The BAC is a scam meant to raise revenue for government. If a cop/court cannot prove impairment without it, they don’t deserve to get a conviction. The smell, the inability to speak, poor driving skills, all reasons to arrest someone. To just stop and test anyone they feel like, it an insult to our human dignity and our rights.
It’s a bit frustrating to me because it is a one size fits all solution.
I would like to see something like a reflex text. If you can pass it, your BAC is irrelevant.
Thing is, I KNOW I would be a better driver at .1 than a lot of the drivers out her in rural KY. I’ve seen the way they drive as well as the skills they display.
A nice reflex test would be good, because then it weeds out people that have no business driving even stone cold sober. And it lets the ones that can handle their alcohol and still drive as safely as the “average” drive legally.
The .08 thing is nothing but a money maker and life ruiner.
No, I’ve never had a dui and no, I don’t drive drunk. I rarely drink, and when I do it’s a single beer with a meal, etc...
I’ve learned a lot from listening to Stephen R. Adams, an attorney who specializes in DUI.
He has led a lonely fight against lazy, mendacious and greedy governments, police agencies and bureaucrats.
The errors, bugs, misuse, flaws, etc. involving these machines are legion. We have all seen systems that utilize hardware and software - ATMs, parking ticket machines, and computers themselves - have major problems and frequent crashes. The intoxilyzers are no different and often worse - the manufacturers themselves have been forced to admit their code was flawed! Agencies using the machines often do so incorrectly, do not calibrate them properly or in a timely fashion, etc. etc. yet these very flawed, potentially buggy machines are treated as the Oracle Of Truth by far too many.
As you say, the scam began long ago and continues to grow, with BAC levels untethered from science/medicine (as planned all along). MADD is now like Planned Parenthood - a back-scratching society with politicians with tax dollars flowing back and forth.
I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t see it that way. These devices have some merit or they wouldn’t have passed muster for decades.
In 1972 our highway death toll topped out at 54.5 thousand per year. In 2014 it was 32.7 thousand. In 1972 we had roughly 122 million (guesstimated based on data linked below) registered vehicles on our roadways. In 2014 that figure had grown to 260.3 million.
Considering that 54.5 thousand deaths could easily have more than doubled as the numbers of vehicles more than doubled, we could be experiencing close to 120 thousand deaths on our highways each year right now. Instead, as noted above we have reduced the deaths to 32.7 thousand (2014).
This means that there are perhaps 90 thousand fewer deaths each year due to the hard efforts of the public and law enforcement.
Drinking and driving is no longer a wink-wink offense. It is an exercise of playing Russian roulette with the gun to the head of the occupants of your own and other people’s vehicles.
I am not happy about roadside check-points. I don’t like the idea of it either. Still, all things considered, I do approve of them.
Your vehicle insurance alone is impacted incredibly by a $44 billion dollar (alcohol related) loss each year due to accidents and deaths.
Then you think about the impact on 90 thousand more families each year, the lost of a spouse, parent, child, and extended family members, and employees, or associates..., these deaths are a horrible cost to millions of us each year.
None of us knows if we are alive today or not, because some person driving under the influence was pulled over and taken into custody. 90 thousand of us are each year.
That outweighs any inconvenience to me. Pull me over.
death stats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
registered vehicles on our roads stats
alcohol (blood level of 0.08% or higher) involved in 31% of fatal vehicle accidents
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812231
The cost of alcohol related vehicle accidents is $44 billion anually
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html