Breathing into a machine isn’t “testimony” any more than giving a fingerprint or having your hair clipped for a DNA sample.
Forgive my ignorance but what does denatured mean exactly?
You aren’t found guilty of doing something for refusing to give fingerprints or give a DNA sample. Also, you can’t be forced to give fingerprints or a DNA sample unless you’ve already been charged with something.
It has poison added to it so you won’t drink it, generally methanol. It is exempt from alcohol taxes.
That’s exactly the rationale used. If you refuse to take the breath test the cops impose on the spot what is called here in Ohio an “Administrative License Suspension.” They’ve been able to do that for a number of years, and now they’re going even further. The cite isn’t handy (I’m at home, not in the office where the article with the cite is), but some Ohio police are adding an additional criminal charge of “obstruction of official business” and the like for refusing to take the test. Yikes!
Haha that’s so brutal. “cheat on your taxes and we’ll kill ya!”
Pretty much. It’s called “implied consent”. When you obtain a driver’s license and drive on public roads, you are, by law, telling the government that you will blow into a breathalyzer if you are asked to do so by a peace officer. If you refuse when asked, your license will be suspended.
As you noted, driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right. You are required to accept certain conditions for the privilege to continue. One of those conditions is a breath sample. It’s no more intrusive than emptying your pockets before getting on an airplane; if you don’t want to empty your pockets, don’t fly.
I take issue with this. Not driving in many parts of the country is essentially house arrest. Our society is built with the notion of personal private mobility in mind.
It’s about like stipulating “wearing shoes is a privileged, not a right” when you can’t go into a store and buy anything without shoes. Finding a job can require a search of several counties. Going to college can be a journey of 40 miles or more.
Calling driving a right does nothing to prevent driving regulation. Look at the Second Amendment. There’s all sorts of gun control regulation, licensing, and the like. What it does do is force us to look at regulation with a strong eye to see if it’s necessary.
Another example is people’s right to safety. You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, even though you have a free speech right because other people have a right to not be trampled to death.
What calling driving a right does do is establish safeguards to prevent abuse.
Say the government passed a law saying “Owning a license is an implied agreement not to criticize the president. You can still exercise your free speech right but in doing so you waive your driving privileges”.
Without using any argument that would also be valid if driving is a right, please explain to me how the above law be different then:
People are usually fingerprinted after arrest, but before being charged with a crime.
The use of breathalyzer and blood tests in DUI cases, and penalties for refusal to submit to such tests, raise two constitutional problems–unreasonable search and seizure (Fourth Amendment) and self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment). Others have concentrated on the Fourth Amendment issue, which as noted is largely resolved through implied consent.
There is also a Fifth Amendment issue relating to self-incrimination, which was addressed by the Supreme Court as it relates to blood DUI tests in Schmerber v. California. “Just as state and federal courts generally agree that [the Fifth] amendment allows compulsory fingerprinting, photographing, measuring, and so forth, so it can also allow tests.”
Um … have I been wooshed?
It’s a battle of dueling outrage. If you or a close friend have been arrested for drunk driving then you probably think the laws are outrageously harsh for such a minor offense. If you know someone who was killed by a drunk driver then you probably think the laws are outrageously lenient of such a serious crime.
How so?
How would that be any different then a law saying “Owning a license is an implied agreement not to criticize the president. You can still exercise your free speech right but in doing so you waive your driving privileges”?
Or even closer
“Own a driver’s license is implied consent for complete search and seizure of your vehicle, and onsight strip search of your person at the sole discretion of an officer of the law”?
Just defining a commonly vital activity as implied consent to wave Constitutional rights seems pretty dangerous and sleazy.
Bump, for your friend driving too fast, it’s his own fault. The expense of the violation is really the motivating factor to not do it again, IMHO.
As far as your friend in the parking lot, should’ve walked. Little taps in a parking lot really doesn’t prove to me she’s too impaired to drive, but sucks at driving in a parking lot. Did she really just tap it, or accidentally floor it and wreck the bumper?
Certain things HAVE to go. For instance, recently in my neighborhood a bar patron who WAS drunk was arrested for the “keys in the ignition” violation. She was getting a ride from a friends later, but went to her car in the parking lot to use the battery to charge her iPhone. Arrested for DUI.
Doesn’t that seem entirely convoluted? A drunk putting the keys in the ignition, starting the engine and putting the car in gear certainly shows intent. This person wasn’t even in her car! The logic behind this law seems to be “intent”. By starting your car while inebriated tends to show intent to kill or harm someone. Still, keeping a loaded gun in your house does not constitute intent to kill anyone.
I’ve taken cabs home before. It’s really not that hard or expensive. Shit, there’s always a bus too…
Well as I see it in practical terms is that getting stopped by the police randomly to ascertain that I have a license, the proper license for the vehicle, insurance and that I am not under the influence of intoxicants is fine when it comes under the heading of IC. Where I take issue with it, is when criminal charges are iminent.
The threat of jail time kicks it up another notch, assuming that judge gas pedal is not an option, refusal to submit to a breathalyzer may not help you in the short run, as it carries it’s own set of problems, but reasonable doubt in a court room is not one of them. While some jurisdictions do things differently and a LEO’s word is generally given more weight than a defendant, it’s kinda hard to go to trial when you have given a scientifically proven, court tested sample of your BAC and expect to win.
Declan
You don’t need a driver’s license to drive on your own property. Public roads are a whole 'nother animal. No one’s saying you can’t travel, only that you can’t drive. You can have someone else drive you, you can take a bus, you can ride a bicycle, you can ride a pushme-pullyu for all the government cares. But if you operate a motor vehicle on a public road, you have to be licensed, and by obtaining a license, you consent to giving a breath sample.
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Different by orders of magnitude. Wearing shoes doesn’t require extensive training and licensing to ensure that you know what signs and pavement markers mean, that you know how to estimate speed and distance, that you know rules of right-of-way and how to interact with other walkers. As for the rest, see above.
I can’t even wrap my mind around this. For one thing, such a law couldn’t possibly be passed, first because it’s a prior restraint on free speech, and second because there is no logical connection between criticizing the President and driving a car, so there is no rational basis for the law. For another, you’re posing a fallacious “irresistible force/immovable object” question, because free speech is a Constitutional right, and for your question you apparently want me to assume that driving is as well. So, you’re asking that I justify a law that puts two fundamental rights at complete odds with one another, such that one can never be exercised without surrendering the other. That’s not the way “rights” work.
Not even remotely similar. Searching your entire car and person is a very intrusive and time-consuming activity, which in your example is being performed without any sort of direction or purpose, just to “see what might turn up.” A breathalyzer (or PBT, more likely) is not invasive, and it checks for only one thing: whether the particular person being tested has alcohol in his system. The “search” performed by having someone blow into a tube is extremely limited, and the courts have determined that it does not offend the Constitution.
If you don’t agree, write your legislators.
That’s true, and of course I think we all acknowledge that not driving would be a tremendous difficulty for many people.
However, the road still doesn’t belong to you. You’re pointing out the practical limitations of saying driving is a privilege, but it must also be noted that the practical fact is that the government built the roads. If I drive on the 401, that road belongs to Her Majesty in theory (I’m Canadian) and, for all practical intents, the people of the Province of Ontario. If you live in the States, then the road belongs to the people of your state (and/or the municipality, or the feds, depending on what road you’re on.) Those people have, through their legislative representatives, chosen to make the decision that nobody can drive on their roads while drunk and that the police can take unusually inquisitive steps (as opposed to other crimes) to prevent it.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that while we want to maximize our freedoms, the government does have a legitimate interest in engaging in some limitation thereof, as is reasonably appropriate to maintaining public safety and order.
You didn’t answer my objection. Your “unusually inquisitive” is a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. Plain and simple. Our Constitution says no unwarranted search.
If using the public roads (which one can’t travel anywhere much beyond their own block, at best, without using) counts as a waiving of rights what the fuck meaning do my Constitutional rights have at all?
If the government wants to violate them all it has to do is say I can’t use a road if I want to exercise them. Suddenly I’m either in house arrest or the right is effectively stolen.
What good are rights one can’t leave their house without “consenting to waive”?
It’s a bullshit reason pure and simple.
I have extremely little sympathy for drunk drivers and think the penalty for even the first violation at “low” levels of drunkenness (i.e. .08 blood alcohol level) should be a wake-up call on the order of a heavy fine and short-term license suspension. I’m fine with mandatory jail time for a second offense.
What ticks me off, though, are legislative efforts like the one in Ohio to mandate permanent breathalyzer devices in the vehicles of first-time offenders. Not so much because it is unfair to the DUI offender, but because it is part of a MADD campaign to get the things mandated in everyone’s vehicle (MADD has acknowledged this goal).
I don’t usually go on about the “nanny state”, but saddling everybody with this expense and presumption of guilt every time you get into your car is going too damn far.
I spent some time in Seoul recently, and marveled at their solution to DUI. It’s incredibly simple. It’s also very useful, since SK’s DUI laws are brutal, particularly for a country where drinking is very much part of the social fabric, and there are about a brazillion cars on the road.
So you go to a bar, get hammered, and call this service. They come to where you are and drop off a driver who drives you home, IN YOUR OWN CAR. That’s the beauty of it. Then someone from the service comes and picks up the driver, and moves on to the next customer.
You don’t wake up the next day and have to find your way to wherever you parked the night before, which is a real pain in the ass.
Ta-daaa!
They have those services here. The kind of idiots who drive drunk are too proud to use them. Hell, you think Mel Gibson couldn’t afford a driver?