The Glade 4.0

Waking up drunk can and does happen. I have seen it.... in my own family.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

While I generally sympathize with Jasmy's sentiment, and DEFINITELY sympathize with her loss, Xeq actually makes an excellent point here. It's very hard for a person to have an idea of their actual BAC. How many drinks, how large they were, how far apart, how fast each was drunk, body size, composition, stomach contents, etc all play into BAC. You might say "but you don't have to worry about that if you don't srive fter drinking anything" but that brings up the question how long after drinking is "after"? The answer is, it depends. A large guy who goes to a tailgate party before a football game, has 2 or 3 beers, and then watches the game without drinking anything for 3 or 4 hours, for example, probably won't have more than a miniscule BAC. Is he "driving after drinking"? PRobably not, but if he wrecks on the wy home and comes up with say, 0.008% BAC, 1/10th the legal limit, some people will still advocate hammering him, and some of them even if the accident wasn't actually his fault!

On the other hand a small, thin person (or actually even a big person, but it takes more booze) could be still drunk the next morning after a night's sleep. The human body, on average, processes alcohol out of the system at a rate of about 0.015% BAC per hour, so at the legal limit it will take a bit over 5 hours to be completely free. However, that also tells us that at 0.16% BAC the person will o
nly be free of lcohol after almost 10 hours. A person who parties late and gets up early for work might feel sober after, say, 5 hours sleep because they're a lot less drunk than they were before they slept but they aren't actually sober. Are they "driving after drinking"? Not exactly, and since most people aren't aware of either their BAC or the rate alcohol is processed out, its not exactly fair to say they "drove drunk" in the sense of doing it knowingly, although they still are responsible for what happens.

As for "one drink and don't get behind the wheel", one word: NO!

That's a fine personal rule, but as a matter of policy its a HORRIBLE idea. As it is, 0.08% is already TOO LOW. The lower you make it, the more you divert the attention of the police from the more seriously impaired ones. An experienced officer with a cooperative arrestee and no complicating circumstances can have the arrestee processed and out of the station about one hour after making the initial stop. That's 1/8th of a shift, typically (less for a 10 or 12 hour shift department but they have fewer shifts per person per week so it all works out the same in the end) and he's probably got some paperwork that still needs to be done. If there are other charges, multiple arrestees to be dealt with (the other arrestees obviously won't be for DUI if from the same vehicle), the person is uncooperative, or has to be transported to a jail (common for small departments that don't have their own) a single arest can easily stretch to 3 or 4 hours or more!

Spending all this time on reltively unimpaired drivers wastes time the police could be spending on the myriad of other things that could be done, not to mention drivers that are significantly more impaired.

Worse, the "drunk driving" problem and BAC reductions are self-perpetuating. Every time you lower the BAC you get a bunch of new "drunk drivers" who weren't drunk drivers before, in the statistics. This makes the problem appear to be an "epidemic". Worse, you won't find much in the way of statistics that differentiate drunk drivers by BAC although you'll find plenty of anecdotes leading you to think they're generally 2-3x the legal limit.

BAC effects charts also gloss over this by giving effects on the person for a wide BAC range; for example on the Wikipedia BAC page chart it lists the symptoms for a range from 0.03-0.059% and again for 0.06 to 0.10%. Note that the first range almost doubles and the second increases by 67%. I don't think I have to tell anyone here that a person at 0.06% is significantly less impaired than a person at 0.09%, or 50% higher BAC.

Again, Jasmy, you have my total sympathy. I have no sympathy whatsoever for drunk drivers. That said, I think the legal limit right now is too low and diverts attention and resources that could be better spent on worse offenders. That lawyer Xez cited earlier does have one good point: MADD is a nutcase extremist group in many regards.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE, two items.

I agree with everything you are saying about about the reasonability of being able to know where you are relative the the 0.08 threshold, but remember your original point about surrendering your 4th Amendment rights stemming from the fact that a license is granted as a priviledge, and not a right. Therefore, I think people are responsible (as you pointed out, they ultimately are) and that reasonability argument is weak in the context.

Secondly, I don't think a liscense is a priviledge. I agree that roads are tax funded so therefore, if you pay taxes and drive on roads, you are subject to laws. However, there is no way to opt out of using the roads and not paying taxes.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I have a beef with preemptive laws in general, and rules against drunk driving are included within that.

I've heard lots of stories about people lost due to drunk driving. IMO, you make that a trigger for a staggered and higher level of punishment. You don't make the act itself a crime or you start running into issues as discussed earlier in this thread.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

In most states, if you've had too much to drink in a strange place, you can't even dodge DUI by sleeping in your car instead of driving. Simply getting in the car already makes you guilty. I've read about how in places where the city has banned smoking in all public places including bars, in cold weather you have people going to their cars to smoke and the cops drive up and hand them all DUIs. It's retarded.

What reasonability argument?



There doesn't need to be.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The reasonability of being able to assert ones own sobriety within the quantitative context (0.08). I think if you we consider driving a priviledge, people should know for certain they aren't over the limit nor pursue any activity that is close. In essence, I'm saying if we consider driving priviledge, then the "I drank a long time ago, it's not reasonable for me to expect myself to still be over the 0.08 limit because of the length of time" doesn't cut it.

Should there be a license to use the Internet? It's publicly funded, and being on it creates a hazard to others. Maybe not proportional in terms of probability and consequence, but it is present.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I'm not getting this. Are you saying driving isn't a privilege, but a right? A driver's license is a privilege. Nothing in the US Constitution guarantees you a right to drive. Therefore, if it's a privilege, you need to abide by the explicit and implicit laws and regulations of driving on the roads.

As for the Internet, there's no right to the Internet either. You need to pay a private company money for the service. A license would be silly for the Internet. You don't need to proof to operate and abide by laws and regulations of the Internet, but it makes perfect sense for driving.

/\ This.

You're perfectly free to use the roads without driving. Biking, and walking, spring immediately to mind.

In fairness, you cannot use interstate highways unless you are driving a car.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

If you're going to nitpick, I should point out there's also riding in a car, which A) benefits the rider and B) is an unlicensed activity.

This is a flawed argument. The purpose of the United States Constitution is to establish what powers the government has. The fact that the U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee a particular right to the citizens does not mean that the citizens don't have that right.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

However, driving is a great vehicle (heh, see what I did there) to talk about the role of government in resonably regulating the rights we enjoy as citizens. Clearly, there is a need to regulate driving - speed limits, rules of the road, street lights and signs, etc. And the public has an interest in safer roads. Drunk drivers kill a lot of people every year, and it's not unreasonable for the law to evolve to see a need to regulate intoxicated driving.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Nothing in the Constitution garauntees a right to privacy yet it exists.

You're forgetting the 9th amendment I think.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It doesn't cut it as it is, because that's not a defense in court. I'm still not sure what you're trying to say here.



No, being on the internet does not create a hazared to others, and in any case, just because 2 things are publicly funded does not mean that they should follow the same rules. The rules should be defined by the nature of the activity. As for the public streets, you can use them just fine without a license. You can walk on the shoulder, ride a bike, or use public transportation or ride in another's vehicle. People without licenses do such things regularly. The need for a license is due to the hazard created by any easily-committed error while operating a vehicle. Simply being on the internet and making an error cannot harm anyone, barring some truely bizarre circumstances, nor would that harm be of a physical nature or life-threatening.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, he's not. The 9th ammendment only says that other rights do exist; it does not establish them. You need evidence beyond the 9th ammendment to establish any other right. I could easily say I ahve the right to kill you and take your stuff using just the 9th ammendment.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Just an observation, but it depends on what you mean by "being on the internet". For the majority of people, being on the internet means owning a computer which has some type of subscription to a carrier. For the (vast) majority of these people, those computers do create a hazard, in the form of being compromised and then being used by bad actors for different purposes. Making an error on the internet does not require anywhere near a bizarre set of circumstances to harm someone. And while physical harm or life-threatening conditions are rare, they are not impossible. Granted, however, most compromised systems are used only to harm on a financial level.

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It does not create a hazard to others. If you created a hazard only to yourself, licenses to drive wouldn't be as much of an issue either. Moreover, we're talking about safety hazards due to negligence and accident, not malfeasence.



Yes it does.



Neither example applies. Both relate to intentional wrongdoing by another. That's a hazard in the broad sense, but not a hazard in the sense of negligence and accident. We don't issue driver's licenses to prevent intentional wrongdoing on the road, which is a tiny portion of all harm that happens. We issue them to help reduce negligence.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Identity theft is harm, and is sufficiently common to not constitute a "bizarre set of circumstances."

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I am not sure where you are attempting to argue this. That the innocent computer user who just wanted to check his email isn't at fault when they click on a bad link and become compromised with one or more pieces of malware? And that they're only a hazard to others due to malfeasance on the part of someone else, and not at all negligence on their part?

Do you know what an iframe exploit is?

It wasn't negligent of the software vendor to release code that could be exploited in such fashion? It wasn't negligent of the network admins not to have better controls in place on their workstations?

As to harm, financial harm is not only extremely common on the Internet, it is in many cases simply chalked up as a cost of doing business. Do you know the percentage of spam to valid email? And how much of a cost savings would be seen if it all disappeared tomorrow? If everyone had to take a test comparable to a driver's test prior to being allowed on the Internet, how much of the population would still be here?

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I don't even want to talk about the Ninth Amendment, because it's just going to result in resound disagreement.

As for drivers licenses, I'd argue their effectiveness is near negligible, and motorcycle licensing is even worse. Speed limits follow a noble concept, but I would say I'd rather have an assertive guy who goes 10 over all the time than grandma on the road who causes hazards stopping suddenly and erratically but is following the letter of the law.

On the subject of speed limits, I think they should be strictly enforced and anyone speeding at all should be cited within the capacity of law enforcement until the general attitude toward speed limits is obeying them. This will result in a strict 3-5 mph band whereby you are allowed to be due to instrumentation inaccuracies, people not getting away with speeding and other not, and probably a general raising of speed limits.

As for this comment:



What I'm saying has nothing to do with whether or not it's defensible in court. I'm referring to your positing that DUI laws generally create an unreasonable standard by which drivers are held accountable to a 0.08 limit without the means to ascertain whether or not they are operating their vehicles lawfully. If we reconcile this with the belief that using public roadways is a privilege, I think it's certainly reasonable to say that it's not that extreme of an expectation. You should give yourself a great deal extra margin if you know you have been drinking. There are tons of literature and information about metabolizing alcohol and the way bodies react to it. If we say that operating your vehicle on public roads is a privilege then it makes sense to expect drivers to be extra precautionary and that they take whatever means they need to ensure they are driving lawfully (i.e. less than 0.08 and of course, all the other standard safety expectations).

Does this mean 0.08 is too law? I don't know that answer. But my point is immaterial to the actual number itself.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Just because judges establish a right through stare decisis doesn't mean I agree with the idea that rights can be established without an amendment. I don't believe there is a right to privacy personally. It isn't enumerated in the US Constitution. The 9th Amendment needs to be read in the strictest sense and limited, otherwise it can be taken to logical extremes. I also don't believe anything can be used to justify a right to drive when there are other modes of transportation and the government is not denying your the ability to move freely, just not necessarily in a car you drive.

I can see why. Rights suck pretty hardcore whenever you want to use government power to accomplish anything.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Nothing in the Constitution garauntees a right to privacy yet it exists.

You're forgetting the 9th amendment I think.[/quote]
Just because judges establish a right through stare decisis doesn't mean I agree with the idea that rights can be established without an amendment. I don't believe there is a right to privacy personally. It isn't enumerated in the US Constitution. The 9th Amendment needs to be read in the strictest sense and limited, otherwise it can be taken to logical extremes. I also don't believe anything can be used to justify a right to drive when there are other modes of transportation and the government is not denying your the ability to move freely, just not necessarily in a car you drive.[/quote]

Rights are not established by anyone. The can however be protected. There is already a logical format for deciding if a thing is a right or not. Privacy is.

I never argued that driving on roads was a right. Simply that the 9th amendment makes it clear that there exist rights that are not covered in the bill of rights.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Fix your broken quote tags.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.