Girl drink drunk
Posted on 03/17/2008 2:34:15 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Bill on tap to dry up ALL drinking, driving By Laurel J. Sweet and Mike Underwood Monday, March 17, 2008 - Updated 10m ago
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A Taunton state representative wants to make Massachusetts the first state to declare driving under the influence of alcohol - even one green beer - flat out illegal.
Rep. James Fagan’s legislation would slash the current .08 blood-alcohol limit recognized nationwide as the standard for being legally drunk to .02. Federal government research indicates a 160- to 240-pound man would register .02 sipping one glass of wine over the course of an hour.
“I think my friends in the Legislature are going to say, ‘Fagan, have you lost your mind?’ ” the Democrat and criminal defense attorney said yesterday. “You can drink all you want, but you can’t drive. Plain and simple.”
Other countries have set a .02 blood-alcohol limit for driving, including Sweden, Poland, Russia and Norway.
Though his cocktail of choice is a chocolate frappe with a strawberry ice cream chaser, Fagan, 60, who said he has represented “thousands” of accused drunken drivers at trial, is no teetotaller.
He simply believes that allowing people to imbibe and drive up to a point encourages “legalized alcohol gambling” by those raising a bottle to their lips and guessing when enough is enough - if at all.
By eliminating shades of drunkenness, Fagan suggests the responsible social drinker would be protected from arrest if caught with boozy breath because another driver hit them or they were stopped for a broken headlight.
“There’s absolutely no denying the amount of personal tragedy and social harm that results from people who drive impaired,” Fagan said, “but should we publicly Taser them? Cauterize their tonsils so they can’t drink? We’re running out of punitive measures.”
Ron Bersani, 61, of Marshfield, whose 13-year-old granddaughter Melanie Powell’s death by a drunken driver in 2003 inspired Melanie’s Law, is one of the state’s best-known proponents of cracking down on lushes at the wheel. But even he thinks lowering the blood-alcohol limit to .02 is “foolish.”
“You couldn’t even go to a wedding and have a toast,” he said.
Revelers at yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in South Boston were also finding Fagan’s bill hard to swallow.
“If this becomes law, then they’d better improve public transportation,” said Mike Hickey of Southie.
Margo Downey of Brighton said the proposal, to be heard tomorrow at the State House, borders on zero tolerance.
“This is just a huge sledgehammer to everyone,” Downey said. “If the buses or trains ran all night then it might be acceptable, but at the moment this is just unfair.”
Fagan realizes his bill isn’t a fool-proof deterrent any more than any punitive law.
“Society in general needs to recognize that no amount of laws will ultimately do away with everyone who intends to abuse the situation,” Fagan said. “But right now, we’re all in jeopardy. It’s just a matter of accident, fate or the whim of a police officer on any given night.” lsweet@bostonherald.com
Why stop at .02? If you’re going to go all the way, then just make it .00, so people can get arrested when they have a teaspoon of NyQuil. Sheesh
The responsible social drinkers will OBEY this law and the drunks will ignore it and drive anyway.
No they won't. The trial lawyers like Fagan would go bankrupt.
F-in’ retards. The cops will be so overwhelmed busting people who’ve driven after one drink that they won’t catch the guy who’s at .25%.
I’ll bet this doesn’t apply to the Kennedy’s.
Just outlaw booze.
Oh yeah, we tried that once.
Getting close to the limit of accuracy of the devices.
This is dumb. But what do you expect from that communist paradise?
So to have a glass of wine with dinner one now has to hire a cab? Why can’t we just outlaw lawmakers??
If you cannot stop the drunk drivers at .08%, how the heck are you gonna stop the not quit drunk at .02%?
. . .
Fagan, 60, who said he has represented “thousands” of accused drunken drivers at trial, is no teetotaller.
No conflict of interest here...
Make no mistake. Given some time, what Rep. Fagan is proposing will eventually be the Law of the Land everywhere. The Nanny State knows no bounds.
Enforcement by BAC is like enforcement by radar gun - it puts cops on the side of the road reading arbitrary numbers off gadgets they don’t understand.
Like running out of your lane or blowing a stop sign is any less dangerous when you’re sober!
Always refuse to blow for the BAC. Those things were rigged for years in Mass. when I was growing up there. A retired judge admitted as much years ago.
That guy is going to drive regardless of the laws.
I've seen this coming and as such I won't drive after consuming any alcohol. Even one beer. For me, a DUI would end my career. It is just too risky. If I go out and drink I will either walk or take a cab to my destination. This way I am forced to find a way home that doesn't preclude me driving.
The way I see it, if I get into an accident, I'd rather argue to the cop that I have had nothing to drink and not smell like alcohol than argue I've only had one or two beers with alcohol on my breath.
Just idiocy. The vast majority of drivers that cause accidents due to alcohol are way past the now current legal limits. They’ve been caught and arrested many times, and then they kill someone.
Most are driving without a license by this time, but we are supposed to think that lowering the limit to .02 will help.
The folks we’re talking about never make it down to .02. They wake up above that.
The Kennedys could replenish the family fortune.
I always found it interesting that Boston shuts down their busses and trains before last call at 2am.
I wonder why. /s
Drunk driving has confused me for some time.
Since the police decided to ticket you for driving too fast the automibile manufacturers installed speedometers so their customers have an idea of how fast they were going so they could avoid tickets.
Why arent all bars required do the same, have a breathalizer at the door so you can check yourself on the way out?
How does the drinker know if he is at 0.7 , or 0.9 without having a cop tell them as they click the handcuffs shut?
This is the reality in many places now, including where I live. Police look for any excuse to get people on the hook. If you blow any significant amount even though you are below the legal level they will try to find a way to get you.
Bloody fascist.
I wonder what kind of contributions he’s gotten from the auto insurance industry?
And then the bars would be liable for maintaining and calibrating the machine. And keeping a record of every patron going out the door to protect the business from lawsuits. Yeah, that'll fly.
I am thinking if Fagan goes home at night to his significant other, it might not be a Mrs. Fagan.
That's giving fascists a bad name. This guy's worse; a 'Rat attorney/legislator from Massachusetts.
It's because a breathalyzer cannot measure below .02. Below that is indistiguishable from zero. BTW, breathalyzers don't actually detect or measure *alcohol* on your breath. They measure the % of CO2 and use that to estimate the blood alcohol.
What were they thinking?
Which begs the question, how many taxi companies does Fagan own an interest in?
Which begs the question, how many taxi companies does Fagan own an interest in?
OOPS!
Note to Ted Kennedy: Hire a driver. Or check out the price on a lifetime MetroPass.
He's a defense attorney. He gets more clients. He'll get the guy for whom a DUI conviction is a career-ender and will pay any amount of money to keep this from happening.
Business will be good for Rep. Fagan if Rep. Fagan's law passes.
Quite. You have to wonder if they'll outlaw parking lots at bars, then? Might as well.
I'd like to see any data that shows that people with a very small blood alcohol level are really any more dangerous than anybody else out on the road. I've got no problem with aggressively going after the serious drunk that's driving senselessly, but this is nonsense.
Most people in the studies I've seen don't even start weaving within a lane until they're at about .12 or more. Let's get those people off the road first. But we're not even very good at that.
The guy that's just had a glass of wine with dinner is no more dangerous, I would submit, than a driver that's got a baby in the back seat, or just gotten off a 14 hour shift at the hospital, or is fighting cold symptoms. In otherwords, no more or less attentive or reactive than anybody else on the road.
They love to spoil a good time and get maximum media coverage.
BTW, how would this idea fly in PCB? Especially this month ;-)
I wish restaurants had separate sections
for alcohol and non-alcohol.
You hit it on the head. I see the police reports. Almost all the drunk drivers are above .15. Many are multiple, repeat offenders with no license.
And we all know that nobody ever drives drunk in Sweden, Poland, Russia or Norway...
If drinking and driving is banned in Sweden, they will have to do away with cars altogether between November and April. Ditto for Russia, year 'round...
OOPS!
One too many, JimRed? ;-)
The whole point is to turn law abiding citizens into criminals.
Nanny State Ping
I do not endorse drunk driving, however there comes a time when enough is enough.
One can register .02 just from gargling.
And for that reason alone he should have never introduced it, as it is an obvious conflict of interest......
Of course that means nothing to Democrat lawyers from Mass.......
We have 40-some thousand of those lovable spring breaker who dropped in this week. Traffic moves about 2.5 mph (which actually may be a good thing for the drunk drivers). They come here with a wad of money and/or the old man's credit card (huge mistake) and they leave broke, so they're good for business....I guess.
If you are familiar with Panama City, the separate town of Panama City Beach lies across the Hathaway Bridge from us and most of the spring break craziness stays on the west side of the bridge. I can only imagine the volume of beer (they seem to prefer the cheap stuff) they go through in just one day.
Girl drink drunk
And those are the ones driving comatose and nailing some family coming home from church... It is not the social drinker who had 3 glasses of wine with dinner.
Agreed
I go out of my way to never drink and drive. But this is like the endless drumbeat to drive pollution levels to ridiculously low levels at the cost of jobs.
Has common sense left the scene?
So is it more or less CO2 that means you have been drinking?
My understanding is that (at least in most states) police are required to take two readings, with a few minutes between them; if the numbers are widely divergent, take readings until they settle down. Something like mouthwash may cause wonky readings for awhile, but alcohol in the mouth has a short enough half-life that if there's enough present to seriously distort a reading, enough would decay over the course of a few minutes to make the distortion obvious. If someone blows a 0.45 followed five-minutes later by a 0.10, the person's real BAC was clearly not really 0.45 on the first blow, and probably not 0.10 on the second. A third, and possibly fourth, blow would be required for a real measurement (if a third-blow five minutes later yields 0.07 or below, the driver should be in the clear; if 0.9 or over, the driver's likely busted. If 0.08, a fourth should probably be given.
Pushing the threshold down to 0.02 makes things like mouthwash a much bigger problem. First because a person is going to blow 0.02 from mouthwash for longer than they'll blow 0.08, and secondly because cops may be less willing to offer repeated blows (since a person could go from 0.02 to 0.00 in well under an hour).
Of course, as has been noted, the real purposes of the law are to (1) turn everyone into criminals, and (2) help obscure the dangerous criminals.
LOL! Oh, yes. We spend two 10 day vacations on Front Beach Rd. every year. Usually May and October. But I was a spring breaker there from '82-'85. Still remember waking up in the middle of the parking lot at Club La Vela one early morning and staggering to a 7-11 on Thomas Dr. for "breakfast." Good times!
Well... I’m not sure. After a little googling I may have to retract that statement entirely. It may be wrong.
I should know better than to just spout stuff off without checking my facts.
But I don’t.
In a word, YES.
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