Much to my suprise a couple of years ago I found out that in Colorado Law .05 BAC is considered DWAI(driving while ability impaired) As you can guess I was really pissed off when I found this since it involved me going to jail in handcuffs. If you had asked me ahead of time I would have sworn that the legal limit for driving was .1 . I always used this as a guideline for driving, because by simple mathematics I knew how much I could drink legally. But thanks to a stupid random breath check I learned that .05 Is the effective limit. However since then I have really payed attention to things regarding this, and not once have I seen in print that you are illegal at .05 to .1. I have seen more that 25 refferences to .01 being the legal limit. Also in an informal poll I have discovered that unless someone is (or knows) a cop, traffic lawyer, or has gone through the DWAI stuff, Nobody knows. It seems less than 10% of the population know about .05 being illegal(including a few high school students who said their Drivers ed class never mentioned it. I was wondering if others states have stealth laws on drunk driving.
I suppose I’m opening myself up to horror stories about family members being killed by assholes like me, but the whole thing seems like another way for cops to screw with people rather than trying to save lives. How can something you didn’t know be considered a deterent(my little poll was of mostly smart and informed people, so don’t simply assume I overlooked this law, it is unbelieveably secret.)
Unbelievable.
I don’t agree with the ‘stealth’ aspect of the law, but it’s really simple for me.
Don’t drink and drive. Period.
As regards entrapment. Bullshit.
They didn’t put the beer in your belly; you did.
<Don’t drink and drive. Period.>
How about this: don’t drink. It works wonders for those of us who are allergic to alcohol. And no, I don’t miss not being able to drink something that tastes like urine to me.
Personally, I have never understood the concept behind “Let’s go get tanked and then see if we can drive in a lane so small we wouldn’t be able to piss into it.” Or something like that. I have a problem with this issue stemming from a family friend who was killed by a 16-YO who had just gotten her license.
Where I come from there is a comprehensive and ongoing advertising campaign to let everyone know that .05 is the lagal limit.
There are no excuses for not knowing and ignorance is not tolerated. Drink and drive and you are gone.
As the campaign says “Drink and drive - Then you’re a bloody Idiot”
I don’t think the government would need to keep it secret. Misinformation needs no help from the government, we do it quite well on our own.
Oh wow, I mean like if you are in my city & under 21, you have a 0 limit. that’s right, a trace amount & off to the slammer you go.
Sorry, Wolfman, no symathy from me.
Don’t drink and drive. It’s pretty simple.
The cop pulled you over for a reason. You must having been driving in a way that seemed erratic or he wouldn’t have stopped you. Doesn’t sound like entrapment to me.
As I mentioned in the OP It was a random stop.
I’m with you Wolfman, I think .05 is too low of a limit, and that one’s ability to drive is not impaired at that level and so it shouldn’t be a crime.
Of course, I also think that MADD should sponsor free cab rides to get people home safely from the bars too but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Here in Michigan if you’re a minor, the limit is .02. If you have reached the age of majority, it is over .07 for impairment and .1 for being drunk. They told us that in Drivers Ed and health class.
If you can afford to drink, you can afford the cab.
You’re joking right?
Um, Wolfman was not trying to defend drinking and driving. His point was that it doesn’t seem right or effective for the government to make a law stating that a .05 is a DWAI and not mention it to the people before arresting them, but instead allowing everyone to think that the legal limit is .1. Wouldn’t informing the public of this law reduce the number of people drinking and driving.
By not making this law widely known, the state allows people to think they are perfectly fine to drive at a .08, and since at this level there is not generally going to be any indication of drunkeness in their driving abilities, they will do so regularly until they find out the way Wolfman did. This leads to more people with a .05-.1 BAC on the roads than would be if the law was well known.
I’ll give Wolfman credit for being conscientious in following the law that he knew about, which is common to a number of states. A reasonable person would assume that if the law sets .1 as the limit, then driving at under the limit is a perfectly safe thing to do.
Jodih, what exactly was your comment in response to?
Jeez… what limit? I can drive! Give me the fucking keys! Who cares if I’ve had one, two or six drinks… I know my constipational limits!
I can see the lines on the road and that’s good enough, right? So WHAT if your little sister is out on her bike! It’s her fault for being in my way, right? Right! I know that if I take my body weight times the weight of the beer… no… the weight of my car divided by the weight of my body I can… no… wait. It’s the weight of the booze divided by my body weight… no, no…
Get real.
Get a cab.
Save your life and mine.
Thanks!
Byz
waterj2 wrote
Bull. That may have been the question he stated. But reading his post makes his concern crystal: He was drinking and driving, got caught and punished, and is angry.
He gets no sympathy from me.
Yes, I was joking about the free cab rides. However, I am not joking when I say that MADD’s efforts at continually toughening the drinking and driving laws have long past the point of diminishing returns, and that things besides outright prohibition and criminalization will have to be considered. IMHO, when a person can be convicted for DUI while operating a bike, or when sleeping in his car in the parking lot at his apartment complex, as has happened here in my home state of Ohio, then the DUI laws are ridiculous.
You don’t think cycling under the influence is dangerous? Sure, nobody’s going to go under the wheels of a semi-trailer, but cycling under the influence poses a danger to other drivers and road-users, as well as to themselves.
Ahhhh…I see, you shouldn’t drink and drive at all. Not one beer with the guys, no toast to the new bride and groom, nothing. Look, like it or not, the law states that under .05 is fine for driving, judgment is not impared. So saying that nobody should ever drink anything, no matter how little, is wrong. I can’t stand people that put on makeup while they drive, or talk on the cell phone, or chow down on their BigMac. All these things impare their ability to drive, but except for a few isolated areas, none of these is illegal. There is one county in Ohio that I know of where talking on a cell phone while driving is illegal, how would you feel if you were visiting from another state, and got pulled over because of this? You would have no way of knowing, and if getting a ticket for that carried the same harsh punishments that driving under the influence did, you might be very upset. Don’t stand on a moral high ground and look down on everyone that has a beer after work. That has no more impact on my driving, than answering a phone call does for all the Yuppies out there. Take a moment to really read the comments in this thread, it quickly goes from “Drinking and Driving is just bad” to “You shouldn’t drink at all” It doesn’t take long before you start imposing what you think is right on everyone else, and you should see where that can take you…
Since it’s kind of tradition that threads are about the question posed in the OP, and not the moralizing of the people reading it, I respectfully submit that your comments (and the comments of most other posts in this thread) are off-topic, and to be more blunt, useless.
Very few people are FOR drunk driving.