The first thing I thought when I read this… you get out of your car, go up to the car causing problems…
For the driver to get out of the car is a traffic violation. My dad once got out of the car at a stop light to make sure the trunk was closed firmly and a cop pulled us over and gave him a ticket for “abandoning the vehicle.”
Calling the police on your cell phone is the way to go.
But what about Chinese fire drills?
A possible 6… Drunk people, and people who don’t use language well (eg autistics, people with mental illness however temporary or permanently… ) need to be have the communication occur in a physical way… and what better way than to take the keys off them… That the attempt to withhold the keys from them is only the same as the key-taker saying “dont you think its a good idea if you don’t drive anymore”…
But thats why you might be giving the keys into the police, if its not someone you could trust to not cause you police trouble…
I once hid the keys of a patient who was insisting on leaving and driving himself after receiving enough morphine to be visibly impaired, police officer who responded said ‘good job, Outlier.’ Can’t say if it was actually legal or not.
Reading through Brickers necessity defense quote the following have to be in place for it to work:
*(1) a reasonable belief that the action was necessary to avoid an imminent threatened harm;
(2) a lack of other adequate means to avoid the threatened harm; and
(3) a direct causal relationship that may be reasonably anticipated between the action taken and the avoidance of the harm.
One principle remains constant in modern cases considering the defense of necessity: if there is "a reasonable, legal alternative to violating the law, a chance both to refuse to do the criminal act and also to avoid the threatened harm, the defense is not available*
So your first four don’t even meet the first requirement… none of those situations present imminent harm; just the possibility under certain circumstances. All six fail the second point; you can (and should) simply call the authorities to deal with any of those situations… most of the scenarios involve you “knowing” (how?) the person intends to do something unsafe in the future. I’d bet the authorities themselves wouldn’t do anything in several of those situations even if you did report them… so if they won’t take action I doubt you could claim you had to. I don’t think it’s worth looking at the third requirement. The last sentence from the quote seems to me to disqualify the defense of necessity in all 6 of your scenarios.
So, you attempt to take car keys from someone who, it turns out, has cerebral palsy/type six ataxia/prior stroke/etc and they use their fists or a weapon to stop your aggressive behavior.
What then?
Then a bunch of potential legal issues comes up for you, them, property owners, etc… which seems to be why law enforcement almost always strongly pushes/tells people to call them and let them handle it rather than taking the law into their own hands - even for seemingly simple things. LEOs have the training, experience, and most importantly applicable type of legal immunity to take the kinds of risks mentioned above.
That’s not to say they’re always right in their decisions… but if a cop makes a mistake and say hurts or even kills an innocent person, as long as they followed proper procedure nothing much happens in the end (at least legally). If you make the same mistake as a civilian, there’s a much higher chance you’ll end up in serious trouble.
I knew someone who broke into the house of a mutual friend, while she (the mutual friend) was in a “stress center” involuntarily after threatening suicide. Apparently her back door lock was stupid easy to pick, and the person who picked it had very good reason (ie, had been told on previous occasion) that MF had a gun “for target shooting.” Person who broke in found the gun, took it, checked that cat had enough food and water, and left.
Once, at a light, the guy next to me was drinking out of a clearly labeled beer bottle. I called the police and gave them the intersection, the car’s license plate, and a description. I never did know what happened.
Well, here’s one more data point for the thread. You see, I did something very similar once …
Picture it, rural Canada, 1990 something, teenage house party. Some dickhead, who was very drunk, announced that he was leaving and driving home. I informed that dickhead that he was way too drunk to drive, and I offered to call a cab and cover his cab fare. Dickhead started yelling at me, as apparently implying that he couldn’t drive safely when he couldn’t manage to put on his boots without falling over was an insult to his masculinity.
I then replied that I had already seen one person die in front of me because of a drunk driver, and if he didn’t give me his keys, I would take them from him by force. He refused and then the fight started. Actually, calling it a fight makes it sound fair, which it wasn’t. I had probably 100lbs on him, plus I was sober. After the one-sided beating was over, I took his keys, gave them to the host, and left. He ended up sleeping it off on the couch.
Apparently, the next day he went to the police station to file charges against me. From what I heard, the cops pretty much laughed at him. Then dickhead started threatening the cops, which never goes over very well. One of the cops followed him out to his car, blocked him in with his patrol car, and make him blow on the breathalyser. He blew over the limit, as he was still drunk from the night before, and ended up getting arrested. Last I heard, he still blames me for ruining his life.
Back on point, I never heard anything about it from either the cops or the lawyers, so I’m guessing it was probably a crime, but they were not interested in prosecuting it. I asked my lawyer later, and she confirmed that I could have easily ended up getting sued to bankruptcy for my actions, even if I didn’t end up charged with a crime. So I just want to state that it’s usually better to call the cops … they have immunity from civil liability.
I was once sitting at a friend’s house, when I heard a car horn go off like someone was leaning on it. I went outside and saw that there was a car parked with the driver leaning on the horn with his head. Obviously he was not aware enough or able to move to make the horn stop. I assumed at first that he was ill.
I walked up and knocked on the driver side window real hard, and he did not respond. I opened the door, and at that point he responded, and I could tell that he was very intoxicated by his behavior. I leaned in and took the keys out of the ignition, then closed the door and called the police. While I was explaining what happened, the driver dug around in his car and found another set of keys, and then drove off.
I was able to give the police the license plate number while on the phone, and the next day I went to the local police station and gave them the keys. The officer at the desk said that they would go to the guy’s house and let him know they are watching him, but based on my testimony, there was no chance of charging him with DUI. The cop seemed non-committal about whether I had done something wrong or illegal or unduly dangerous.
I have no idea what happened after that, I hope that, at the very least, I scared the crappola out of him and caused him to not drive drunk again.
You can say that you were trying to stop a drink driver. He can say you assaulted him. The cop has a choice of believing you, him, or neither/both of you. I think I’d call 911 and ask what you should do at the time it’s happening.
Only works if you’re a greased-up deaf guy.
Here’s something I always wondered. In the distant past, when it was Dear Wife who had the drinking problem and not me, she’d get extremely plastered and want to go drive to the club (or take a taxi). I’d have to hide her keys and phone and physically block the door to prevent her from leaving the apartment. I always wondered if I was on shaky legal ground here. I felt pretty good about taking her keys, but barricading her in the apartment and confiscating the phone might have been a dodgy thing to do.
Strictly legally speaking, yes you were probably in the wrong. Realistically, the chances of anything happening because of it would be slim. It would depend first on if she called the police, then on what she said to them and how convincing she was.
Even if they believed every word she said, rather than automatically going after you they’d likely give her the chance to then leave again (or even encourage it), and give you the opportunity to let her go (basically to see if they could personally witness you preventing her leaving). You can see this type of situation played out countless times on COPS and similar TV shows.
But that’s just the police/arrest stage… whether the crown or state would bother pursuing it to court is another matter. I doubt you’d be at much risk if your wife was at all normal socially. There are however some men and women out there that are extremely convincing, manipulative, vengeful, and committed enough to fool the professionals so you’ll never be totally safe doing the type of thing you describe.
So just last week I ran into a similar instance…
Spotted a black Corolla weaving in and out of traffic.
Thought it might be someone elderly, so I honked a few times (train horn), but it didn’t even faze him.
Called 911 and reported him.
Turns out the driver was totally wasted!!
Cornered him in a Wendy’s parking lot (which by sheer luck just happened to be right next door to where I was headed) and managed to take his keys cause there was no way I was gunna let him back on the road in his condition.
Called 911 again and an officer was there within minutes.
Booked on 4 counts of DWI and his court date is tomorrow
Got video of the whole thing (kinda long, but I didn’t wanna edit much out)
I was once in the car with my mom, when we saw a driver weaving all over the road, obviously either extremely drunk or impaired in some equivalent way. She called 911, and got chewed out by the dispatcher for calling 911 in a non-emergency situation.