It’s for all suspicion of DUI. If you don’t submit, you are suspended for 6 mos. Happened to a friend of mine.
From http://www.19thcircuitcourt.state.il.us/bkshelf/resource/il_dui.htm#SUSPENDED%20DRIVING%20PRIVILEGES :
If he didn’t submit to tests, he may have had the charge reduced to reckless driving. That’ll get you out of the suspension.
That must have been it. Sorry for the hijack.
The testing requirements for CDL holders is in the DOT/FMCSA web site, but it’s hard to navigate. Here’s an overview from another site:
http://www.hr.upenn.edu/policy/policies/717.asp
There is often confusion about drivers who hold a CDL, but most cops will err on the side of caution. If you hold a CDL, be prepared to be treated more strictly than someone w/ a standard license.
I have two half-question, half-stories that I’d appreciate input on since I can’t figure the BS factor of either - sorry if it’s a hijack.
#1. A few years ago, a friend of mine came home to discover his wife shooting heroin. (she’d been in a program, swore she was clean, etc.) Fight ensues, she leaves and drives off, and (coincidentally) ran her car into another friend of mine’s just a few blocks up the street. (No injuries, fortunately) The police test for alcohol, she’s clean, she refuses drug test, and is let off. I hear this story from the both her ex-husband, and the friend who was hit. I know she didn’t get in any trouble, no ticket, nothing. The accident was considered her fault, and went on her insurance, but I’m wondering why the police couldn’t compel her to take some sort of drug test. And if they had, what would she have been charged with? Are there laws similar to DWI, only for drugs, not alcohol.
Story #2 - FOAF(OAF), so the details are definitely wrong, but the basic story is he was driving, a child on a bicycle hit/ran in front of him and was killed, (the accident was the bicyclist’s fault, this I know for sure), the driver did take a drug test - positive for cocaine, no alcohol, and the driver went to jail for some sort of negligence (?) - this is where I don’t know the details.
My confusion lies in how accident 1 didn’t become a “crime”, when she was absolutely under the infulence of drugs, which caused the accident, and accident 2 was a serious-enough-for-jail crime, when the evidence shows that he had recently used coke. (According to friends, it had been a few days before). Plus, accident 2 wasn’t his actual fault, where accident 1 was.
Any input is appreciated, speculation on what crime happened in #2, anything is appreciated. This has left me wondering for years.
I could be wrong, but I think the deal is they cannot compel you to give up bodily fluids. She agreed to do a breathalyzer but not a blood test. Therefore, they have no proof that she was on drugs, regardless of what her husband saw.
You mean your friend being a pothead and all.
Busted! I can’t believe anyone saw through my “friend” ruse 
IANA Lawyer, Cop, DMV Employee, or anything similar, but here’s my take on the incident(s):
#1: No injuries, only property damage. Not much of a crime there, not even much of a potential lawsuit. It also seems like the “friend” was unwilling to press charges further than reporting the accident to insurance. As for the cops, keep in mind they’ve got many other criminal cases to deal with; a fender-bender involving some drunk woman doesn’t strike me as something they’d worry too much about.
#2: Well, a child was killed. Doesn’t matter what the real circumstances are – SOMEONE has to pay for that. Happens all the time. And since your FOAF had cocaine in his system…his goose was cooked. Even if he was clean, he would have faced some type of criminal negligence charge, or a wrongful death lawsuit. Remember, the system tends to go ballistic over dead children…even if the driver’s not at fault, they will seek a way to make him at fault!
Not true at all. Accidents happen, children are killed and drivers not charged. It is not that rare at all, nor would you expect it to be. Kids do unpredictable and unfortunate things all the time.
First I was going to call you uninformed. Now I’m just confused. Personally, I don’t experience any effects that last beyond maybe 4 hours. The exception is if you fall asleep high, so let’s just count 4 wakeful hours. Most of my friends don’t either. There was one who professed to still feel it the next day, or even the day after that. However, he was kind of a noob. Perhaps it is true for some individuals, but generally the stupid does not linger for days! In my experience, this could not be further from the truth.
Actually, it probably has to do with how often you smoke. If you do it infrequently, the after-effects do last quite a bit longer. If you smoke regularly, you become much more tolerant to them and the after-effects go away much sooner (in addition to not being that strong in the first place). When I was starting out, I remember I’d be burnt-out for a considerable number of hours.
I think that that last thing is the crucial point, and the reason why the seasoned potheads say one thing while the casual users say another. However, I doubt there exist any studies with careful enough data to examine this fact. And of course, you’ll never be able to convince a jury saying, “no, see, I am competent at driving 12 hours later because I smoke every day!”
That’s probably because they smoked many times a day, and were probably in the stage of being “burnt-out” when you hung out with them. That means they were just really tired, a little happy, and not really giving a shit if they didn’t seem respectable (and probably even found acting like that a little funny). Make your judgements only when you know they’re not actually high. It also happens that “learning-impaired” people are probably more likely to become potheads (for sociological reasons). However, intelligence doesn’t have too much to do with driving a bus anyway (i’m talking hypothetically here, don!).
Oh, ok, that’s real fucking nice. Your friend gets into a car with her high boyfriend, agrees to take that chance. And then when something bad happens, she wants him to get fried by the law. What a bullshit American mentality. The victim in the other car has every reason to be angry. But not your friend! Not only could she have not gotten in the car, she had the tits to make her boyfriend not go anywhere either.
Oh, no one seemed to have wanted to address the point of what was worse… driving drunk or driving high (on weed).
I think that the biggest danger of driving drunk isn’t that your skills are impaired but that you feel really confident and drive fast and don’t feel like looking out for dangers. Ie, you become reckless.
If you drive high, your skills are obviously impaired as well, but the crucial thing is that you become much more cautious than you would even be sober. That certainly offsets things a great deal. For example, this is the principle by which old ladies don’t kill everyone.