not use them based on their interpretation of the constitution, which implies that states that do use them could be on shaky ground.
Also, I should be clear that checkpoints do not involve the random use of a breathalyzer, but random sobriety checks. But if the sobriety check gives probable cause you can be sure a breathalyzer will be handy.
I should also include the disclaimer from the above link:
I don’t know how this fits into the thread, but it’s an interesting data point, I think. When I worked as a cocktail waitress at a strip club in Atlanta, they required me (and all employees) to take a breathalyzer test before being allowed to leave and go home. You had to blow below the legal limit or they wouldn’t let you leave. Since it was a job where sometimes customers bought drinks for the employees, it made sense. The breathalyzer was a machine and we had to put in 75 cents (we paid) and it dispensed a straw that you put into a hole in the machine, if I’m remembering right, and then you blew into it until the machine told you to stop, and it displayed your score on the front.
I think that it would be plausible to have bars have these machines and have someone at the door take keys/ID/something from the patrons and then require someone in the group to blow below the limit in order to get them back to leave. I haven’t thought about it extensively so there may be some huge flaw in that plan that would make it unworkable, but at least upon casual glance, it seems like it could help.
I have seen machines like this and I think most of the issue is legal. (How insightful, right?)
There is a question as to how the machine is used and who “administers” the test. There are ways to fudge, and if you down a drink and then blow, the test isn’t accurate. Likewise with cigarette and–one assumes–other smoke. (Which also raises the question of how to deal with someone who is under the BAL but who is otherwise impaired.)
Also, the machines aren’t necessarily the same as those used by the cops. If the machine in the bar says:“Gimmee the keys, Lisa!” and the cops say:“Watch your head.” who’s the judge going to listen to?
If the bar owner takes anything other than a “entertainment purposes only” approach, they run the risk of legal action, either for letting someone drive who isn’t legal, or for restricting someone from leaving when they are.
Sobriety checks without the use of a breathalyzer can’t spot those driving with a BAC of 0.05-0.1%, and it’s quite a few years since we went from 0.05% to 0.02% as the legal limit. So, over here, the sobriety check is pretty simple and straightforward: “Would you please blow into this instrument, Sir?” “Just continue blowing until the green LED lights up, please” “Thank you, Sir, have a nice ride home”.
Because they don’t want people playing “alchohol roulette” by trying to see how close to being legally drunk they can get without going over.
I have to say this. Doing most of my drinking in NYC where I can always walk or take a cab or public transportation home, I was kind of shocked how many people I see in my home town who drive around town barhopping while utterly smashed. And it seems like unless you litterally smash into someone, it’s more or less accepted.
If you really are nursing two drinks over two hours, your BAC will be close to zero.
At 65 deg. N. and -1 GMT you might be surprised to know that, here, not only are checkpoints not legal, but I can carry a gun! AND! No BAL limits apply.
Yeee Haaaaww!
Not very.
No, penalties graduated with level of impairment would have the exact opposite effect. As of now, once you have had a couple of beers, you might as well go for broke, because no matter how impaired you become, the penalty is identical. Under a graduated penalty system, every additional drink would risk escalation of the penalty.
/reading comprehension FTW.