This is mainly just an aside here, but I went to a surprise birthday party tonight for one of my friends. I bet most of the people who drove home from that party were at the legal limit or over it. There was even one narcotics officer among those who I’m sure were over the limit. I saw him pour himself several stiff rum and cokes. Think his buddies would have arrested him had he have gotten pulled over, even if he was .13%? I doubt it. I know of plenty of instances where cops, lawyers, and judges have avoided those charges when others probably would not have avoided them. I was talking with a deputy a couple of days ago who was telling me about a time he’d given one of our judges a ride home after he found him hammered trying to put gas in his car at a convenience store stumbling around with his fly undone and his sweater on backwards, unable to get the gas nozzle in the little hole where you put your gas. I’m a lawyer and I know I’ve been let go when I was probably way over the limit after the officer realized it was me he had pulled over. This is part of the reason why you’ll never see the laws get as harsh as you’d like to see them get. The people making these laws or enforcing them have all driven with too much alcohol in our systems or know others we care about who have done it or do it. The DWI laws are pretty darned harsh as it is in most states. They’ll probably get a little worse but try as they might these MADD wackos aren’t going to push the laws to the extremes they’d like to see.
I agree with you.
Had I stopped you or any other lawyer, and you were DUI, I would have arrested you.
You may have missed it, but.. I already said (in an earlier post) that I was not serious about 5 years for 1st offense and life for 2nd. I was being absurd to illustrate my point... that being: The best way to address this problem is... RAISE the legal limit, and increase the penalty.
I still do believe that. I see the same things you do around here. There are a LOT of people who like to drink socially... (surely to above 0.08% and often above 0.10%) and the drive home. MOST of them, are making a judgement call (even if they may not be consciously thinking about it at the time).. that the risk is low enough to accept. Maybe, they are not driving far, or they know the route well. And, they believe the chances of them making it home safely are low enough to risk it. For the vast majority of them, they are right.
What I want to do is... change that risk equation. I actually think, most of these social drinkers I know would SUPPORT tougher penalties for people who are REALLY drunk. What kills public support is the harsh penalties on people who are in the marginal range. That smacks of communties just trying to impose complete abstinence and/or generate revenue.
Personally.. I would favor dramatically increasing penalties for repeat offenders. If you’ve been caught at 0.12% or 0.13%? Your rights change. The risk, for that person, obviously needs to be increased. And, I’m sorry... I don’t have sympathy for a person convicted 3 times. They need to go TO JAIL, AND treatment... for a very long time.
Sadly... I see very little chance that our laws will change in this fashion. We’ll just keep muddling along with alarmist like 2nd throwing around bogus stats like “17,000+ killed”. I do see a building resistance to further reductions in BAC limits though... Enough voters are being affected now to stop this.
If this issue were left TO THE STATES... where it rightly belongs... I’d be 100% happier with the system.