Secrets of the City

Cue Rick Moranis voice:
“I am the Intoxilyzer. Are you the Boozekeeper?”

can somebody show me the study they did to establish that .08 BAC is the point at which a person’s driving is impaired.

is it really .12?
or maybe .05?

i’m no drunk driving apologist, and i think setting a hard figure is necessary, but i’m just curious how this came to be the line. anybody know?

Easy answer: MADD.

Originally, we had an arbitrary selection of a BAC, one at which most people were well and truly unable to drive (or walk, or speak, or vomit in the correct direction, etc.)

Over the years, MADD has simply argued it down. And down. And down. They’ve now got the BAC cutoff so low, there’s nothing left for them to do, so lately they’ve been pushing stuff about passengers being drunk.

(They’ve been trying the source code motions here forever. The makers don’t hide the code because it’s flawed – they hide it from the competition. There used to be an engineer-type at the BCA, I think it was, whose main job was as an expert witness, testifying that there was plenty of foundation for the test results without the source code, and nobody used to win those motions. Looks like that’s changed – but, don’t get too excited, because now, I’m sure, CMI will simply disclose the code in response to every defense motion, and that’ll be that, because no one really wanted the code – they wanted to be able to say “they won’t give me the code” and get dismissed. The code won’t itself won’t get them anywhere.)

pretty much what i figured bobby…arbitrary on top of arbitrary.

interesting how varied the definition is around the globe though…it must just seem too taboo a topic for research funds.

maybe nobody wants to see a study that says “impairment above legal limit no more hazardous than excitedly singing along to REO Speedwagon at high speeds”

i guess it’s safer for everyone to just avoid both

Someone could do a study based on what BAC is reported when people are stopped for DUI, and then make some calculations as to the average BAC that makes you drive bad enough to get stopped.

The .08 threshhold is so low that has pushed the courts into overdrive with 1st time offenders. As a result, they seem to do a good job of fitting the punishment to the crime. I’ve had many friends arrested for DUI, and it seems to me, generally speaking, that if you’re a drunken criminal idiot, you’re going to be stripped of your dignity (Whiskey Plates, Telephone Breathalyzers) , property (car) & liberty (jail time). If you’re an otherwise responsible citizen who made an honest mistake after 2 drinks over 2 hours @ happy hour, they tend to go much easier on you.

If you don’t drink and then hop in your car to drive home or elsewhere you don’t need to worry about. A taxie fare even if its 50 or 100 dollars is a whole lot cheaper and easier to pay then what the consequensis of drinking too much and then trying to drive no matter what the leval is. Some folks one is to many, others can hold much more without problems. Don’t just think they are picking on you, use your head when you drink.
Many years ago a good friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver. He left a wife and two small children. The thing about this is I didn’t feel too sorry for him. Sure I missed him as a friend, and felt sorry for his family, but he also drank to much himself and then drove quite often. The night he was killed he was sober and on his way home from work about midnight from his job as an MTC bus driver when a drunk hit him and threw him out the door of his car. He died several days later. Several years before this he himself had been drinking very heavily and drove. He killed his girl friend who was riding with him when he drove off the road and hit a tree head on.
It just goes to show you that there is no real safe leval of booze when you mix it with driving.

JUST BE SAFE AND IF YOU HAVE BEEN DRINKING DON’T DRIVE

You’d just be aiming MADD at REO Speedwagon. Not a pretty picture.

In Minnesota, you can get a DUI when you’re under 0.08, if you are visibly intoxicated. It’s pretty rare, and generally involves old people mixing meds with their cocktails, or 16-year-old barfing after their first wine cooler. Stuff like that.

The people who astonish me are the ones getting busted at 10am, after “sleeping it off” with a .20 and pee in their pants. It’s amazing how many reports have the word urine, uh, splashed all over them. Pee-your-pants drunk is definitely, absolutely, too drunk to drive.

“If you’re an otherwise responsible citizen who made an honest mistake after 2 drinks over 2 hours @ happy hour, they tend to go much easier on you.“

And then your new insurance policy bill comes.

I took part in some demonstration thing in college where they had us drink, blow a breathalyzer, and do an obstacle course. I was really shocked by how completely annihilated I felt before I was anywhere near .08…

besides that sounding pretty fun pilleka, i think that’s more of what i’m looking for…a distinction of how much of an otherwise legal substance you can have before you can’t do an obstacle course in a car or with your own two feet.

clearly the easy answer is “none”…but if that’s the case, why is the legal limit .08?

i think fuzzy area gets people (non pants-pissers) into trouble.

-spokesperson from ‘people against driving under the influence of contagious hot lixxx in 80s rock’

We did that too, long ago in college, but we all took about five hits of speed first, and it went really, really well. Surprisingly well.

(If the cop testifies that you were driving erratically, had slurred speech or poor balance or couldn’t do the nystagmus test (”follow the tip of this .38 Special bullet with your eyes, please”), smelled like booze, or some combination thereof, you’re nailed. The dashboard camera is turning as useful as the breathalyzer. If the cop pulls you out of the car and takes you to the space behind your car, just remember that the resultant movie may someday make it to U-tube.)

“ i think that’s more of what i’m looking for…a distinction of how much of an otherwise legal substance you can have before you can’t do an obstacle course in a car or with your own two feet.“

If you’re wondering just where the line is between “look at how politely that young man drives that nice car!” and “damn, sarge, we’re pulling this joker over right NOW!”, and trying to quantify it either by [ounces of booze per pound of body] or [BAC], it won’t work. Besides all of the questions about the relative rate of alcohol breakdown due to metabolic differences, some people simply have more practice acting sober when bombed. That you would be criminally prosecuted based on an arbitrary number reflects all of this – there’s no “better” alternative.

I wonder why people don’t go after the training and calibration of the officer with the machine. Also I used to work for a company that did work with the BCA. In thier lab they were using lab standards that had expired 10 years before. Does anyone ever go after this sort of information in criminal cases?

Huge fan of bobby_b right now. Are you a disgraced lobbyist on the lam or something? Greatness. Anyway, before MADD became another NGO self-justifying their funding, they did do some necessary work, right? So now that we’ve all gone too far and nobody can even have good clean fun anymore, maybe you can indulge a utopic question. If we lived in a reasonable democracy, rather than the sensationalistic, morally-hypocritical (”do I smell CIGARETTE SMOKE?!?”) Special Interest of the Month Club that is modern society, what would be some rational legal limits to partying?

I was pulled over recently after a weekday BBQ at a co-workers house in Edina. I arrived at about 7:30 and left at about 11:30. I had anywhere between 5 and 7 Coronas, and ate BBQ. I was not intoxicated at any point of the evening and was enjoying a nice time with co-workers. I pulled onto 100 and was pulled over immediately. The officer said I was speeding (I was going two miles over the speed limit) and that my car weaved slightly when I hit highway 100 (i was adjusting a CD). I had to do every field sobriety test I’ve ever heard of, and despite wearing flip-flops I thought I did pretty well. I messed up slightly on the heel turn of the 10 paces test. I was articulate and polite with the officer. He took me to the back of his car and asked me to blow in a breathalyzer. I blew a .048. I asked him if I was free to go and he said he yes. He then followed me for 3-4 miles to my exit. I was white knuckling it the whole way despite being fine to drive.

I’m 31 years old and klnow when I’ve had too much to drink. This was not the case that night, and if anything I could have failed the field sobriety on sure nervousness (it was pretty nerve racking with a flashlight shining in your eyeballs while being ordered to do things so quickly). It was incredibly scary experience and I couldn’t sleep that night at all.

The officer was just doing his job, and he was polite ( I thanked him for that). But round after round of the field sobriety test seems a bit ridiculous to me, some of those things are hard to do if you’re stone sober. I’ve never had a DUI in my life BTW.

“I’m 31 years old and klnow when I’ve had too much to drink. This was not the case that night, and if anything I could have failed the field sobriety on sure nervousness (it was pretty nerve racking with a flashlight shining in your eyeballs while being ordered to do things so quickly). It was incredibly scary experience and I couldn’t sleep that night at all.”

Now imagine trying to do that test when you can’t hear what the officer is saying because 1. the traffic noise, and 2. the flashlight shining in your eyes prevents you from seeing the officer’s face, so you can’t read his lips.

I’m guessing I would have been beaten to a bloody pulp the second time I said “what?”

“What did you say, pig?”

“What did you say, pig?”

Hee,

and after I picked my self up off the road, I’d get ticketed for poluting our evar soooo clean air with my cig as well as being hauled in for the DUI.

C’mon, bobby_b, I’m serious. What would a sane DWI law look like?

“Anyway, before MADD became another NGO self-justifying their funding, they did do some necessary work, right?“

Back at the beginning, the cops who pulled you over would scrape the pedestrians off of your grill for you and then drive you home. Yeah, MADD did some great, necessary work.

“If we lived in a reasonable democracy, rather than the sensationalistic, morally-hypocritical (”do I smell CIGARETTE SMOKE?!?”) Special Interest of the Month Club that is modern society, what would be some rational legal limits to partying?“

There’s two ways to get nailed: one, BAC measurement, and, two, cop says “I watched him drive. I have watched many, many people drive, and I have caught many of them driving drunk”, (which gives you foundation – meaning, he knows what he’s talking about), “and his driving conduct was poor and erratic and made me believe he was too drunk to safely drive, and the balance, speech, and eye tests I gave him confirmed my belief, and here’s the videotape from my dash showing him trying to call his attorney with his wife’s Taser that he thought was a cell phone. This next part is interesting.”

So, there’s a level of drunkenness at which a cop, who sees oodles of drivers, drunk and sober, and really does know one from the other from 1/4 mile, recognizes your driving to be impaired. For most drivers, that used to be darn close to the old BAC limit. So, if you got stopped, you had an equal chance of getting hit with the “he was driving drunkenly” testimony, or the BAC charge. In other words, there was a rational convergence of the two – assuming you’re not in the zero tolerance group, and accept SOME level of impairment as being tolerable, the BAC limit was a good, objective, non-opinion measurement of how drunk you really were.

The new lower limits are a mixed bag. The older limits allowed you to reasonably party, but they also, in effect, reflected a societal decision that “X” number of drunk-driving-caused deaths per year were acceptable. It was a balancing of interests – people want to party and then go home, v. nobody wants to die screaming under a Yugo. So, they busted some, and some died.

New morality says, every chile is special, so no more smoking near humans or cute animals, no drinking and driving at all ever nohow noway, we shoulda paid gazillions more so the bridge would outlast the earth, and be pretty, and if he died the doc must have screwed up even though he was 104. Everybody now wants to live forever, and it’s too expensive to build titanium bridges, so we get 0.08% BAC as a sop.

Shoulda added:

But, frankly, beyond quibbling with the exact limit, the whole system is pretty close to appropriate and right and correct, if you ask me.

BEEP BEEP BEEP…. I AM THE INTOXILYZER 5000EN… ALL SIGNS POINT TO “LUSH”

I am a Member of DAMM, and I am getting a kick out of these comments.