Posted on 08/12/2005 11:36:01 AM PDT by Rodney King
McLEAN -- A Fairfax County judge has ruled that key components of Virginia's drunken-driving laws are unconstitutional, citing an obscure, decades-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that could prompt similar challenges nationwide.
Virginia's law is unconstitutional because it presumes that an individual with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or higher is intoxicated, denying a defendant's right to a presumption of innocence, Judge Ian O'Flaherty ruled in dismissing charges against at least two alleged drunken drivers last month.
As a district judge, O'Flaherty's rulings do not establish any formal precedent, but word of the constitutional argument is spreading quickly among the defense bar. Every state has similar presumptions about intoxication at a 0.08 blood-alcohol level, so defense lawyers across the nation are likely to make similar arguments....
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
Rather than out getting the bad guys, they have decided to make criminals of us all by lowering the threshold of what constitutes criminal behavior.
Studies have shown that most of the carnage is caused by the very drunk, i.e. those in the .2 and above range of drunkenness.
Cops could arrest these guys left and right by waiting outside bars at midnight.
Do they do that? No. Instead they get the threshold of what constitutes DUI lowered to .08, and arrest regular guys who had a couple of beers after work that the cops stopped for speeding or something.
.10, which held in most states for a while, is a reasonable limit. We need to fight the MADD types who want to effectively outlaw drinking and the cops who want to claim success in the war on drunken driving without actually reducing the carnage.
bump
Ping for fighting off the nanny MADD morons.
This type of legislation happens when people cannot police themselves. It only takes a few drinks to impair one's driving ability yet too many people could care less in the pursuit of exercising their "rights". Maybe if folks would just wise up then we wouldn't need government to do it for us.
I speak as a recovering alcoholic (16 plus years sober) but also as a friend of someone murdered (and that's what it is when you have been warned not to drink and drive) by someone having some drinks after work.
"Studies have shown that most of the carnage is caused by the very drunk, i.e. those in the .2 and above range of drunkenness."
I'd like to see those studies. In my court, its the people who are not real drinkers who are often the worst offenders, ie., they can't handle alcohol and get really stupid on a little bit. Having said that, I would like to see the BAC raised back to at least .10 The real drunks are usually in front of me for spousal abuse and assault cases, not DUIs. Re: hanging around outside of bars waiting for closing time.... a lot of cops do this already, but beware of the dirty words: "profiling" "entrapment"
I'll try to find them. I remember seeing it a year or so ago and being "struck" by it.
"Cops could arrest these guys left and right by waiting outside bars at midnight."
Yes, but that would be profiling. </s
A half of glass of wine or less gets you blitzo?
You have to understand that the DUI laws and the .08 limit have oppened a major revenue stream for the legal system. It is a cash cow that nation-wide brings in billions.
Here's a fun site to play with.
http://www.intox.com/wheel/drinkwheel.asp
BAC Scratching
By Jacob Sullum
March 11, 1998
After I've had three pints of beer in an hour, I'm pretty tipsy. But the Drink Wheel, a computer program available at www.intox.com, says my blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is well below 0.08 percent.
That's the legal limit for driving in 15 states, the standard that a bill recently approved by the Senate aims to impose on the whole country. The American Beverage Institute (ABI), which represents restaurateurs and other opponents of the bill, has argued that a 0.08 limit would cover a lot of social drinkers who are basically OK to drive. My encounter with the Drink Wheel suggests otherwise.
Granted, tolerance for alcohol varies from person to person, and it's risky to extrapolate from a sample of one. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that attention, speed control, braking, steering, gear changing, lane tracking, and judgment are all measurably impaired at a BAC of 0.08.
It seems fair to say that a reasonably cautious person would not fully trust his driving ability at this level of intoxication. But that's not a sufficient basis for a federal law.
To begin with, the Constitution leaves such matters to the states. That's why the BAC bill's sponsors, instead of simply legislating a national limit, are threatening to withhold highway funds from states that do not adopt a 0.08 standard. This maneuver, which was also used to establish a de facto national drinking age of 21, is an end run around the 10th Amendment.
Constitutional concerns aside, a lower BAC limit would be a waste of law enforcement resources if it failed to reduce crashes. The ABI notes that a 0.10 standard, used by 33 states and D.C., applies in eight of the 10 states with the lowest rates of alcohol-related traffic fatalities, and those rates are no higher in the United States than in 16 industrialized countries with lower BAC limits.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the main group pushing a national standard, cites a 1996 American Journal of Public Health study that compared traffic deaths in five states that switched to the 0.08 limit with traffic deaths in five other states. Overall, the study found a 16 percent reduction in crashes that killed drivers with BACs of 0.08 or more.
In a before-and-after study like this one, it's impossible to separate the effect of the limit itself from the impact of factors such as publicity, new penalty procedures, and more-aggressive enforcement. Furthermore, the 16 percent figure was based on a pooling of data that made the results seem stronger than they really were.
Only two of the states (California and Oregon) saw statistically significant drops in fatalities, while a third (Utah) saw an increase significantly lower than the increase in a comparison state. An ABI-commissioned analysis by Data Nexus Inc. found that the advantages for California and Utah disappeared when different comparison states were used.
Another reason to be skeptical: Drivers with BACs between 0.08 and 0.10 are involved in just 6 percent of alcohol-related traffic fatalities, according to NHTSA data. And it's important to remember, especially when dealing with relatively low BACs, that crashes are considered "alcohol-related" if a driver has consumed a detectable amount, whether or not it contributed to the accident.
More than three-quarters of the drivers in such accidents have BACs of 0.10 or more, with 62 percent above 0.14. The average BAC for fatally injured drunk drivers is a whopping 0.18 percent.
This pattern raises issues of fairness as well as efficiency. The driver who's just had three pints of beer may be negligent, but he's not nearly as reckless as the one who drank half a bottle of whiskey. Should the law treat them the same?
Blurring such distinctions paves the way for a ban on driving after any amount of drinking. MADD says "nearly one quarter (3,732) of the 17,126 alcohol-related traffic deaths in 1996 involved drivers with BAC levels below .10," and "MADD thinks that's a problem worth solving." But three-quarters of those 3,732 fatalities involved drivers with BACs below 0.08. So why stop there?
Steve Simon, chairman of the Minnesota DWI Task Force, says "0.05 is better. That's where we're headed. It doesn't mean we should get there all at once. But ultimately it should be 0.02." Under that standard, it would be illegal to drive home after drinking a beer. MADD insists it won't go that far. But its logic does.
(c) Copyright 1998 by Creators Syndica
I saw the same articles. If I recall correctly, the point was that lowering the standard to .08 was not going to make much of a difference because almost no fatal accidents were caused by drivers in the .08 to .1 range, and in fact were mostly caused by the really, really bombed, i.e., way above .1
By the way, how does the impairment at .08 compare to that caused by cold medecines and other common prescription and non-prescription drugs, or for that matter, to the average effects of old age.
My primary concern with lowering the BAC so much is that it will reduce the social stigma that I believe has been a helpful factor in reducing DUI. I recall, growing up, that driving drunk was not a big deal, a "boys will be boys" type of thing to most people. Now it seems that most people are judgmental about it; I think it's good that social pressure also has been brought to bear to reduce the incidence of DUI. If, however, the BAC keeps getting lowered to the point where nearly everyone could be busted for DUI, where the crime becomes more common again, I think there's the risk of the "everyone does it" attitude returning.
The standard I set for myself is 2 beers in one hour, or 4 beers in 2 hours.
Ya, sad huh?
THere are so many things that impair driving and as a result kill people. I think the real damage comes when two or more of those factors team up. E.g., inexperience, night driving and alcoholo. Or cell-phone prescription medicines and lack of sleep. Or bad traffic patterns, rush hour and late for something.
The .08 thing on its own is really silly.
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