Thanks. I may have been remembering company policy. Or it’s been changed since then. It’s been 15 years.
Accident rates per 1000 drivers:
16 - 61.4
17 - 46.2
18 - 45.4
19 - 37.8
All Ages - 16.8
Younger drivers are more likely to be in an accident. All the more reason they should consume no alcohol while driving. Driving isn’t a physical activity like running or digging a ditch. It’s more like 90% mental.
I’m sure that the legislature could show that less experienced drivers would be involved in accidents at a higher rate if they were driving a car full of teenaged contemporaries or after dark. That is not at all in dispute, and I don’t see the relevance of it. Plus, we are talking in this context about kids under 18 with probationary licenses. You can screw with them more under the law. And a result under a probationary status would be an administrative sanction, not the full weight of the law with criminal penalties.
We are talking about .02 BAC. Nobody is claiming that that level is an intoxicating level. If it was, it should be illegal at 16 or 116.
Further, I am not claiming that both A and B must be true. I am stating that A and B are absolutely true, but it does not follow that C is true. We do not want kids to drink, and we do not want anyone driving under the influence. It does not follow that we do not want kids driving after drinking, but not under the influence, and punishing that with enhanced penalties. We have decided, through our elected representatives, that .02 represents no increased danger to the traveling public.
If there is an argument that .02 BAC is an increased danger to the public because of the inexperience of these young drivers, I have yet to see it. It is a pretext.
These kids did nothing to enhance the crime that they already committed which was underage drinking.
This is a non sequitur. I’m sure that the least experienced pilots or truck drivers or doctors or lawyers or engineers make the most mistakes. It doesn’t follow that the consumption of an amount of any substance that the law deems not to be intoxicating for the vast majority is intoxicating to this small subset of the population.
Alcohol is impairing only after a certain amount, just like any other drug. There is a difference between one beer and ten beers just like there is a difference between taking a prescription amount of a sedative versus snorting half of the bottle off of the nightstand. If we don’t understand the difference, then there should be no parking lots at bars and adults should be subject to .02 laws.
And it is under and over inclusive. A girl that lives in the city and doesn’t get her driver’s license until age 25 is not subject to this law the very hour after she gets her license, but the 20 year old who has been driving for four years is subject to it.
So, write to your legislators. (Good luck with that.) I’m sorry your clients are getting charged and convicted, but what do expect us to do about it? Life isn’t fair, as most kids learn eventually.
Also, I’m pretty sure they cover this when you apply for a license. It’s not like a 18 year old doesn’t know that 0.02 BAC or higher can cause them serious legal problems. They know, and can adjust their behavior (or not).
What would make things clearer for you would be if you had the concept of a provisional license - something to show that a person is licensed to drive, but is inexperienced.
In Australia, when you first get a license, you are “on your P’s” for (usually) three or four years and can’t have any alcohol in your system if you’re driving. You can get a license at 17 or 18 so, practically speaking, under 21 drivers can’t have any drinks, even though drinking at 18 is legal everywhere. But the concepts are divorced enough from each other that you can see that stopping young folks drinking isn’t the point - having safer drivers is the point.
Similar stats on driver accidents per year of driving by the way - inexperienced drivers are just much less safe, and don’t need any extra distracting factors.
This response is most unhelpful. Anyone could say that in almost any GD or Elections thread. Hey, you don’t like the new voter ID law? Call you legislator and they can tell you to piss off. This place is for discussion about these issues.
*snip. What is unsafe about a .02 BAC? If it is something, why allow the vast majority of adults to do it? If it is nothing, then why are we screwing with young people?
Further, if we want to make that an administrative regulation as part of the licensure requirement, then fine, there are a lot of a stupid administrative regulations. That is what bureaucrats are for: to regulate things. But this is not that. This law is contained in the DUI section of the criminal code and punishes young people with penalties very similar to DUI. That is grossly unfair when the young person is objectively not under the influence of alcohol.
As I understand it, the primary reason the drinking age was set to 21 was to cut down on teen drinking and driving. That’s arguably why “the vehicle part is relevant”: if the underage drinker weren’t driving, it wouldn’t be a big deal that they’d been drinking.
This is what’s unsafe.
I know that “drinking and driving” is commonly substituted for “drunk driving” but, AFAIK, nobody has ever seriously wanted to outlaw modest consumption of alcohol prior to driving. The evil to be combated is drunk driving.
And when a person is not driving drunk, the presence behind the wheel of the vehicle should not matter. This kid has indeed violated the underage drinking laws, but he is not driving drunk.
It seems as if because he is closer to driving drunk than he was at .00 BAC then the argument is that we need to do something proactive to stop it. That seems to me to be as silly as an argument that since the speed limit is 70 and he is doing 67, he needs a smack across the nose with a newspaper because he is closer to speeding than another kid doing 60.
I’m not sure what the point of the link is? Should all adults be subject to a zero tolerance BAC level? If so, that is a different debate. Nothing in your link suggests that at age 21 a certain BAC level becomes safer to drive at.
Reduced judgement and slowed reflexes coupled with a relatively inexperienced driver.
Maybe we could get a lawyer in here to explain it better.
I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass (but as my wife says, I must be just a natural at it :)) but I am not seeing your point.
The rules of the road are pretty straightforward. Unless you are absolutely bombed, you can see a stop sign or a traffic light or oncoming traffic. The dangers of alcohol consumption while driving, at least as I understand them, are the delayed reaction time to unforeseen events like a kid walking across the road.
This delayed reaction time increases with age and alcohol consumption exacerbates that. If anything, older people should be subject to a lower BAC limit, or after a certain age not be allowed to drive at all.
Stop changing the subject. I do think the elderly are undertested in general for driving. That’s not the discussion.
I think the current .08 is way too fucking high. I’ve been at .04 only once and there’s no way I was getting behind the wheel.
Why don’t you tell your client that he shouldn’t have been drinking, to suck it up and take the punishment?
In my state, Colorado, younger drivers get their license suspended with fewer points than adult drivers. I think if you’re 16-18 you can get suspended with 6 points in one year. 18-21 it’s 9 points within a year, and once you hit 21, you can accumulate 12 points in a year before losing your license. Something like that.
So the driving regulations reflect that younger drivers just have to be more careful not to accrue points.
This alcohol thing seems like the same kind of thing.
I believe it’s supposed to reflect the message that you’re young and new to this thing and you need to get better. But then once you’re 21 you don’t have to be better.
Whoa! The madd mothers gave us .08. They advocated for us. The limit used to be .1 (and in some states .12 or .15). This is the level that the most anti-alcohol group in the country gave us. You personally want it to be lower. That’s fine; that is your argument, but it is not the law, and not a reason why a guy age 20 should be subject to a lower limit than a year later.
I do tell the prosecutor, the judge and my client that the kid broke the law by drinking and to punish him and cite him for the same. But he did not endanger the public by having a beer and then driving to his parents’ house anymore than me, the prosecutor, or the judge would do by doing the same damn thing. Dismiss the bullshit charge and cite him for what he really did.
As I have said, I have no problem with administrative rules for minors. These are not administrative rules. These are criminal penalties which stay on a person’s record when they go for employment and such. It is punished as if the young person was actually driving his vehicle in an intoxicated state.
He has to take DUI classes, for example. What are we teaching in those classes? No beer before driving, but next year that is okay?
But there is such a societal evil and yes, people want it to be Zero.
Who are these “people”? You don’t think a grown man can have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving dinner and then drive home without killing people? That is an astounding suggestion, and not one that is supported by any law enacted by any state legislature in the country.
No, I dont think so. But the neo-puritans and the MADDers do think so.
And yes it is supported, see the OP. All states have some sort of Zero Tolerance for under 21 drivers. The only rational for this is driving with any BAC is “evil”, but the lawmakers can only be coerced into making it illegal for those under 21.