If operating a motor vehicle with a BAC of .o8 were truly as dangerous as you make it out to be so that the act in and of itself is equivalent to rape, bodies would be stacked on the side of the road like cordwood every saturday morning. It is a very dumb, selfish and potentially dangerous thing to do, yes. That doesn't dispel the fact that millions of people do it and have done it over the years without killing anybody.
10,076 people will killed by drunk drivers in 2013. That number is less than half the totals of a generation ago. Who knows what the numbers were like pre-MADD when all the authorities were doing whatever they had to do to cover up the problem? The DUI laws have made a big impact so far in cutting the problem down. It's a big deal to lose your license for being caught DUI and to face an almost certain conviction and jail time if you hurt anybody in the process of doing it. The culture still has a ways to go though. People still get into their vehicles without knowing what their BAC is, which is why so many people get arrested for DUI. People still defend the right to drive while buzzed as long as you're not clearly drunk. We need to get those things cut down to size. Nobody should be able to start their car in an impaired state, whatever the definition of impairment is. Nobody should think it's ok to drive home after a few drinks that have left them somewhat impaired. Let's get serious here, most impaired driving occurs at night, when driving conditions are worse due to lack of light. When reaction times are slower naturally due to the circadian rhythm. When the ability to see and react to the hazards on the road is already diminished by both effects. When fatigue frequently is part of the equation also. Adding alcohol, or any drug that impairs judgement, reflexes or visual acuity, is irresponsible and by the law of the land also illegal.
This is all true. It's still not as grave a crime as rape. Unless you believe that alcohol per se is so dangerous that it really ought to be prohibited. Which is what MADD is ultimately after. I'm sure I've posted this before, but explain to me why any restaurant in America that has a parking lot is allowed to serve liquor?
come on now. seriously. you gotta be trolling or something. "whatever the definition of impairment?" besides 2 reasons why your bogus proposal would never, ever work/be seriously considered. 1.) People would just get someone else to blow the device. I imagine myself going to the olive garden and having 2 glasses of wine with dinner and then asking my wife to blow .......I mean blow into the device so I can drive us home. 2) DUI charges are a huge revenue generator for the state/county. They might actually have to do something about revenue generation (gasp! taxes) besides park the police cars directly outside of establishments and pull over anyone for anything they want and arrest them for like 1.5 drinks
I'm hoping we learned our lesson with the failure of prohibition and don't try to make alcohol illegal again. Tax the hell out of it, educate people on the dangers, make sure doctors list the consequences as they're noticing the symptoms in their patients, etc. but there's no point in driving the alcohol trade underground. It won't stop people from abusing alcohol and it will remove many useful ways of intervening before people go off the deep end. Your second point is really good but the answer is really good too. Restaurants have always served alcohol and had parking lots. A change like your question suggests just won't happen overnight and really it isn't ever going to happen. The only way to make it happen would be to track drunk driving incidents and trace them back to the originating establishment and make them pay a similar fine/price for the incident. While the technology is there to do that in many cases the actual liability of the establishment is very hard to prove in court. You have to have people willing to testify who saw the guy get in his car impaired at the establishment and you also have to be able to prove that the establishment knew (or should have known) this was happening. Funny little aside here, I took my nephew to a local sports bar to watch the Steelers play a few weeks ago. I never drink at this point because my metabolism doesn't react well to alcohol any more after frequent abuse in my 20's, and I really don't need the buzz anyway. However my sister dropped us off at the bar and was coming to pick us up afterwards so I figured what's the harm in a few beers? I was planning to eat twice during the game so I'd be fairly well grounded and my nephew was there so as soon as I started making him laugh I'd know I'd had too much to drink (definitely don't have a 13 year old sense of humor while sober at this point). So the waiter comes up to the table and I ask him what's on tap and he reels off a long list of beers including the house special pumpkin something (or other). I decide to try the pumpkin ale and I wind up drinking like 3 of them but no buzz at all. It was non-alchoholic and I'd just missed that part in the reel off. Thought I'd gotten my tolerance back, but noooooo, I just accidentally chose to drink near-beer in my first venture back into the pursuit in nearly 20 years. Took it as a sign and I'm back on the wagon for another 20 years is my guess.
You must be quite the barrel of laughs at a bachelor party. It actually serves you right for drinking pumpkin beer in the first place.
Luckily, at 54 my days of bachelor partying are over. I was legendary during my 20's, when I tended to be in the wedding party and got completely trashed on more than one occasion. I think the best one was the night I tried to take a stripper home from a local bar in Iowa, where the wedding was and nearly got in a fight with the entire bar including her bouncer boyfriend who had half his motorcycle gang backing him up. Apparently I was funny enough in doing all this that they let me live because I'm here to tell the tale 25 odd years later. I did manage a two point landing on my chin on a concrete stairs back at the hotel and somehow took almost no damage in the process. Just the luck of the staggeringly blind drunk is my guess. Thanks go to the brother of the groom who had been feeding me shots all night at the bar and pushed me in the general direction of the stripper with the suggestion that maybe we should take her home with us.
Nothing is scarier than someone DUI. I mean other than a lawful gun owner who believes they are justified using it in a public place. _
most pumpkin beer blows but you have to try southern tier warlock before you write it off all together. it's a stout.
You signed the driver's license. That means you agree to all that entails to it including to agree to breathalyzer tests.
The law has little tolerance for those who don't want to follow all their directions so they create more laws to punish you for it.
