That is the negative view of it, but I tend to agree with you that it is part of the slippery slope to make the law .00 BAC for everyone. But there is some sort of logical fallacy in play here, and I don’t know what to call it. It’s almost like:
People under 21 should not be drinking at all.
Nobody at any age should be driving with a BAC of .08 or above.
but then the conclusion is something like since a person under 21 has drank and is part way to .08 then the penalties need to be similar to a person who has a BAC of .08 or above.
Actually, could you provide a link to what these laws actually say? and maybe the rationale behind them?
Not that I doubt you, but I tried googling, with limited success. Although I did turn up a reference to a “measurable amount” law applying to drivers who were on probation for DUI. That one makes sense to me: we should be stricter with such drivers because we trust them less. Maybe a similar logic applies to underage drivers: we don’t trust them as much.
Out of curiosity, why was the driver pulled over? I’m kind of tempted to say, “If the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream wasn’t enough to affect your driving, then why’d you do something to get pulled over?” But depending on the circumstances, that might or might not be fair.
You’re ignoring the last 20 years of brain research, and what it has shown regarding development of the frontal cortex. The reason for those stats about accidents is not about experience in driving. It’s about brain development. People under 25 or so are much more likely to engage in risky behavior–as a biological function of their brain–so the inhibition reducing effects of alcohol become much more aggravated. It’s not about delayed reaction time–it’s about risk-taking. The insurance companies know this.
Perhaps the age cut-off of 21 is arbitrary. I image for political reasons it was the age legislators thought people would most easily accept.
To your second point, a person can be pulled over for any reasonable articulable suspicion that he is violating a law. If it is such that he is weaving or his driving is impaired, this law does not apply, and he can be charged with the general DUI statute.
Agreed. And it isn’t like alcohol has no effect until 0.08 and then, boom, you’re intoxicated. There is some effect at 0.03 and some more at 0.05 and some more at 0.07. For a young and inexperienced driver, 0.04 might be enough to influence them to push the gas a little more then they normally would on a dark deserted highway.
I don’t disagree with any of this. Of course, younger and less mature people will naturally not have the life experiences to understand that certain risky behaviors are not things that they should be doing. I look back at things I did in my 20s and wonder how I survived and why I was so stupid.
But driving with a .03 BAC is not one of those stupid things. Indeed, it demonstrates that the young person consumed a modest amount of alcohol and was not at a frat party getting blitzed. The young person controlled his or her drinking and drove at a level that is considered safe for an adult (or older adult) person. That is to be commended and not punished.
What then is the point of classes on how not to be drunk and drive? The kid did not do that; he acted responsibly. However he did drink at an age that the law does not allow him to drink so he should be cited for that, but not treated like he is Ron White sipping whiskey on the road.
I disagree. If they “push the gas” then they have committed a crime. The idea of DUI laws is that above this certain limit (which can be argued as to what the limit should be) you are per se not within your faculties to be able to operate a car and understand inherent dangers on the road. Per se, just solely because of the alcohol intoxication.
It is not because of what you might otherwise do because your inhibitions are lowered. That has never been the point of DUI laws. Two beers may very well make me more or less pissed off at what the guy from work did, but the law does not punish me for driving after that.
I don’t see how you can say driving with a BAC of 0.03 is “acting responsibly.” Sure, it would be worse if he was 0.15, but that doesn’t excuse everything that’s not at that level. Maybe the penalty is too harsh. Maybe the drinking age needs to be lowered. I can see all that. But an under aged driver with 0.03 alcohol level is not “acting responsibly.” I know I wouldn’t praise my kid for such conduct.
0.03 is “considered safe” for an adult over 21, it’s not considered safe for 16 to 21 year olds.
I guess it would be great if we went back to prohibition days and everyone was driving at a .00 BAC, but that’s not what we have. Alcohol is a part of society and commonly used at social gatherings and at dinners. We need to realize that instead of fighting it.
As far as the 21 year old drinking age, I agree that it is too high, but from the research I’ve done, the main argument for that was to try to keep booze out of high schools. The argument was said that we really don’t care if 18 year olds drink, but if you have an 18 year old drinking age, then 15 and 16 year olds will be drinking because their older high school friends will buy them booze. We will have easy booze after homecoming and prom and high school graduation. If you make the law 21, then we can control this thing better.
But now, we are criminalizing, not the access, but the consumption.
A person who has a .03 BAC has shown that he has consumed alcohol in a reasoned and responsible manner in a way that a guy at .15 BAC has not.
I wouldn’t necessarily “praise” my 20 year old kid if he got charged with driving with a .03 BAC, but I would understand that I drank when I was his age and realize that it is perfectly legal for me to drive with that BAC. I cannot see a scenario where I would be pissed off at him for that sort of conduct.
You quote guizot’s post that makes the point that it’s not about experience, it’s about brain development. But then you ignore it and keep talking as if it’s about experience.
Fine, but I think it would be problematic to make a law that says, “Arrest the driver if the breathalyzer BAC reading is over 0.00%.”
The value displayed by any measurement instrument has uncertainty, and this includes breathalyzers. A recent study of ten breathalyzers showed they had an uncertainty ranging from ±0.01 mg/l (±0.002%) to ±0.05 mg/l (±0.01%). So to be safe there should be a non-zero lower limit for “zero tolerance,” e.g. 0.02%.
It is terrifying that you think that driving is a primarily physical task. You think a 40-year-old can’t pull a tern signal lever?
Despite the depressingly large segment of the general public who seem to be unaware of this, driving is primarily about judgment and decision-making, not about reflexes.
I have to wonder where and how you did your research. I have not researched it, but having lived through the “nationalizing” the drinking age at 21, you are missing a major argument, that is, reducing the number of deaths caused by teens driving while they were drunk. You also seem to be under the impression that prior to raising the drinking age to 21, that it was 18 throughout the land. This was not the case. Each state set it own limits. Prior to the 26th Amendment (lowering the voting age to 18), the drinking age was 21 for the vast number of states. When the voting age was lowered in 1970, many states lowered their drinking age, but not all and not all to 18. In Illinois, for example, in the 1970s you had to be 19 to drink beer and wine and 21 for liquor. By the late 1970s, however, states were starting to raise the drinking age due to traffic accidents among drunk teens. By 1984, only 15 years since the 26th Amendment, the Federal Gov’t passed the Federal Drinking Age Act essentially making the national drinking age 21 throughout the nation. I do not remember any arguments during this time about keeping the booze out of high schools. Although the drinking age was 18 when I went to high school, alcohol was the toughest drug for a high school kid to get his hands on. I could get LSD, amphetamines, cocaine, or pot relatively easily. Getting beer or liquor was a lot more trouble.
As mentioned by others, the biggest justification for preventing minors from drinking is that alcohol seriously impairs a person’s judgement. Young people have a unbelievable knack for exercising poor judgement, as well as a ridiculous sense of invulnerability. You put these two together, and setting the stage for persons under the age of 21 to legally drink and drive is a bad plan. Sure, you did it when you were young and you’re OK. I did, too. At the same time, I also rarely wore my seat belt. Nobody did. In fact, in some circles, putting on your seatbelt was considered to be an insult to the driving skills of the one driving.
Today, a 20 year-old driving with a BAC of 0.03%, IMO, is exercising incredibly poor judgement and not being responsible, at all. Sure, when I was 20, not only was that legal, but I could also drive while drinking a beer. But, that was more than 40 years ago and the laws (and society’s attitudes) have changed much since then. Back then, smoking cigarettes was not seen as anything worse than not brushing your teeth after every meal. Just because it was OK for my parents to smoke when I was in the room when I was a kid doesn’t make it fine for me to smoke around children, today.
