Spoilered for veering towards political content: Spoiler It's like anything else. Take public schools, for example. Suppose someone wrote a note for their child's teacher saying, "Timmy should be allowed to talk on his cell phone during class, because my tax dollars paid for your school." No, it doesn't work like that. Participation in civil society means allowing for the placement of restrictions upon public behavior, and extra latitude is granted where consumption of public resources is concerned. This is how civilization works. Particularly in the case of public safety. No one suggests that restricting 12 year olds from driving, or restricting the blind from driving, is unreasonable. The blind pay taxes (and 12 year olds' parents do), but we don't say that therefore grants them the right to drive. It's unclear to what degree one's tax burden gives one the right to endanger the lives of other tax paying drivers. Does the burden of these laws exceed the public safety gains? Maybe, maybe not. I'm inclined to say yes, you're probably inclined to say no. But that's a very different debate than whether the authority to make those rules in the first place exists. One can argue about whether a rule exceeds the bounds of reasonableness, but the basic authority to make those rules is part of the social contract that makes society go.
This is adorable, I honestly can't tell if you're joking or just naive. I mean, they don't HAVE to be mutually exclusive, but to think the intention of a politician who would go through the hassle of passing these laws lies more in the interest of public good than to enhance their political clout is downright laughable. Yeah, maybe it was the tone that I got from your original post about where the ownership lies that set me off, but this is very true in this society, can't argue with that. More on focus: what do y'all cap your drinking off at before you hop in the car? Personally I use to abide by the six pack rule (six beers max) since I had a very high tolerance, but worked with a bunch of people who got DUI's. Now I'm like Omeggaham and prefer to have one beer max and pound waters the rest of the night because moderation is for pussies.
My drinking habits are that I get tipsy comparatively fast (but then a long time to get hammered) and I usually drink stronger-than-average beer, so I tend to err a bit on the side of caution. So I usually stop after two or three if I'm driving. God bless living in New York, because that is a pain in the ass when I visit home.
When I’ve been in jail, they said they offered classes, and I signed up for all of them: Alcohol classes, Drug classes, anger management classes, parenting classes, you name it, just to break up the monotiny. I was there for almost 3 months, and they never had any classes. I think you will be able to comprehend/retain the information a lot better in a rehab setting than in a prison, where you are always looking over your shoulder for who might shank you. And do you seriously believe that prisons are more cost effective than rehab? Have you ever been to jail/prison (and I’m not talking about a night in the drunk tank)? According to that, I'd say we should have different BAC limits for different age groups. This is something that all of those "JUST TAKE A CAB!" people don't seem to realize: not all locations have cabs or public transit. (What I am about to say is an explaination for many DWI offenders' thinking process, NOT an alibi.) You get out of a bar and you feel lightly buzzed. You know that calling a cab or taking a bus would be the best thing, but the local bus line stops running at midnight (that's what they do down here, in the cities that actually have buses), and since you live in an area outside of the city limits, it wouldn't make any difference anyway. No cabs will take you to your house (local cab companies won't go out to where I live. All we have are shitty, 2 or 3 car cab fleets around here. They stay in the populated areas.), so your options are: 1)Walk to a motel and leave your car in the bar parking lot to get towed. 2) Call some friends who aren't answering the phone because it's too late. 3) Drive home because you don't feel that bad; you and other people have done it plenty of times before, and you probably won't get caught. Hell, by the time you get home, you will probably be under the legal limit. If I lived in a city with all-night buses/subways and cabs, I don't think I would have any DWIs on my record. Hell, if I lived in a place with all of that at my disposal, I don't think I'd even bother with the hassle of owning a car. EDIT: Here’s a question for all of you: This whole discussion has focused on DUIs pertaining to alcohol. How do y’all feel about people driving under the influence of marijuana or other drugs? (I know that there are a lot of pot smokers on this board.)
But you knew that you are far away from home and public transportation is not an option before you opted to go out to the bar. What about having a plan ahead of time. Staying with a friend in town, limiting your number of drinks, finding a designated driver. If none of these are an option, how about just drinking at home?
Statistics like ^ that are why I get so angry when I see provinces like British Columbia instituting even lower BAC laws at the behest of lobby groups like MADD. And I stress again: all this for a victimless crime.* As someone pointed out, you're being punished for a crime you MIGHT have committed. I'll say it again: the current laws only restrict responsible drinkers from the roads. Anyone I've known with an alcohol problem that's been pulled over and charged with DUI has never internalized that drinking and driving is a crime. Instead, they blame [the cops/the Crown/the laws/etc]. Invariably, they continue to do it. So, if the law doesn't deter the people who are the most apt to cause harm, what's the point? Also, look at the cost to society. Let's say we have a 'criminal' that exactly fits my worst-case description. He's a male, 30 years old, never been arrested, had three glasses of wine at a company Christmas function and blew a 0.09. The fallout for him is that: - he will have a high degree of difficulty getting a job with a federal criminal record. - he will never be able to travel/work overseas. - if his current job involves driving (even if it's to-and-from work), he will not be able to keep it. *THIS HOLDS TRUE EVEN BEFORE HE GETS A TRIAL TO PROVE HIS GUILT/INNOCENCE* - he will cost the state a great deal of court fees. I'm sorry, but who has been helped by this? It's not deterring the dangerous drunks, and if it causes a situation like I just described, how is society better? *At no time am I including people who are under the influence and actually have an accident in my discussion.
Frank brought up a good point that I forgot to mention: For all of you people who are screaming for the heads of repeat offenders like me, I ask you this: What about people who are just bad drivers? My sister has totaled almost every car she's ever had, and she has hurt some other people before. And my sister doesn't even drink. Obviously, she has a bad driving record, and has been a menace to other people on the road. WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE THAT? Yes, if you have enough violations within a span of time you will have your license suspended, but do we arrest bad drivers? Do we slap them with felony charges with their 3rd accident, even if no one was hurt, and everyone was insured? Since driving while talking on the phone has been statistically proven to be as dangerous (if not more dangerous) than driving with a .10 BAC, should we arrest and prosecute people who talk and drive? Or would you say "NO!" to that because you might be guilty yourself? (And why do I see so many Texas State Troopers talking while driving? Hell, cops have to talk on their walkie-talkies/two way radio systems all the time, shouldn't they arrest each other for distracted driving? No, that would never happen because cops are better than us. [blatant sarcasm] Maddox sums up my feelings about cops nicely here.) From what I've gathered via PMs and rep, no one is understanding my point, so I will state it simply: I AM NOT DEFENDING DRIVING WHILE INTOXICATED. I AM AGAINST EXCESSIVE/OVER-EXTENDED PUNISHMENTS FOR A "CRIME" IN WHICH NO ONE WAS HURT. Re-read my first post if you don't understand.
I bring an AA meeting into the county jail twice a month and worked in a juvenile corrections facility this past semester that provides a concurrent drug and alcohol treatment program, so my experience is on the other side of yours. But the offenders who go to the AA meetings are there by choice because they want recovery. They've moved past their denial and are working a solution. Occasionally we get 1 or 2 who sit in to break up their monotony and try to disrupt the meeting, but the prisoners who are serious about call them out on their BS and they end up leaving. You could give a starving man the best fishing rod and reel, but unless he uses them, he's still going to starve. It's up to him. I don't know where you spent your time, but AODA treatment is offered at every state prison and Dallas and Ft Worth county facilities. The youth I worked with are more problematic because they're teenagers and know everything (though the average IQ among the kids there was 81) and they're in serious denial. They're not DWI cases as most of them aren't old enough to drive. Instead, they're locked up for burglaries, some armed, in order to support their drug habits. But lack of parental involvement in their lives in general, and the environment they'll return to bring a much deeper complication to their chances of a successful outcome. Frank: I paired my cellphone to a Bluetooth speaker unit in mytruck once. When I get in, I turn the speaker on. One touch to answer a call, one touch to activate voice dialing. I can't see how handling the phone itself is easier and requires less focus. And as to DWI laws being purely politically motivated for votes, I have never heard a politician making it a platform campaign issue, probably because the majority of voters understand the reasoning behind the laws--to cutdown on fatalities and save lives. What reasonable person would oppose that?
I cap it off at zero. Makes it much easier to avoid this whole shitstorm and get home safely. I love a good drink, but I can go without. Agreed. I grew up in a small town, with one of those 3 car cab "fleets", and regardless of your surroundings there is almost never an excuse to drink and drive. I mean fuck, why take the bloody risk? What is there to gain when there is so much to lose? Fuck politics, fuck the debate over what the law should and shouldn't be, fuck comparing apples to oranges, and fuck trying to place the blame elsewhere or justify your actions. Just don't fucking do it! If you can't figure out a safe way home when your sober, then don't get fucking drunk in the first place. It is your responsibility to keep your ass in check.
It doesn't show very much detail there. A bit of googling shows this: It looks like 3-5 times more likely. Considering that outside of eating unhealthy and not exercising driving is by far the biggest risk you take every day. Increasing that by 3-5 times is simply illogical. And really, what gains do you really get between .07 and .09? How is that even worth risking it? If I know I have to drive I don't have more than 3 beers. No high gravity, no liquor, no shots. Usually those 3 beers are over a few hours. Even if I wasn't 215 lbs the math would roughly be .02+.02+.02 - .01*hours. If I had 3 over 2 hours I'd be sitting somewhere around .04-.05 which is the same relativistic chance of accident. Even then, I usually pay more attention and you could say may even be a bit safer.
Ok, I'll try to cover a few things succinctly. First of all, beyond a certain point, deterrence doesn't work. Deterrence works when something is initially made illegal (such as with cell phones while driving, or pretty much anything that is criminalized). You'll have people that don't know something is illegal, they'll get pulled over, tell friends, etc. and eventually everyone knows that a certain activity is illegal. There comes a point in the sentencing of a defendant where increased penalties do not deter. It is widely known that drunk driving is illegal. It is widely known that you will get a license suspension for a first offense (in NJ anyway) It is widely known that you will pay a shitload of money in fees/fines/etc. Since there are some mighty dense folks in these parts, I'll get the disclaimer out of the way: I'm not defending driving while drunk. It's a bad thing. Ok, now that what should be obvious is out of the way... Increasing license suspensions, increased jail time, etc. does not act as a deterrent. You don't find drunks saying "Oh, shit, I thought my license would only be suspended for six months, not seven (which was the increase for a first offense in NJ when the limit went from .10 to .08)." It doesn't happen. They know driving drunk is illegal. They know they'll face a suspension. They took the risk anyway. So as to the 'deterrence' argument -well, see how Capital Punishment works, and that totally stopped people from killing people...oh, wait. My issue with DWI laws is that you face heavy consequences and have limited protections under the law. While MADD and others may think that these assholes deserve no rights, for a right to mean anything it has to apply to even the least liked folks in a society. And added deterrence won't do a thing, I've seen folks with 5 and 6 DUI's and they're in jail for 130 days on a 2 year sentence (due to overcrowding because we criminalize so much activity that we have more people in jail in the US than anywhere else in the world (Land of the Free? Interesting). In short, unless you're literally going to kill these people after the 2/3/4 or whatever offense, no amount of deterrence is going to guarantee your safety. Key word: guarantee. Nothing will stop someone from getting behind the wheel if that's what they want to do. I won't touch on the idiocy of 'they should make it murder' because frankly there's a very good legal reason for it and from some of the posts in this thread I have to assume to the concept of mens rea will be completely lost on them. In short, increased deterrence doesn't work, there's a shitload of money for the state in these matters, and once again your rights are stripped way beyond what is necessary for the 'common good' which everyone is wholeheartedly for, well, right up until you're the person in a group the majority thinks sucks for whatever reason and decide you're not deserving of rights either.
Wow, I thought there would be people clamoring to discuss this subject, seeing as how there is no "cut and dried" way to tell how stoned/coked-up/high a person is. (Because we all know that breathalyzers and arbitrary reflex tests are infallable, right?) Also, no one has touched these items: We already discussed whether or not talking on a phone/headset was bad, so what should the punishment be? Should three-time offenders get the felony treatment?
Sure there's a way to test if a person's on drugs. Blood test. I think cops are experienced enough to recognize when someone's stoned, which gives him probable cause and they can draw the blood at the station. And if the guy is holding, he's busted for possession, too. Booze or drugs, reaction time focus and concentrations are all affected. As for bad drivers, what percentage of traffic fatalities do they account for, how do you determine the accident was a result of their lack of driving skills? The drunk driving numbers were more than 50% when the NTSB made its recommendations for tougher DWI penalties in 1984 and that percentage dropped to around 35% in 1999, so Asa general deterrence, it had some success. The tougher laws were the result of that government study, not the MADD lobby. And all that money the state "makes" as a result of the fines--they fund alcohol uawareness education and rehabilitation initiatives for drunk drivers. Maybe higher fines and longer suspensions is the way to go. $10,000 fine on the first DWI, $25,000 on the second and $50,000 on the third and just keep doubling it, but that would be unfair to the poor. Instead, fine them a percentage of their gross income and scale the percentages so they increase with each .01 over the legal limit by 2.5%. So blowing an .08 costs you 10% of your gross annual income, .09 costs you 12.5%, etc. for one year if it's your first offense, and the number of years you're fined increases with each additional offense. No job? Work it off in a road maintenance program where the offender is paid at half the minimum hourly wage, but "room and board" will e provided by the state. As for using a cellphone, the restrictions we have here is no cellphone use in a school zone when tschool is in session. I use a Bluetooth speaker, so it's hands free operation, but ifcTexas changes the law, I'll abide by it. Texting while driving is currently still legal, but that doesn't mean It's safe or sane. It's irresponsible, and the legislature will address it pretty soon.
If you don't think they already have laws on the books for driving under the influence of weed you need to brush up on your local and state laws. Ohio's OVI law includes language that includes weed and other illicit substances (under the umbrella term metabolites). Just because they don't have the breathalyzer for it doesn't mean you can't be charged with it. No, weed doesn't affect you as much cognitive wise as alcohol can but it still can and I think it should be regulated, the penalties should be less IF that is the only thing in your system. Combing alcohol and weed, gettin' twisted, should be treated harsher. Also, I am generally alright with the punishments, they could be improved as I said in an earlier post. No it isn't deterring powerful alcoholics but not a single one of my friend or acquaintances with DUIs*, that aren't true alcoholics, would even dare to fuck around with drinking and driving again. Once was enough to straighten them out. I wouldn't be surprised that a majority of DUI offenders don't end up repeating a second time. *You'd be surprised how many you know when you sit down and think about it.
I'm curious as to why the fine/insurance/jail punishment structure is so severe. Would things like having some DUI offender stand in front of a school or the site they were pulled over wearing a sign saying "I am a Drunk Driver" be considered cruel and unusual? Surely there are more creative and effective ways of punishment that the current system, which makes it very difficult for someone living paycheck-to-paycheck to put a DUI behind them.
Thank you for continuing the thread lust4life; you are a great asset to this board, and this thread in particular. I don’t know if the blood tests are different in your part of Texas than they are in mine, but my understanding on DUI blood tests (in regards to drugs, at least; you get an actual BAC for alcohol) is that it is just a pass/fail test for drugs. It doesn’t give you the actual level. And even if it did, what are the acceptable limits for different drugs? For example: you could have smoked a joint last week, but because you would be positive for THC in a blood test today, you are guilty. If you snorted a $20 bag of coke 2 days before your arrest/blood test, you would be positive for driving under the influence of cocaine. If you take Adderral or Ritalin (with or without a prescription), you would come out positive for amphetamines. At least that’s what I’ve heard from guys who have been convicted on drug charges. Please tell me they are wrong. Are you serious? Do you really believe that the average Joe-Gumshoe knows the difference between a person who is flustered by dealing with the “scary” police and someone who is high? Especially when Joe-Gumshoe wants to make a collar? (Remember, you [lust4life] and I are used to dealing with law enforcement officers. Not everyone else is. It can be pretty scary for some people, especially when the cops don’t follow procedures and intimidate people.) Do you know how much training/experience you need to be a cop? It’s painfully little, especially when you are wielding that much power. If you want to teach at the college level, you need at least a Masters’ degree. To be a cop: Finish a six week academy. DOES THAT SEEM RIGHT TO YOU? You got me there, if the guy is holding, he's busted. Of a victimless crime.
Where you live and where I live, weed and coke are both illegal, so if the blood test comes back positive, guess what--you broke the law. Also, there are different varieties of blood tests that have different specificity levels, so time of last use can be ascertained. I understand you have a hard-on for cops, but do you really think it takes an advanced degree to recognize when someone is stoned? Especially when you have repeat exposure to such individuals in your line of work? As for possession being a "victimless" crime (and I think the families of anyone killed in drug trade violence would disagree with you), it's a crime nonetheless. If you don't want to face the consequences if you get caught, don't do it, or be smarter about it. And I was asked to provide a reference for the drunk driving %'s in my last post. The NTSB Safety Report.
I just don't know what to say to this. Between this and your next post, just, fuck. Do you have that much of a hard-on for the law that you're willing to start blood testing people for "intoxication" (nb it's very hard to have a qualitative measure of intoxication based on a quantitative blood concentration for most drugs except alcohol) and then, when it turns out the blood test is useless for determining impaired driving, turn around and say that it's totally okay that a test useless for its intended purpose was performed if it catches other illegal behaviour incidentally? We suspect you of breaking the law today - oops, you haven't actually broken the law, you're not impaired driving, but it turns out you did something illegal a few days ago, so we're going to arrest and charge you for it. How is this not unreasonable search and seizure? Also, advil can cause a false positive for marijuana.
No, I was just answering the question. And in Texas, this has already been implemented. Around the holidays when law enforcement steps up it's presence on the road via DWI checkpoints and additional patrol units, "mobile courts" are also deployed where a court order can be sought from a judge to draw blood from a suspect who refuses to submit to a blood test. That's how it's not unreasonable search and seizure.
I am so glad I live in a place where being previously tipped off, and reeking of pot, is still unlawful search and seizure