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.
"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."
Total MADD BS Propaganda!!!
I have a cousin that is 6'4" and weighs 250 and I would feel very safe with him driving me home after drinking a case of beer.
Some people just metabolize alcohol better than others.
Some may be impaired at .06 while others are not impaired at .10 !
Face it it's just a revenue generator in cases where drivers are arrested with BAC less than .08.
All American Boozin' Ping.
MADD is out of control.
Amen!
This is the case in most small towns in Delaware. One town was so notorious for their speedtraps and roadblocks on the highway that Legislation was passed to limit their revenue raising ability by forbidding them to do traffic enforcement on the highway. The Police Force in that town was cut in half because without the traffic enforcement revenue there wasn't enough money to pay for the cops.
As the mother and grandmother of 3 that were all killed by a drunk driver---there is no sympathy from this end for a guy that goes out and has a drink and drives. No one is sure how alcohol will affect them as so much has to do with the weight---the amount of food----and your blood sugar level---so better stay home if you need a drink. How very simple it is to have a designated driver-----I have been one all my life.
BUMP
I believe that the original founder of MADD said the exact same thing.
Mark
You have my sympathy.Did that drunk driver have A drink?What did that driver actually test at?
While this has nothing to do with this thread, you might find it interesting...
The State of Missouri sued the Kansas City, MO Police Department... Over funds and property confiscated from drug busts.
The State of Missouri has a law that any property confiscated by state or local law enforcement during a drug bust goes into a state fund. However, the federal government has a program that if they do the bust, assisted by local law enforcement, then the feds and the local LE share "the booty." Well, when the KCPD realized just how much they were missing out on, they would do all the investigations, but at the last minute, they'd call in the feds for the actual bust. That way they got to keep 1/2 of the property siezed. When the state realized what they were doing, they sued the KCPD in state court. I believe that the KCPD had to give what they had "earned" with the feds to the state, because they were in violation of the law!
Mark
Thats the truth - my wife drives better in traffic or bad weather after 2 or 3 drinks.
No matter what -never ever never admit to a cop you have had drink. Once you do the doors open to this kind of abuse!
Roger that.
It IS an outrage when police are rewarded on a case by case basis rather than salaried. Such a system pays for abuse and gets what it pays for.
Around here, DUIs are busted with no income to law enforcement.
Ever been to a cop bar and see them all get in their cars and drive home?
Check this one out:
http://www.mississippidui.com/attorney/mcrae.html
July 7, 1998
"Impact of McRae DUI Case Debated"
By Pamela Berry
Attorneys say Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Chuck McRae's successful defense of a second drunken driving charge won't cause an increase in breath test refusals.
But others, including lawmen, predict people's perception of McRae's July 7 acquittal will mean more will try to get around the state's drunken-driving laws by refusing to take the DUI test.
I assume that income ws mostly for speeding. The argument being made in this thread was that higher (and apparently stupider) standards for DUI were somehow to be laoid at the feet of law enforcement because they would make money from the enforcement of those standards. The "fines" to which I referred, therefore, were fines levied for drunk driving offenses, not for traffic offenses generally.
And as I said above, around here traffic and drunk driving laws are enforced without any increase in compensation for the officer or his department. Tickets, however DO sometimes encourage the financial parts of local government to be aware that their cops are doing SOMETHING other than eat doughnuts.
As a general observation, I've noted that people complain about Law Enforcement right up to the point where THEIR ox is gored. THEN if they complain is because LEOs don't do their job as efficiently as it's done on CSI or Law and Order.
Maybe I misunderstood your comment - but I took it that you did not realize that some police forces are funded by their enforcement practices. I was just letting you know there are a bunch of them in Delaware.
And this is all traffic enforcement, including drunk driving offenses. Some of these departments are funded solely on the basis of how much they "collect."
I have no dog in this fight because I have never gotten a DUI or even a speeding ticket, but with that said I do happen to believe there is some very arbitrary enforcement of traffic laws, particularly DUI, and much of it is revenue based. But that's just one person's opinion.
So, where's the follow-up story about those w 0.02 and 0.03 BACs suing for false arrest?
My bet is that they got lippy w the LEOs.
I've been through these check points after drinking and have never been asked to get out of the car, or hassled in the least.
Gotta be polite, even when PO'd.
I am sorry at your loss.
This guy, John Doyle who wrote this article, writes pro-drinking and driving articles for a living.
Im my San Antonio Express-News, 03/19/05 he wrote the following letter to the editor:
Re: "Sobriety checkpoints are brewing again" (March 9):
It's troubling that state Sen. Judith Zaffirini is leading efforts to authorize roadblocks in spite of recognizing that their intended purpose is "not really to catch drunk drivers."
According to Jeffrey Runge, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, today's drunken driving problem is "by far and away" made up of "those who have alcohol use disorders."
These chronic alcohol abusers know when and where police will be stopping drivers because roadblocks are, by design, highly publicized.
NHTSA found roving patrols are the best way to catch habitual drunken drivers. These patrols net nearly three times the arrests as roadblocks. Texas led the nation in reducing alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 2003 thanks to aggressive roving patrols.
Roadblocks are a costly detour from effective law enforcement.
John Doyle, executive director, American Beverage Institute, Washington, D.C.
Funny how he doesn't mention - and neither have any of the previous posters - how DWI costs our country over 114 BILLION DOLLARS annually and the death toll is over 17,000 Americans each year.
Let me apologize in advance if I hurt someones feelings: But a big SHUT UP goes out to anyone offering lame excuses for drinking and driving. Same SHUT UP goes to critics of MADD, also.
Want more facts? Well I'm gonna give them to you: Texas, sad to say, is one of 11 US states that don't have DWI check-points. The "Bubba" industry has seen to that. Studies of proven that these check-points save 20% of DWI fatalities each year. In the last 20 years, this could have resulted in more than 6800 Texans alone still being alive.
OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. (And put on my flame retardant suit?)
I agree that it is not a good idea to get "lippy" with the cops, but it is not an arrestable offense either.
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