Posted on 11/09/2005 3:39:41 PM PST by elkfersupper
It is time to separate fact from fiction about our drunken driving laws. It is time to stop deluding ourselves into believing that stricter penalties are the solution. It is also time to start promulgating laws that attack the core problem, including creating a bright line that even an intoxicated person can walk.
Drunken driving is a problem in Massachusetts. It is also a problem in New York, Texas and every other state in the country. Statistically, Massachusetts’ roads are not the most dangerous in the country. There is also no proof that Massachusetts drivers are more likely to drive impaired.
-snip-
Perhaps it is time to make it illegal to drink any alcohol and drive a car.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bostonherald.com ...
There was no warning that I was aware of, or I surely would have avoided it. It was on a major highway where I live. I was never actually stopped. When the cops saw me in a mini-van with a wife and two kids sleeping in the back, they waved me on through. I waited for an hour to get to the checkpoint so I could be waved through.
"No. I asked you to no longer use it because it offends me."
Truth often offends. I am sorry basic truthful comparisons offend you, but indeed that is your issue to deal with. i will not set aside basic truth cuz it offends someone.
I am offended that you defend the combination of drinking and driving. Moreover that you do so without justifying that with examples of its merits.
You have the "it isn't gonna happen to me" attitude.
Well it DID happen to me. That matters.
in 2003 there was 42643 traffic fatalities.
AS your search engine I offer this:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSF2003/809762.pdf
" Isn't the driver responsible for the condition of the car? "
Am I responsible for you car? Nope.
"Isn't the choice to drive a car an irresponsible choice that has the potential to cause a fatality of an innocent party?"
The choice is an irresponsible one just as it is to drive when you have been drinking. Are you defending one and not the other? Sure seems so. It seems to me that you are saying that drinking and driving should NOT be persued criminally because others circumstances aren't Maybe you need a turnaround. Maybe you should be advocating both issues be punished, rather than neither.
"No one has advocated an advancement of drinking and driving."
Have you read this thread? Some are defending it as if it is their right to do so and how wrong it is to punish that behavior. You are arguing a position that it is wrong to punish it and saying that other things not being punished the same way is the reason why.
How about this. Do you agree that the combination of drinking and driving should be punished for the ill that it is shown over and over to create? If you do agree what is the punishment you find appropriate?
Maybe this will clear the air a bit.
I will offer the following: We could "save" 40,000 lives per year if we just outlaw motorized travel altogether (probably not, though, since horses and mules have a brain the size of a walnut and occasionally have to prove that they weigh 1,000 lbs. or more and we don't).
The law of diminishing returns comes into play here. It's just not worth it. Nor is it worth criminalizing 2 million people per year for "DWI". More kids drown in mop buckets every year than there are innocent people killed in traffic accidents (oops, "crashes") caused by "drunk" drivers, yet there is no such organization as "Mothers Against Mop Buckets".
It just isn't worth it.
You can oppose thru positive alternative. Are you saying that is not a conservative trait?
Rule of law is not something freepers respect?
Punishing those that break it is not either?
Ok then I will ask you this, should I go take care of the person that did this to me or should law enforcement and the judicial system do that?
Should our System set idle in wait unitl this happens or should actions be taken to stop it.
Keep in mind now your position must jive with the one you hold for this war on terrorism and here is why.
My family has been terrorized sir. I have been. The willful acts of another that cause death or harm to another is terrorism. Drinking and driving is a willful act know to cause injury and death, most time to innocent civilians.
Now rather than ignore that anaolgy cuz it offends you, how about you show me why it is not true. I pose that you cannot do so.
I am so glad you asked that. I volunteer sir. So do all the others that speak along with me. The answer to your question is nothing.
That being said your premise of :"Now I understand your vested interest in stricter DWI laws." is shown to be off base.
Sir, my vested interest in this is to see that noone else has to go thru what I go thru everyday due to the choice of a person to drink and drive. That no person has to lose their mother or father or son or daughter or best friend as a result of someones decision to drink and drive.
I understand the number can never be zero. Lack of perfection is not total failure and I will advocate far a change in action that suits the equal observance of all peoples rights. I would think you would want that also. But hey, maybe I am as wrong about that as you are about my interest in this subject.
This includes the anti-smoking kooks, the food police, the socialized-medicine advocates, and the "Smart Growth" afficionados that want us all living in beehives in CBD's, either walking, bicycling, or taking public transportation everywhere we go.
It's the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Check them out under the "Foundations" drop-down menu.
Add PETA, ALF, ELF.
"comfortably below the legal limit. "
In all Fifty states that is the case.
(no place besides the District that had such a low threshold for routine DUI arrests.)
"She had been pulled over in Georgetown about 12:30 a.m. for driving without headlights."
That is a valid reason to perform a traffic stop.
I do not agree with that but it is the law, I would suggest that the people of DC need to speak up about it. I sure would.
I'll amend my statement
"It is IMPOSSIBLE, in all fifty states, to blow above the legal limit if you ONLY HAD ONE.
Happy now?
She says this :"Whatever the rules are, I will abide by them. I just didn't know these were the rules."
That is honorable on her part. Here the law is clear about .08. You can see that on TV you can see it on billboards and it is also a part of gaining your driver license to begin with.
I applaud her fighting that and would have done the same.
Note. Being that you said nothing , just a copy and paste, i responded the best I could to what you posted.
Okay, then explain this:
You know my position about the nany statists and the RWJF.....I need not get into it.
However, MADD has gotten so out of control in their push for prohibition that even one of the founding memebers has washed her hands of it and went to work for the Distilled Spirits Council in order to work for effective campaigns and policies regarding the combination of alcohol and motor vehicles.
EXcessively bitter? You can value the things that have been taken from me? WOW.
I am angry at what was taken from me and how. Pretty bold of you to say you can judge that as excessive. Don't you think?
What I do with those feelings is tell people about what happened to me. I do so in attempt to share truthful knowlege so that others may think about it when they make the choice to drink and drive.
I turn something bad into something good, I am sorry that you call that excessive.
I would like to know what you would say and do if you had doctors tell you that everything you have ever done in your life ( as to me that is holding and using tools) is gone....done....over...ended. Lose your 50 thousand a year career. Tell your kids you cannot play soccer or football with them. Go thru endless nights with elusive sleep. See your wife sued while insurance companies and lawyers are playing their games for years (when she wasn't even there and it wasn't even our vehicle). When you drop things due to the fact your left/arm/fingers/hand doesn't do what you 'tell'it to, when you bust a bottle of gatoraide all over someone at the gas station.
When you go pour a glass of milk and forget you even did it...leaving it sit right where you poured it. When you take an FDA drug and it gives you parkinsons like shakes that remain several years later, When your kids come to wish you a happy 30th birthday as you lay in a hospitoal bed from spinal surgery, as you sit and watch planes fly into buildings so stoned on vicodin ( among other drugs) that you have zero way to protect your family, as you deal with pain on a daily basis that makes things as simple as shaving difficult (sometimes undoable), as you try to do a sinkful of dishes and have to stop several times along the way, as you type with two fingers on your left hand because the others 'don't listen', Sir this list goes on and on and on....
And is all due to a person that didn't learn from their FIRST DUI and went on and did it again and hurt three people.
Talk to me about excessive sir, and tell me why I should not be bitter and angry. I try to turn that energy into something positive and I am told I preach, that I support augmented government, even that I am excessivelty angry and bitter. PUUUULEASE.
The damage done as a result of drinking and driving is real.
Make yourself feel better by calling outspokenness about it ecsessive all you want to. That doesn't change the truth about the efffects of mixing drinking and driving.
Bit of a rant? Maybe. Is it all true? ABSOLUTELY!
"that any alcohol before getting behind the wheel is too much, is going too far. "
I agree with that statement.
I agree with you about .08 and personally I think that is the fairest point at which we can all be held to account under the law equally.
"You do not wish to be responsible for your own existence or your continued existence, you want "Nanny" to take care of you and the hell with everyone else, your security and peace of mind must trump any and all."
Not hardly.
I want all people to be responsible for their own existance. You seem to think that people that make the choice to drink and drive should not be held to account. When they refuse to do so then they should be compelled to do so . that in essence is what the rule of law is all about. I subscribe to that rule......do you?
"You have a bone to pick with ONE individual and your fervent desire is to punish everyone!"
Yes I have a bone to pick with that individual and that applies to all people that do the same thing he did. Equally. I see peers as peers, don't you?
GROWN ups that take personal responsibility do not drink and drive. They get a cab or a DD or they walk home or they call a friend with the truth that they have had to much to drink and should not drive. I offer that it is you that needs to grow up if you cannot yet see that very basic common sense.
"Proves that your minuscule world revolves around you and some unfortunate incident that "YOU" experienced,"
That would be my personal LIBERTY RIGHT? Sheesh!
"I oppose about 90% of the laws we now have on the books "
Ten percent more and you are a toal anarchist eh.
I guess you really ARE against the rule of law.....how do you consider yourself an american when you oppose the rule of law by 90%??????
" the remaining 10% would have to face intense scrutiny"
The law should face scrutiny but drinking and driving shouldn't? Unreal.
"Liberty Infringement studies"
Seems you miss the study i try to present to you about MY liberty infringment. Not surprising really.
As for chicken little......that works both ways sir.
Michael Moore says 'there is no terrorist threat" Facts show otherwise RIGHT?
While YOU say 'there is no threat from drinking and driving'..facts also show otherwise. I present some personal ones to you and you dismiss them as much as Moore dismisses the ones about militant islamic punks.
He doesn't see us comering in fear, he sees us tackling it head on. He doesn't see us standing down to him anymore than you see me standing down to you.
Tell that to the person that blew .123 and hurt me, the friend I was riding with and his girlfirend ( the passenger in his car. He was passed out....so much for your .15.
[later...]
He blew a .123 and that was almost three hours after the crash. He was caught with his beer and was two lanes away from his own. He admited to the cop on the scene that 'when he came to he turned the wheel left."
Are you trying to suggest that someone with a BAC of 0.123 three hours after a crash would not have had a BAC of over 0.15 before the crash? If not, it would seem that you are being disingenuous.
Can you show where eye color causes impairment in ability? Your analogy fails there.
Can you show where a BAC of 0.08 causes impairment beyond the statistical noise level? The argument that large amounts of alcohol are bad, ergo smaller amounts must still be bad is not sufficient, since many things that are harmful at certain concentrations are harmless or even beneficial in smaller concentrations (oxygen being a common example). While I won't claim that alcohol is chemically 'helpful' to driving even in low concentrations, I would suggest that someone with a 0.08BAC who is mindful of the need to drive carefully is apt to be a safer driver than someone with a 0.00BAC who is busy thinking about decorations for the upcoming company picnic (or whatever).
Should people drive with a 0.08BAC? Probably not. And if you wanted to pass a law that drivers caught with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.10 would be required to take a cab home and either have a tow or arrange for their vehicle to be moved within two hours, but would have no other punishment, I'd probably go along with that. But saying that someone who drives with a 0.08BAC deserves to have his life ruined is too much. Especially given that someone whose life has been ruined by such a conviction has little to lose for repeat offenses.
"How does harshly punishing those just barely over the limit, or as can happen, below it, stop these hard core drunk drivers?"
None under the limit should see punishment.
What this accomplishes is equality under the law.
Everyone over the limit should be punished for what they do.
Some say that DUI is harshly punished. I would beg to differ. Many walk away far to easy. Years ago there wasn't even an arrest. Here is my example.
The kid that ran into me was a 2nd time offender at age 17. The very first court date was delayed when I showed up, So were the next four. Upon the sixth the DA came to talk to me and made known to me what the punishment they were asking for this Kid. Fine and probation, that was it.
I posed my discontent. I had my say and they listened to an extent. He ended up with 3 months without his license, 100 hours of community service, 100 hours of drug and alcohol counsiling, fines and a suspended sentence ( I guess that is what its called) of 364 days in jail. He was put on probation till the day he turned 21 and if he violated that probation he would have to go to jail. When he turned 21 his record would be wiped clean...as if it never happened.
When that happened I said " john schmidt...tough on DUI MY A$$! I was escorted by a baliff right out there.
I offer that stopping hard core drunk drivers begins with punishing them early on. What this kid got was hardly punishment (imho).
Jail is the answer imho.
A friend once told me his angle about jail and I agree with him, it goes something like this....
1 Little hammer + 1 Big rock = Lots and Lots of Little Tiny pebbles. ;)
I take my brother to the bar and he gets smashed.
"there goes the bar business" is a cop out.
Nanny staters might cheer with glee over D.C. policy but I aint one of them. .08 is proper in my book.
"It was meant as the sorry state of affairs where a person can't have a beer without being a target of the confiscatin-incarceration state"
It isn't the beer that is targetted....its the Driving.
There is a class of people who often drive with a BAC of 0.15 or higher, and cause a lot of accidents. Some of these people have had their licenses revoked, been thrown in jail, and had their vehicles confiscated, and yet when they get out of jail they start driving again and get into even more accidents. This group of people rightfully deserves to be condemned.
There is another, much larger, class of people, which occasionally drive with a BAC that may occasionally reach 0.08-0.10; this group of people does not have nearly the passenger-mile accident rate of the former group. Indeed, this group's passenger-mile accident rate is not significantly worse than that of the population as a whole, and some members of this group are safer drivers than some other people who never drink.
Why do you wish to condemn every member of the second group, when it's the first group that's causing the disporportionate number of accidents, and when every year a prison cell is used to house a member of the second group is a year it isn't being used to house a member of the first?
Why don't you instead try to have resources focused where they will do some good, like going after the 0.15+BAC drivers?
If the guy's BAC was .123 when it was sampled three hours after the accident and he weight 150lbs, that would suggest his BAC was probably around 0.20 at the time of the accident. If you wish to suggest that someone driving around with a 0.20 should be punished more severely than this guy was, you wouldn't find much disagreement.
If your complaint is that this guy, because of the delay in testing, got off because his BAC was 0.123 rather than 0.20, then perhaps you should push for legislation allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence of imputed BAC (i.e. if a person's BAC at some time after an accident implies a higher BAC at the time of an accident, they should be punished for that; the defendants in such case should be allowed to have (and introduce into evidence) tests to determine their own alcohol metabolism rate if they disagree with the estimates used by the government.
What you perhaps fail to appreciate is that while the jerk who hit you got off easy, there are many people whose lives are destroyed for "DUI" convictions with much lower BACs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me like you're trying to impose on the non-dangerous people the punishment that you think the jerk who hit you should have received. There's a term for such behavior: "witchhunt".
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