Posted on 09/27/2016 12:26:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Court of Civil Appeals decision to reinstate a man’s driver’s license after a DUI arrest.
Eric Sample argued that the rules governing the Intoxilyzer 8000 were not valid.
The Intoxilyzer 8000 is the machine that drivers blow into after being arrested on suspicion of DUI.
Sample’s attorneys say DPS has had several years to fix the problem and get valid rules in place, but they haven’t.
Now, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, thousands of DUI offenders could get their licenses back.
I know a man (not in Oklahoma) who was hit head on by a drunken pregnant woman. He lost his leg because of that accident, he nearly died. His young boy was also in that car.
As a result of the physiology of his injuries, his blood alcohol rose over a span of several hours. Initially his blood alcohol level was zero. Over a year later, HE was charged with a DUI despite the fact that he hadn’t been drinking.
Therefore, my point is that even blood alcohol levels aren’t always accurate with regard to DUI.
Well, that was a breath of rancid air...
All kidding aside, the rules do need to be in place.
What I can’t understand is with all the ambulance chasers out there, how did the breathalyzer remain trusted there until now?
Something is way wrong with that story...............
While property rights are weakened, taxes are raised, people are prosecuted for not being politically correct and the Constitution is being shredded, this is how liberal judges imagine they are champions of freedom - freedom existing for only those who break the law. Try keeping what you earn, or exercising dominion over property or buying a gun, and you really begin to experience what oppression is. Honest people are the real criminals in a liberal courtroom.
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.
You could do a bit of research. False BAC readings can be caused by blood in the urine and kidney damage.
And, since it's a ratio, the ratio can be elevated by traumatic loss of fluids.
yet these very flawed, potentially buggy machines are treated as the Oracle Of Truth by far too many.
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The machines are 100% effective. At making lots of revenue, which is their only practical use.
You would have to have been ingesting alcohol...to get a reading high enough to be over the limit.
Something is wrong with the story.
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
No, there are conditions that would cause a false BAC reading.
Name these false BAC level conditions.......where ZERO alcohol was ingested.....
The issue is the testing: there are things that can cause a false positive:
This page cites medical articles, and also offers other possible causes, including diet. A person can have a false positive due to hypoglycemia, even if they don't have high blood pressure.
Add in a serious traumatic injury that leads to a loss of a leg, and loss of fluids would elevate it further, especially if there was liver or kidney damage.
You could have learned this with a Google or Bing search, rather than acting like an ass.
correlation is not causation. The reason deaths are lower are seatbelts, airbags, disc brakes, better tires, better headlights, taillights, brake lights and windshield wipers. In 1972 a very high number of cars had vacuum powered windshield wipers. You slowed down, the wipers nearly stopped. Bias ply tires that when cold got very stiff, when hot they blew out...and by blow out I mean BOOM and you lost control. The institution of breathalyzers has had a small effect on highway deaths, not enough to trade in our right to travel without fear.
I was stopped and detained roadside for an hour just 3 years ago for a DUI. The final result of being harassed, I was let go because I finally got the cop to give me a breathalyzer, and I blew a 000. He had me do the roadside test, the alphabet, everything he could think of. The reason, I left a casino a few minutes before, and he was hunting for some tax dollars. I didn’t swerve, speed, tailgate or go too slow. I was detained in pursuit of taxes. I would rather people die, than our ideal of Liberty, that is the plain truth.
Justlurking is right about this. There are many circumstances in which a defendant should not be convicted of DUI though showing a blood alcohol level ABOVE the legal limit. Blood alcohol tests, urine alcohol tests and breathalyzer tests all have their problems.
First, you must recognize that the defendant has NO burden of proof. The prosecution has the entire burden of proving each and every element of the alleged crime and every judge will so rule or so instruct the jury.
Scenario #1: A driver who weighs 150 pounds (driver's weight is relevant because the heavier the driver the more alcohol he can consume without violating DUI laws which are based upon a ratio of alcohol consumed to body weight) goes out with friends to eat, drink and be merry. He consumes a large meatball "submarine" sandwich. While driving around, he consumes five cans of beer AFTER the meal but before an accident. Each can of beer (for him) represents .02% for a total of .1%. If the arbitrary legal standard is set at .08%, he MAY be in violation BUT there are other factors which may prevent him from being proven guilty.
Scenario #1A: Same facts. Test is taken 2 1/2 hours after the last moment when defendant finished eating the sandwich. The meatball sandwich blocked the entry of any alcohol from the beer for at least 90 minutes but when the alcohol that has been blocked starts to enter the bloodstream, it all comes rushing in. This means that the defendant may have been stone cold sober when driving and .1% when tested minutes thereafter.
Scenario #1B: Same facts. Prosecutors will sometimes try to get around Scenario#1A by having an expert witness make a "seat of the pants" estimate of what the blood alcohol level might (not beyond a reasonable doubt) have been. Such evidence is utterly unscientific. To extrapolate from known blood alcohol levels, you need several tests over a period of time and to plot a graph and it is still not foolproof. This tactic of the prosecutors can be cured by timely objection or by withering cross-examination of the expert.
Scenario #2: The defendant is a diabetic as are a very large number of drivers. All diabetics have acetone in their bloodstreams. Acetone has NO EFFECT on a person's capacity to drive. Nonetheless, chemically (in blood, urine or breath tests) acetone is indistinguishable from alcohol and therefore no test of a diabetic should be admissible.
The problem with DUI prosecutions based on "scientific" tests is the same as with radar prosecutions. Each is the endless search of the prosecution for the magic "scientific" whizbang to convince gullible jurors that they have to convict because the "evidence" is "scientific." Breathalyzer machines come with manuals from the manufacturer requiring that they be used only under carefully controlled conditions. Machines have to be periodically calibrated. For breathalyzers, there is an ambient temperature range within which they may be accurate. If the heating system has failed and room temperature is 45 degrees, the results are inadmissible. If a radar unit has not been timely calibrated, its results are inadmissible.
Scenario #2 is the only direct answer to your question but the others consider problems which you must also be prepared to deal with. The foregoing is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many ways to legitimately beat DUI prosecutions. The magic whizbang is no answer.
An honest expert can be induced on cross-examinatio, to admit the truth that, under Scenario #1 above, the blood alcohol level when the defendant was driving COULD have been 0% to .1% or any point in between and that there is no one point that is any more or less likely along that spectrum and that he/she has therefore a "reasonable doubt" as to guilt.
Hey, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution's impressive expert witness knows a lot more about this stuff than I do or, with due respect, than you do in all likelihood. Who are we to disagree with his/her conclusion that there is "reasonable doubt" as to guilt? As the judge will instruct you, if there is "reasonable doubt," you MUST find the defendant NOT GUILTY.
While you raise a reasoned point, and I do agree those played an important role.
The fact still is that driving under the influence has dropped significantly. It has also been a very important factor in the reduction of saved lives.
No safety system in the world is going to save your ass in a T-Bone accident when some guy glides into you at 50mph.
Don’t forget the stats-skew. I don’t have data, but at one time (1990’s, and perhaps until today), if a sober driver got into a crash, and there was a drunk in the back seat, it was recorded as and alcohol-related crash. Similar with “alcohol-related” fatalities..
I’m sure there are variables.
At the end of the day, we had a pretty big problem of drinking and driving.
It was socially acceptable until about the mid to late 70s.
What I mean by that, was there there was no onus on folks not to. The laws weren’t that stiff. Then things got a lot tougher.
When they did, that too reduced the number of drinking and driving accidents, but isn’t statistically calculable.
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