Last I checked you said would it justify it to ME?(me being anyone answering you question). As it seemed to me that you were asking for an opinion, thats what I gave. Sorry if you think that my opinion puts us back at square one.
Well, in a way it does, doesn’t it pezpunk.
Because if it’s wrong, it’s wrong- no matter what the outcome of Vinnie was.
At least that’s my position.
But I don’t know your position on DUI roadblocks, so I could have saved that bit of commentary on my end.
I didn’t say that it would, nor do I think that it would have. I’m just curious why he lied, that’s all. There’s a phrase used in the legal community, the Latin for which slips my mind, but it refers to a “criminal mind” or “guilty mind”; I think it’s mostly used in insanity defenses (Jodi, Bricker, minty, little help?), but refers to the idea that the accused must be aware that what he was doing was wrong.
If Vinnie didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, and was confident that he could blow below the legal limit on a Breathalyzer, why lie about how many drinks he’d had? Was it just an “Up yours, cops!” kind of thing, or was he maybe more impaired than he’s willing to admit?
For me, I make it an absolute personal imperative to not drink and drive. I make myself well aware of my limits, and if I’m sure I’ve exceeded them, or even suspect that I have, I let my wife drive, I hang around long enough to sober up, or I take the Metro. There have been maybe three or four incidents in my life where I’ve driven when I probably should not have. I never have been pulled over, stopped at a checkpoint or been in an accident, but nevertheless, I am anything but proud that I did it.
Mens rea, PHIL, may be what you’re looking for; it means “guilty mind,” or criminal intent.
It’s worth noting, however, that driving drunk is not an intent-dependent crime; you do not need to have any particular intent to do it. You just have to be drunk.
Pandora, nice to hear from a fellow PA native! Was that you I saw in that buggy the other day? 
Speaking of “Pandora’s Box”, to answer the qwuestion, I was thinking Miranda. Not that I had been arrested.
Pardon my further intrustion, but Huh? What does lying to the cops about the number of drinks you had have to do with Miranda?
The “20 or so” cops involved in sobriety checkpoints are 20 or so cops NOT staking out bar parking lots at closing time and NOT catching the real problem drinkers at their source.
Vinnie is absolutely correct in his rant against grossly inconveniencing the public as a whole with these checkpoints.
On cold, damp days, I can’t turn my head to the left without pain, thanks to a drunk driver who hit me from behind as I sat at a stoplight. This guy roared out of the bar parking lot and headed downhill straight into the first vehicle he encountered. A cop stationed at the bar lot could have prevented this, 20 cops inconveniencing freeway drivers–at large-- would not have.
Ever since Clinton started shovelling lots of “free” Federal money at the local cops, we have had checkpoints run on every major holiday. The Barney Fifes say that the fact that they catch fewer and fewer drunks each holiday is proof “the war is being won”, but I say its proof that the local drunks plot their drives home around the predictable possible checkpoint sites and that they’re only catching a handful of unwary out-of-towners.
Unfortunately, our community can’t say no to liquor license applications. Limit the number of places that can sell alcohol, patrol these places vigilantly, and stop hassling thousands to catch dozens.
I feel a little strange posting this in the wake of Byzantine’s heartfelt post, but it is actually probably a good place to do it.
On the previous page, Arjuna34 asked me if I had any statistics on “alcohol-caused” accidents as opposed to “alcohol-related” accidents. I missed that question until today.
I still don’t have any concrete figures, but I can offer a clue from the same source I cited previously, this time from a speech by Sheldon Wishnick.
and
and, finally
This guy is citing NHTSA statistics that show that the vast majority of fatal accidents are caused by sober drivers, and that the vast majority of fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers are caused by those who are fucked up, with a 0.14 BAC or higher. Those with a moderate amount of alcohol in their systems are actually safer drivers than sober ones. Vinnie, in short, was statistically one of the safest drivers on the road that night when he was stopped and questioned, without cause.
This is a Pit thread, not a debate, so I’m not going to spend the time necessary to spit forth the raw data. I’m making this post to point out a very, very important thing: things are not what they seem to be.
This is the essence of the Straight Dope. If we are here to learn, understand, and fight ignorance, the myth of drunk driving should be high on the list of old wives’ tales which need to be dispelled. At this point, I would argue that a great many more lives are being destroyed by pinning safe drivers with DWIs than the number of lives that are being saved. It’s fueled by the emotion of those who are legitimately hurt by drunk driving fatalities, but the majority of the recipients of that wrath are not deserving of such treatment at all, except to salve the vengeant spirit of those already, tragically, wronged. Furthermore, the witch-hunt spirit of the anti-drunk driving effort is well on its way to eroding the very concept of “freedom” here in America.
I myself lost one of my best friends to a drunk driver. But punishing the innocent for the crimes of those already punished or dead is just not right. Let’s fix the problem by targeting the real dangers out there–wasted drivers–instead of emptying the wallets of the innocent in order to make us all feel better.
(I was a bad drunk driver. I now choose not to drive at all.)
Cnote, I like your sick fish analogy.
I think checkpoints are neither effective nor proper. Improper in that people are being stopped and questioned when the police have no probable cause.
IMO it would be better for the police to patrol the area with their eyes peeled for people who are driving erratically, and pull those people over.
I’m in favor of throwing the book at any driver who recklessly endangers others. I can’t see that it matters if the cause is being drunk, being on illegal drugs, being on a prescription drug, or just being stupid. If someone is caught in the act of driving recklessly, charge him with reckless driving. And enact and enforce some tough penalties for reckless driving. At the very least, yank their licenses – and mean it. That is, driving when one’s license has been revoked for cause should get you an actual prison sentence.
I have to suspect that the real purposes of these checkpoints are (1) to get credit for “doing something” about a problem, and (2) to give cops something easy and safe to spend some time on. Who wants to spend all of every shift doing hard, dangerous work? They need some safe, easy assignments, too. This is one of them.
Sorry I have no cite, but I seem to remember reading that the biggest problem re drunk driving is repeat offenders. Guys (usually guys) who are long term heavy drinkers (often alcoholics) and who just will not stop driving while drunk. They have accidents, they get arrested, but somehow they just keep on drinking and driving.
Seems to me we ought to be able to solve this problem: take away their licenses, and if they drive anyway, put them in jail.
Someone suggested that the police should keep a eye on bar parking lots at closing time. Sounds like a good idea. No need to check every driver that passes a random spot. Just steak out the lot and look for probable cause to check someone out.
This kind of argument never holds any water with me. “If ________ saves one life, it’s worth it.”
Bullshit.
This “saving one life/preventing one fatality” crap can be used to justify anything.
Here’s a way to prevent drunk driving. Ban the private use of automobiles in this country. After all, if it saves just one life, it will be worth it.
What, you say you would be inconvienced by this? Well, boo effin’ hoo.
BTW, I also am of the opinion that DUI checkpoints are unconstitutional. Seems pretty cut and dried in the 4th Amendment. I don’t know what the Supremes were thinking.
I’ve only been in a couple, in Connecticut. I’ve got to tell you, there’s nothing more fun than coming off of 16 hours of shift work, and spending 45 minutes in a checkpoint on the drive home.