Another reason to not drink and drive....

Viable public transportation and mixed-use communities would do more to end drunk driving than any odious, heavy handed law enforcement strategy. Not that I'm saying that type of thing will happen overnight, but it's one of many good reasons to build our cities in different ways.
 
More likely, we get a complete suspension of rights coupled with an ever increasing totalitarianism doctrine "for the common good" in response to some sort of national crisis. And we are laying the ground work to pick up anyone within a matter of minutes who happens to step out of bounds. But hey, if you do nothing wrong, then you don't have anything to fear or hide, right?
 
Will have the citation later, but the Supreme Court approved forced blood samples at least 20 years ago. With the makeup of the court now, I doubt that would change.
 
So you are saying all those people talking on their cell phones or the people speeding who do not cause an accident are OK, but the people who drink two or three beers at happy hour and don't cause an accident have to go to jail and have blood forceably withdrawn?
How about doing these horribly invasive procedures only on those who cause accidents and harm people?
 
Here's the problem with this. 99.9 % of police officers are great people. But their is that.1% who are not. Now, when they pull you over for speeding, or running a stop sign, they give you a ticket which is easily contested or you can do prefered adjudication.

Now if that same cop does this to you, suddenly you are being taken into custody, presumably in a public place (it would really suck if this happpened in front of your work or home). Taken for who know how long (I'm guessing it would be well over an hour) have somebody you don't know & did not choose stick a needle in you. Not to mention, who knows what happens to your vehicle during this time.

Also, unlike a terrorist or a murderer, getting a warrant would be incredible since it would be based solely on the discretion of the officer and not on tangible evidence presented.

Above, someone asked for a case. I can't rememer the name, but it involved someone in an actual accident who was taken unconcious to the hospital where the Doctor took the blood. Police suspected Drunk driving was the cause. Two major differences between this and what the Austin police are doing is A) a warrant was issued after probably cause was presented & coroborated by the judge who was totally impartial (since he wasn't waiting around for a police officer to call him up). B) the blood was taken by someone not affiliated with police department.
 
Stat
And what about cell phone use. More dangerous than inebriation near .10?

Mandatory manslaughter? The facts are in, I believe.
 
i'm against having blood drawn. so many dwi's are handed to people who had some drinks and just rolled a stop sign without knowing a cop was there. two glasses of wine in an hour puts you over the limit.

go after reckless drivers, not folks who went 5-10mph over on a freeway, rolled a stop sign, didn't use their blinker, or anything else that is minor.

i do that sober. but i do not drive recklessly down a road swerving from lane to lane at a high rate of speed.
 
Good of you to say GOO. I realize you had a friend whose life was destroyed by a drunk driver. Not something to take likely, but let's thin kthings through.
 
Why arent there different levels of dwi?
If you get pulled over for some random reason and are given a dwi at .08 you are on the same railroad that if someone were to be reckless and blows a .18.
i believe one should be a citation/fine, the other is taken in and arrested.
MADD has made this thing out of control with skewed stats. I wonder how many .08 people have actually killed someone?

i do know that if you are driving along and someone runs a red light and kills you and the person killed has had a beer that goes down as an drunken death even though the killer was sober.
The Link
 
Yes, what about those cops who don't like your attitude, or want to teach you a lesson, or want to throw their weight around-they can have you taken to jail for a blood letting ceremony. When I was a teenager, cops really liked to be authoritarian to young males-I'm sure this still goes on.
 
how many drunk drivers pulled over are pulled over because they were behaving dangerously on the road?

i hear anecdotal stories all the time of people getting pulled over for rolling a right on red, or a tail light that is out, or not signaling a lane change, etc, and get sent to jail for dui/dwi. hell, if i was black, i would probably try my damndest not to drive ever after dark.
 
A DWI cop doesn't have to be a "bad" cop to take you to jail. All he has to be is greedy. APD - DWI cops get paid overtime to show up in court for all of the people they arrest.

This gives them a direct incentive to arrest as many people as possible, regardless of guilt or innocence, in order to make more money for themselves. If that doesn't strike any of you as completely ******* crazy, I'm not sure what will.
 
So what's the non-Big-Brother-long-night-of-fascism way of enforcing and getting drunk driving convictions short of waiting for the case where the EMTs are scraping the brains of the people in the other car off the inside of their windshield in order to go after the drunk driver? Or where the guy about to play DB for UT gets t-boned and paralyzed by someone too lazy or stupid to call a cab?

Or are DUI laws themselves nothing more than the hobnailed boot of the fascist state on the throat of the libertarian little guy?
 
Beer on breath is not probable cause for DWI. It is an ELEMENT of probable cause.

As far as why aren't cell drivers hauled in for blood, several reasons. 1) it is not illegal to drive talking on a cell. I am open to the discussion of making it so. I love personal liberty, but when other people's liberty interfere with my ability to live, then no. 2) it is not necessary to obtain evidence they were on the phone.

Also remember, you only get the blood draw if there is probable cause that you are DWI AND you refuse to voluntarily blow or give a sample. You don't have the right to refuse, under the Transportation Code you have given your consent to give a sample by driving on Texas roadways. Driving is a privilege not a right.

I personally would love to see it become MUCH harder to obtain a license, see more people lose their license because they are an awful driver, and much tougher penalties for driving without a license.
 
DWI laws, while well intentioned, have gotten completely out of control. The fact of the matter is that driving with a 0.10 BAC is the same as driving with a cell phone to your ear, clearly not ideal, but not all that dangerous either. The fact is that drivers aren't much of a danger to themselves or others until they are 0.15 or 0.20.

There needs to be more rhyme and reason to these laws. Driving at 0.20 is NOT the same as driving at 0.10, but they are treated exactly the same. Jail time. Many thousands of dollars in fines, court costs, surcharges, insurance premiums, and that's before you pay you lawyer.

If you drink and drive and cause and accident that injurs or kill someone, yes, you should be punished. The threshold is too low and the punishment is too high for those who barely cross the line.

I know single monther who is about to lose her dream job (seriously, the job of a lifetime in a very specialized industry) over a non-accident related DWI. There are WAY to many cases where the punishment does not fit the crime.

I don't trust cops to determine probable cause either. There was a big case here in Houston a few years ago. Young black male in a late model Benz, maybe even a Bentley. The cops said the justification for the stop was that the driver was "weaving". Later, when the video from his patrol car showed the car NEVER left it's lane. The cop said the guy was "weaving within the lane". Give me break. Just admit you pulled him over for Driving While Black. The charges were dropped due to the bogus stop.

Bernard
 
The inherent flaw appears to be the presumption that a .08 is "minor."

Yes, .45 is worse, but the police also devote some resources to assault rather than ignoring it in favor of pursuing only murder cases.

I understand opportunity costs. That's why I asked how many .08s slide to keep on the lookout for a .45. I get the impression that your answer is "all of them" because .08 is "minor."

I think studies show that .08 is substantial enough impairment as not to be minor.
 
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