I have very mixed feelings about DUI enforcement: I am totally against drunk driving and want all reasonable measures taken to discourage it - whoever came up with the "designated driver" is a genius. But I also know from first-freaking-hand knowledge that much of the enforcement is arbitrary, that .08% is just too low for the average driver to be considered legally impaired, that driving behavior is a much more important indicator of impairment than an across-the-board statistical figure, and that Diana Ross was one shitfaced diva when she was busted in Arizona:
- Ross was cited Dec. 30 and faces three DUI-related charges. She has pleaded innocent.
Police said she had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.20 percent. The legal limit in Arizona is 0.08 percent.
Ross, wearing a black pantsuit and silver bracelets, testified for about 10 minutes.
"I felt a threatening tone from him. You know, like a command, a demand," Ross said, referring to Tucson police Officer Scott Sullivan.
....According to the police report, officers at the scene wrote that the singer was unable to walk a straight line and fell while trying to stand on one leg and count to 10. [AP]
The system is set up where you are SUPPOSED to feel threatened into taking the test. If you don't you, lose your license automatically for a given period of time in most states. Heads you win, tails I lose. In this particular case, the woman was clearly blitzed, shouldn't have been anywhere near the wheel of a car, and is very lucky she didn't kill anyone.
She and her attorney are well aware of all this, though, and are just playing the game: if you have the money to pay for a good attorney and the patience to play out the string, you have a huge advantage. Your attorney contests everything in sight, the prosecution eventually wearies and reduces the charges, which can have an enormous bearing on your insurance rates. It happened to me twice in a 16-month period in SoCal in the late '80s. Then I quit drinking for ten years - so in the big picture I guess the system worked in my case.
I hope Diana has learned her lesson as well.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - James Russell
.08? Try .05. That's the limit here in Australia.
2 - Al Barger
If you and Diana had just been smoking the chronic instead, you wouldn't have been impaired or gotten DUIs.
3 - craig
i like any story that starts "back when i was in socal, in the late eighties..." and ends with "so i quit drinking for ten years..." i had a couple drinks last night before i went to see the hulk, just a nice french shiraz i was trying, and i could definitely tell that my judgement was slowed. i just drank some viognier and the rest of that shiraz, and it's time to go to Bible study. rats.
4 - Daniel Jaffe, DUI Defense Attorney
I agree that a good DUI defense lawyer in Arizona can make a huge difference as to the outcome of a DUI case. HOWEVER, and this is BIG, if the police did their job, and if the prosecutor does his/her job, the defendant who is guilty will be convicted. If the government doesn't do their job, they don't deserve a conviction. What kind of protection would we have from DUIs and virtually every other charge if the government was not required to prove its case while playing within the boundaries of the law. The police would essentiallly be able to convict anybody of anything anywhere and anytime, at least in Arizona.
Sincerely,
Daniel Jaffe
Arizona DUI Defense Lawyer
Studnicki, Jaffe & Woods, PLLC, Attorneys At Law
Scottsdale, Arizona
480-361-2444
http://www.duiarizona.com
http://www.azduiattorney.com
5 - Daniel Jaffe, DUI Defense Attorney
Furthermore, the only real way to make the law absolutely fair to everybody is to lower to legal limit to 0.000, that is no alcohol in the body whatsoever, and if you drive with anything above this limit you can be found guilty of drunk driving. This will put everybody on notice not to drink and drive. Anything else is just designed to feed the money making machinery of the DUI process (of which I am admittedly a part).
Judges and lawmakers would never agree to lower the legal limit to 0.000 because there is too much to lose for them. About 12,000 DUI cases go through Phoenix Arizona courts each year. Without those cases, many judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, paralegals and court personnell would be out of work. Legislatures would no longer have a carrot stick to offer an outraged public each year when they tighten the Arizona DUI laws (I assume it is the same elsewhere) a bit more.
That 0.080 works is a myth of tragic proportions. We need to fix the system. 0.000 would eliminate DUIs (and put me out of work).
Peace.
Sincerely,
Daniel Jaffe
Arizona DUI Defense Lawyer
Studnicki, Jaffe & Woods, PLLC, Attorneys At Law
Scottsdale, Arizona
480-361-2444
http://www.duiarizona.com
http://www.azduiattorney.com
6 - Eric Olsen
Interesting thoughts Daniel, thanks, so interesting I don't mind the ad - others should be so informative and thought-provoking with their ad/comments.
7 - jadester
it is a good point, i agree. One to think about. No doubt, at least here in good ol' blighty, with our tradition of getting rat-arsed on beer and/or cider on a very regular basis (down the pub, this is different to getting wasted on shots and/or cocktails at bars/clubs on a thursday/friday/saturday) there'd be too much outrage at such a suggestion. Whilst i enjoy the odd pissup
1)i don't have a car myself. I currently cannot afford so am in no danger of being DUI myself as none of my mates are stupid enough to e.g. let me drive their cars when i'm pissed
2)no matter how pissed i get the only bad driver i will get in a car with is a taxi driver. And then, i won't know they're a bad driver until they start driving (and plenty of taxi drivers are good, i don't mean offence here).
To be honest, almost all the people i know reasonably well (e.g. ex-schoolmates) are not stupid enough to drink-and-drive AT ALL. There's one or two, and i've been in one car with one doing so just once because otherwise i faced a several-hour-long walk home in a freezing night alone.
8 - Eric Olsen
J, I'm glad you are wise about drinking and driving. I think there would be quite an outcry here too if they tried to make the limit 0 - it sure wouldn't be very practical.
9 - Craig Lyndall
The real issue here is that nobody realizes just how low .08 is. I am talking about your average bar patron. Anyway, I try and be very careful, and usually spend the last 30-45 minutes of any night out, not drinking, but then again, I wonder if I have ever been really close or even just over the limit. I would never "party" and then drive, but then again I have gone out and had 3-5 beers in a given night. I don't know what the solution is, but if everyone was just a little bit smarter we wouldn't even need the added level of strictness.
10 - Eric Olsen
Another fairness issue is tha people are different: what is definitely impaired for one may be unnoticeable in someone else, and can vary just as much from time for a given individual. If I have one beer on a completely empty stomach I will feel it more than two on a full stomach, and on and on.
11 - Daniel Jaffe, Arizona DUI Lawyer
It is true that alcohol affects different individuals differently, and that there are many variables such as stomach content, time of drinking, etc that affect how it is absorbed into the blood and therefore how it gets to the brain. What many people don't know is that most alcohol is absorbed into the body in the intestines, not the stomach. That is why, on a full stomach, you don't feel the affects as quickly. The valve that releases food once mostly digested in the stomach into the intestines, remains shut. However, there is a danger of drinking excessively on a full stomach... that is, when the food is digested the stomach can dump a huge hit of alcohol into the intestines, and rapidly elevate your BAC.
Women and med absorb alcohol differently... women more rapidly because of their lower proportion of lean body mass. So a 100 lb woman is going to be higher (all other things being equal) than a 100 lb man when they both drink two beers at the same time.
Educating the public... really educating, not just the negative shock campaign of some of the large anti-DUI political groups... would have a huge economic impact on the nation. If we educate people to drink sensibly, we will make great progress towards making America's highways safer. If we continue to punish without education it is like rubbing a stupid puppy's nose in his crap on the rug... it just doesn't teach the intended lesson.
12 - Eric Olsen
Daniel, thanks, those are very sensible thoughts and important facts.
13 - phil
I'm surprised none of you have brought up the good ol "Dram Shop Law". Now Daniel probably knows alot more about this then me because he's a dui lawyer but I believe any bar can get sued for giving people enough alcohol to put them over the limit. Although I'm not too sure If i support this law or not but I think it's a good idea for bars and bartenders to start taking some responiblity for their patrons. Now these bars might offer a free breathalyzer machine for patrons before they leave, or maybe not give another one to the guy who can barley make it to the bar. Hey Danial what are your thoughts on this? Maybe you can explain this law a little better to us. Oh yea, by the way I started an anti drinking and driving called YAERD Young Adults Educating Responsible Drinking. Come check it out if you get a chance!
14 - TDavid
phil - I'd be surprised how enforceable that would be with any bar "putting its customers over the limit" because that could be simply serving a pitcher of beer to two smaller-sized adult patrons. If they slammed that pitcher, got up and left and were stopped right away then they might both blow .05 or .08.
A slippery slope.
15 - BB
Possibly a better solution would be an extension of Shakespeare's law - i.e. eliminate all the lawyers as well as the drunks. ;-)
..BB
Former litigator now turned Mediator
(sorry for the ad Eric)
16 - Tom Johnson
As a non-drinker, it doesn't affect me at all. But personally, I don't really care how inconvenienced DUI laws make people. I don't want anyone on the road that is impaired. These are people's lives we're talking about here. The law is set as low as it is because it has to cover, as some have pointed out, the fact that some people can handle less alcohol than others. They can't make an arbitrary law that goes based on relative size, now can they? Impaired is impaired - whether it be mildly or severely, if the end result is that an accident occured, it would not have done so without the presence of alcohol. In the end, if it gets some shithead off the road that might otherwise have plowed into my wife, parents, friends, I'm that much more glad because of it.
17 - degustibus
The idea that .00 would eliminate DUIIs and put lawyers out of business is laughable --even hysterical, coming from an attorney. (It's posed as a joke, right?) As long as it's possible to negotiate a plea or argue for sentencing conditions eg fines, jail time, etc., a lawyer will always have some business. Lawyers have also been known to be helpful when a person wants to plead "not guilty" --to challenge a police report or a breath test.
(In some states minors can be cited for DUII --Oregon, for example-- if they test positive for any amount of alcohol. It's called zero tolerance, and a minor is anyone under 21. Hasn't kept minors in Oregon from getting DUIIs.)
The legal limit for CDL is .04. Can't drive a commercial vehicle and drink. Period.
Breath test machines in bars have been tried -- turned out to have unanticipated consequences: patrons treated the machines as games and competed to see who could get the highest breath test. (You can buy portable breath testers -- Radio Shack used to market one, you can find them by googling..... although I've never known a drinker who used one. And they may not be calibrated as perfectly as the breathalysers used by law enforcement.)
Some facts to keep in mind about DUII: It is not drunk driving. One's subjective impression of being able to handle it has nothing to do with DUII -- which is a legal definition, usually depends on breath test, UAs, police reports, video tapes and other evidence. ("But I only had two beers"--yeah, right.)
DUII/DWI in most states also covers driving uder the influence of intoxicants other than alcohol, including prescription medication and marijuana -- yes, even medical marijuana. Many people who take prescription pain medication on a regular basis are always driving under the influence. (Russ Limbaugh take notice.) Same goes for medical MJ users.
Using designated drivers may be helpful, but you'd be suprised at how many designated drivers get arrested for DUII. They drink small amounts in comparison with their comrades, but they still get over the legal limit. (Unfortunately some belligerant drinkers take the keys away from the designated driver and insist on driving home.)
The designated driver rule: Do Not Drink Alcohol.
.08 works, but it ain't perfect. DUI Checkpoints work, but are not constitutional in some states. Laws are only as good as the enforcement. Cutbacks in funding state police for example may result in an increase in impaired drivers on the road.
Probably the most effective penalty for DUII is immediate suspension of drivers license. (But many people drive without a license -- the second most effective penalty is vehicle impoundment or seizure.) Some form of DUII education and treatment for DUII offenders are usually required in most states. No one knows how effective this is in preventing future incidents.
Dram shop legislation can be useful, but gets into problems in trying to prove that a person's last alcohol intake took place at a certain location. Much attorney business here. Bars are not in the business of providing safe drivers, they are in the business of selling as much alcohol as they can. Studies have shown that almost anyone coming from a bar will test over .10. They may feel fine but they're over the limit. Bartenders will cut drinkers off when they become outrageously intoxicated -- but never when they are legally under the influence for driving purposes.
Driving, of course, is only one area of impairment. Flying (a pilot suspected of intoxication recently taken off a plane), legislating (check out your legislators, your commissioners, your city council members), teaching (under the influence of God knows what medications and/or mindboggling herbs).
See Drug Test Us All
Have a safe and DUII-free holiday.
18 - phil
TDavid, It happens all the time. I was suggesting we should have a law like that, there already is a law like that. I live in Pittsburgh and right now we get about 10-20 cases a year and the farther you go out west the more you will see this happening. I guess they are the trend setters huh? Anywho, it happens all the time and Benigins or whatever that place is called (we have none up here) just got sued for 36 mil in Texas for serving two drinks to a lady 95 pounds who died in a car accident leaving the resturant.
19 - drunk driving law
Seattle DUI Attorney Peter Peaquin
is an excellent source of information on the topic. He recently informed me that the laws in Washington State are changing so that everybody, regardless of how they are suspended for a first time DUI, will be eligible for an occupational license to drive to and from work and on the job, so long as they equip their vehicle with a functinging ignition interlock device. Now that sounds like a pretty good idea... that way people convicted of DUI keep their jobs and can actually drive to and from alcohol classes and treatment. Amen.
20 - bruce alm
DWI, drunk driving, dui, and a license to drink.
Copyright: 1987-2005 © Bruce Alm.
The answer to the problem of drunk driving, etc. could be this; a permit for the purchase and consumption of alcohol beverages.
This would not only be a major assault on the problem of drunk driving, but would also have an effect on virtually all other crimes such as these;
murder, rape, assault, burglary, robbery, suicide, vandalism, wife beating, child beating, child molestation, the spread of aids, college binge drinking, animal cruelty, etc., the list is endless.
If this proposition was made law, there could be a major reduction in all these areas of concern, even though the emphasis concerning alcohol abuse seems to be drunk driving in particular.
There could also be many other positive results;
families healed, better work performance, booze money spent on products that would help the economy (we've all heard of the guy who spends half his check in the bar on payday,) would spare many health problems, etc.
This new law could go something like this:
Any person found guilty of any crime where drinking was a factor would lose the right to purchase and/or consume alcohol beverages.
For a first misdemeanor, a three year revocation. a second misdemeanor, a ten year revocation. a third misdemeanor, a lifetime revocation. Any felony crime, an automatic lifetime revocation.
Anyone caught drinking alcohol without a permit would receive a possible $1000 fine and/or jail sentence. those who would supply alcohol to people without a drinking permit (and possibly make money at it,) would also lose his/her right to purchase alcohol beverages.
What wife or husband would buy an alcoholic spouse a bottle?
What friend would give a problem drinker a drink at the possible cost of a thousand bucks and the loss of their own privilege? This could be a total discouragement to these would-be pushers.
This permit doesn't seem as though it would be a problem to put into effect. It could simply be a large X, or whatever, on the back of any drivers license in any state, to show who has been revoked, and cannot purchase alcohol.
Most people of drinking age have a driver's license, but one area that might be a problem could be New York City, where many people don't drive.
This problem could be resolved, however, by a license-type I.D. specifically for the purchase of alcohol beverages. Most, if not all states have these already for the purpose of identification.
This could be a small price to pay for the saved lives of thousands of Americans each and every year.
After this, it would simply be a matter of drinking establishments checking I.D.s at the time of purchase.
In the case of crowded bars, they could simply check I.D.s at the door, as they do now.
Would this be a violation of rights?
There can be no argument here since they already check I.D.s of people who look as though they may not be old enough to drink.
This could be a good saying, "If a person who doesn't know how to drive shouldn't have a license to drive, a person who doesn't know how to drink shouldn't have a license to drink."
Here are some other pluses to this idea:
A good percentage of people in correctional institutions are there because of alcohol related offences . Because of this, court, penal, and law enforcement costs could drop dramatically.
The need for A.A., ALANON, MADD, SADD, etc., could be greatly diminished as well.
What the alcoholic fears most, is the temptation to have that first drink, usually a spur of the moment type thing. Without the ability to do this, he/she is fairly safe. To start drinking again would almost have to be planned in advance. and to maintain steady drinking would be extremely difficult, in most cases.
Even though A.A. members as a group don't become involved in political movements, it seems as individuals, they would all be in favor of a situation like this. Any person who wants to quit drinking, even if never having been in trouble with the law, could simply turn in their license for the non-drinking type.
A woman from MAAD, on the NBC TODAY show, said "One out of every ten Americans has a drinking problem, and that 10% consumes 60% of all alcohol beverages sold in the U.S.."
If this is true, there could be financial problems for breweries, liquor stores, bars, rehab centers, etc., as well as lawyers, massive amounts of tax revenue 'down the drain,' and so on.
But it doesn't seem as though anyone would have a valid argument against a proposal such as this for financial reasons. To do so would be morally wrong, and could be likened to a drug-pusher attitude.
Even with the problems this new law could present, it still could, in one sense, be considered the simple solution to the number one drug problem in the U.S. and elsewhere. Alcoholism.
P.S.
What ever happened to the skid row drunk?
http://www.geocities.com/dwi_dui/index.html
21 - SFC SKI
"...that .08% is just too low for the average driver to be considered legally impaired..."
We are all better drivers, lovers, speakers, comedians, with a few under our belts, why can't the MAN see that?
When the law can define average driver and scale drunkenness accordingly, and transfer that ability to some cop in the bar zone or the highway at 2 AM, we can have a sliding scale, until then there is one standard, and it is not in favor of the 200 pound man having a beer with his meal, it has to take into account the 90 pound woman having a cocktail.
My only complaint is that too many places in the US require one to take an expnsive cab ride or make other arrangements if drinking, whereas in Europe I can make it home often by foot or bus. Is it an incinvenience to not be able to drink if driving, yes, it is definitely a big factor in planning a night on the town, or a drink with lunch, but if a percentage of people cannot police themselves responsibly, then the law will have to come up with ways to counteract that.
22 - Eric Olsen
license to drink, very interesting Bruce, thanks - that one will require much pondering. The hypocrisy of alcohol as the "okay drug" is still staggering, but the tough drunk driving laws now in place go a certain distance to addressing that. And I don't have much doubt that excessive drinking is much less "okay" than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I saw the changes in attitude coming first-hand in the '80s while DJing at clubs and especially at colleges, where I saw the hammer really come down about drinking.
23 - SFC SKI
Laws cannot impose morality or responsponsibility, all they can do is be forceful enough to hopefully make a person consider their course of action. Unfortunately, it does take stern law to make some people consider not driving if they drink, and there still people who don't care about the law and do it anyway. Equally unforunate is the fact that it might take something as horrible as killling someone in a drunken car crash to make a person change their ways. People are like that.
That being said, we should decriminalize marijuana and let people have as much as they like, as long as they don't drive, either.
24 - wesley
Boy that Dan is as sharp as a tack. I really beleive that the Intoxalizer is out dated and much in error. I can see this going on the way side and a pee test in it's place. Or perhaps a blood test. This is a safe no fail way. Or even with the more modern tect, a piece of hair. The 5000 is like fred and barneys era. However Dan, you and your bud's will never be out of bussiness, as the lawmakers tend to disregard to constitution of the US on a lot of issues. A good attorney is always in much demand, the poor ones are always found out.In conclusion the US Constitution must always be maintained as it is.
25 - wesley
Assuming that no one knows about the dui bussiness. The average ticket is split to 25% for MAAD. Nissan, GMC, McDonalds and many more contribute to MAAD. MAAD lobbys for tougher laws, more arrests. Most Officers of the MAAD are men. Should they be called FAAD, BAAD,SAAD or what they really are.Yes ask any lawyer about the DUI bussiness. Propose that all taverns, bars, lounges and so on are liscensed by the city,county,state and so on. If the state, in fact control these, why isn't the bartender in court with the defendent? Or the owner. The Three sided law, the lawyers dream ticket, MAAD and dui.