Posted on 05/07/2005 4:32:18 AM PDT by billorites
WITH SPRING blooming, you decided to treat that “special someone” to a romantic dinner at your favorite restaurant. The evening had started off well enough. A fine meal. The perfect companion. A bottle of wine. The two of you hadn’t driven far from the restaurant when you saw it: a police roadblock. No problem, you thought. All you did was split a bottle of wine over a long meal. Since you weigh 180 pounds, your blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) is .03 percent at the most. And the legal arrest threshold is .08 percent — more than twice yours. Unfortunately for you, police have begun arresting people with a BAC at just a fraction of the legal limit. One Florida man recently ended up in jail for driving with a BAC of .02 percent — the equivalent of about one drink. The grandson of a former Supreme Court justice, who’d had a little wine with dinner, was arrested in Washington with a BAC of .03 percent. And just a few months ago, a Florida man who admitted he drank a few beers hours before spent a night in jail even though his BAC was a flat .00 percent. These are more than just isolated incidents. They are harbingers of a growing trend. It gets even more ridiculous. Let’s say you didn’t finish your bottle of wine. In most states it is illegal to recork the bottle and take it home. In the states that do allow it, the unfinished bottle often has to be resealed in paraffin, placed in a stapled-shut doggie bag and locked in the trunk. Politicians looking to make names for themselves are advocating even tougher controls. Lawmakers in three states have gone so far as to call for the installation of breath-testing devices in every single car. If they have their way you won’t make it out of the parking lot until you test yourself; whether or not you drink is irrelevant! No reasonable person excuses drunken driving, but it is absurd to equate those who get behind the wheel after abusing alcohol with the 40 million Americans who drink responsibly before driving. Scientific evidence proves that this legal behavior is far safer than driving while talking on a cell phone, even with a hands-free device. Studies from the University of Utah, The New England Journal of Medicine and elsewhere show that drivers using a hands-free cell phone are more “impaired” than drivers at the legal limit of.08 percent BAC. Drunk drivers involved in fatal accidents have an average BAC of .19 percent, more than twice the legal threshold. To get that drunk, your steak dinner would have to include a whole bottle of wine for yourself, plus at least five cocktails. This kind of alcohol abuse — not a couple enjoying a bottle of wine over dinner — is the real source of today’s drunken-driving problem. Not surprisingly, our measures to crack down on those abusers are failing. In December, Congress ordered an audit of the nation’s drunken-driving programs after noting that we have seen “no discernible progress” over the last six years. That’s the same period during which the noose has tightened around responsible drinkers. In addition to multimillion-dollar “zero-tolerance” advertising campaigns, the legal limit for drinking and driving was lowered from 10 percent to.08 percent BAC. An honest look at the evidence will lead government auditors to conclude that this approach has failed, and that the real problem has been reduced to what Mothers Against Drunk Driving calls “a hard core of alcoholics.” These people will not be persuaded by PR campaigns, and according to government research they go out of their way to avoid highly publicized roadblocks. Time and again you hear about people arrested for their 10th, 15th or 20th driving while intoxicated. One man was recently arrested for his 34th. Common sense says that our scarce resources should be used to hunt down and arrest these habitual offenders, and that once caught they should be punished severely. MADD founder Candy Lightner put it best when she said, “if we really want to save lives, let’s go after the most dangerous drivers on the road.” Our collective failure to adequately deal with alcohol abusers who drive drunk should not be used as an excuse to punish moderate consumption of adult beverages. Responsible adults who share a bottle of wine with their dinner deserve privacy, not persecution. John Doyle is executive director of the American Beverage Institute, an association of restaurants.
Let's just cut to the chase here:
With very few exceptions, the only reason to arrest someone who blows less than a 0.12 is to allow the city to collect a whole bunch of money.
In other words, most "drunk" drivers are just a bunch of revenue sources. The fact that arresting these people winds up ruining their lives doesn't matter - it's the money that counts, and it keeps MADD off of their backs.
"liberals trying to control people"
Ah, yes. Do you mean Mike Bloomberg and the cigarette Nazis in New York? Now you can't even sit in a bar and smoke a cigarette with your evil drink.
I mean, isn't that why people go to bars, to drink and smoke? A far better solution would be a warning sign posted outside establishments that have smoking areas. And a waiver to be signed by people who choose to work in those establishments.
I happen to do neither, but I support the rights of others to smoke and drink (of course not be drunk and drive).
Not only has Bloomberg emasculated New York with his faggy anti-smoking laws but he has tried to force the bent pahllus design ("Freedom Tower") on the world since he took office.
A liberal always wants to create the world in his own image!
So Bloomberg is trying to make NYC resemble a large-headed dwarf?
Don't forget that socialist zoning laws make it all but impossible to open a bar in the 'burbs closer to where people live, so they don't have to "run the gauntlet" on the way home.
Are you saying that the police departments get the fines? Where is this the case? Can you direct me to some sources for this information?
Further, if the guy you are discussing is a habitual offender and the state has no habitual offender laws, if the guy is repeatedly arrested, convicted, and turned loose to drive drunk again, how is that the fault of the police? They don't write the laws, they don't pronounce the sentences.
"So Bloomberg is trying to make NYC resemble a large-headed dwarf?"
No, more like a bent, limp phallus...
"For better or worse, real jail time is a rarity but the plot is revealed quickly: a DUI cottage industry has grown. Locking offenders up costs money - fining them earns it."
You nailed it!
Exactly. If any here think cops will go out to "collect revenue" for their city, county, or state, you miss the mark by a mile. If the money was going in the officer's pocket, even indirectly, I could understand the argument. But governments at every level use money from fines for everything but law enforcement.
As far as the .08 laws are concerned, here in NC that is just the presumptive level. The law actually states you have committed the offense of driving while impaired if you drive a vehicle on a street, highway, or public vehicular area with your mental and/or physical faculties impaired by an impairing substance OR have an AC of .08 or more.
Many studies have shown that impairment begins in the .04 range. The point where most rational people wouldn't even think of driving is around .06, in my experience (I have access to a portable breath testing device). The reason so many cops are gung ho about removing impaired drivers from the roads is because they see the daily carnage they cause.
Spend a weekend in an emergency room sometime. You quickly tire of the smell of alcohol on drivers' breath...
Dude...you have no idea how often the theme song from the "Twilight Zone" has gone thru my head as I have done the exact same thing.
Look...I love Texas, but they also have that damn "Alcohol Board: crap, or whatever it is they exactly call those bunch of nepotistic ittle punks with their flashlights and BS who go around the bars.
You know th eroup I'm talking about. No arrest powers inside the bar, but they can detain and call the police if they get you outside the bar.
Those little inbred bast!ds alone are enough to make a good citizen go bad.
Not that I'd know about something like that...but I do have a story about 3 UC DEA agents in a bar in Corpus who took umbrage at 3 of the little punks...it had a sort of happy ending...
I used to ride a motorcycle. Some traffic lights are triggered by vehicle weight, and a motorcycle isn't heavy enough to trip the light (at least not the one I was riding at the time). You could sit there all night and the light would never change. So, I got in the habit of stopping at red lights, looking around to see if anybody was coming, and then running the light if all was clear. I don't ride a motorcycle anymore, but sometimes I will still do it out of habit. Never been caught.
"How about the cop on the motorcycle that killed himself and his wife in Austin Texas."
How about the one in NYC who drank beer ALL DAY and then ran down an entire family. He killed about 4 people. And he showed very little remorse, kept insisting that he wasn't THAT drunk and the sun was in his eyes and prevented him from seeing the two women, baby carriage and small boy, all of whom he ran right over.
Generally, I love cops, but this guy was a real pig.
I believe it is illegal, actually.
MADD is out of control.
Just like any other do-gooder, busy-body organization, they gained power with money and are now pushing for prohibition. They've realized that they stand to lose their clout if people are actually responsible drinkers.
There it is! Truer words were never spoken. When liberals squeeze the maximum tax dollar out of their constituency, they have to sink to new depths to find money. These depths include seatbelt & liability insurance "phishing" roadblock stops, radar speed traps, as well as the kind of cop abuse described in this post.
I play music on weekends, and will have a beer or two during the gig. But I drink nothing but water or 7-Up during the last couple of sets, and either go to an all-night cafe for some breakfast or grab some chicken strips to munch on while driving home.
A lawyer friend of mine says to be advised that these cops are trained to recognize scents on your breath like Altoids or other breath cover-up mints that can be used to disguise the fact that you've been drinking.
Bottom line is, DWI if you're over the BAC limit, or DUI if you're not.
If this ever happens to me, FReepers will find out who I am.
I would refuse on Constitutional grounds and make them arrest me. I'd take this all the way to the Supreme Court. I live a clean life, have a clean record, but the cops don't need to know that because it is none of their business.
Jay-zuz.
They sound like Hitler Youth. Ever watch "Swing Time" with the whistler blower?
Can they be killed for holding someone against their will? I would have thought so.....
I grew up in the South, and I can tell you this line really reminded me of home when I first heard it.
Totally off topic, but I note your tag line with some satisfaction. If you weren't making frequent, sarcastic posts, you wouldn't be earning your keep at FR, now would you? :-)
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