by minimus 66 Replies latest jw friends
Impounding the vehicle, storing it, towing fees, everyone is making big bucks. The state makes you pay for classes, fines, new licenses, etc. It's a huge buisness.,
Arresting for other crimes brings about much less revenue than does this crime.
I say get criminals off the streets too. Get rapists, burglars, and petty thieves off the street! Not just drivers. (If you're driving drunk, you should be made to pay but treat other serious crimes in the same way).
It will go national - that's the intent.
It will likely also become law in the near future, for people to submit to both blood and urine tests at the time of their license renewal, so that a drug test can be done, a DNA test and an HIV/AIDS test. Washington already had a $15.00 off your license renewal this year if you took an HIV blood test in their office. I expect this will start to find it's way across the country.
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The program is gathering pace and has already been instituted in other States. As we have previously highlighted, police in Texas and Idaho are already forcibly jabbing needles into people’s arms and taking their blood at DUI checkpoints, even if they are merely “suspected” of being drunk.
The Associated Press reported last year that officers in Texas and Idaho are training to withdraw blood from “suspects” as a replacement for the standard breathalyzer test, primarily because police can’t make anyone breathe into a tube but apparently, in the “land of the free,” they can forcibly hold someone down and jab a needle into their arm and take their blood, “a practice that’s been upheld by Idaho’s Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court,”.
Nicole Watson, the College of Western Idaho phlebotomy instructor teaching the Idaho officers, described how the process would unfold.
“Once they’re back on patrol, they will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They’ll use force if they need to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down, Watson said.”
The practice of cops drawing blood at the side of the road has been in place in some areas since 1995 but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has indicated that the program is ultimately intended to be introduced nationwide.
FYI here is the situation in the UK. Police can set up checkpoints and stop all cars they wish for routine checks. No escape route is allowed and usually there are motorbikes or pursuit cars in the vicinity for any cars that try to evade being stopped. More commonly cars are stopped by individual police patrols who find an excuse to make a stop.
They can require you to take a breathaliser test - blow into a straw connected to a meter. It has a simple traffic light system and if you are over the limit (red light) you will be arrested and taken to the police station for another difinitve test on a more accurate machine. The lower of two readings is the one they use. The permitted limit is 35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath; or 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. this is approx 3 units of alchohol which as roughly one and a half pints of normal beer or three small glasses of wine. If you refuse to give a sample of breath you will be charged, not with driving under the infuence but with failure to supply a sample of breath. Conviction of either offense carries a mandatory 1 year driving ban and a fine in the region of £200 for 1st offense if only slightly over the limit. Renewing your mandatory insurance after a ban is very expensive.
Nobody can demand a blood test and it is unthinkable in UK that any judge could order such an invasion of your person.
If your breath test shows a reading only just above the limit you can request a doctor attends the police station and takes a blood test. Often this will get the person off if it was marginal to begin with. By the time the doc gets himself there etc there is a good chance the driver's liver will have processed another unit or so.
Hi Cofty...interesting...what happens if a person is unable to supply a breath test due to a medical condition or extremely high level of intoxication (i've seen both scenarios)?
what happens if a person is unable to supply a breath test due to a medical condition or extremely high level of intoxication - tenyearsafter
The police will always ask if there is a medical reason why they can't use a breath test. In that case I think they are given the option of blood or urine testing. The limit is 107 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of urine.
If somebody is so badly drunk they can't do any of the above they will spend the night in the cells and be charged in the morning when they are sober enough to understand. I know the courts will accept calculations of blood levels based on a sample taken many hours later in cases like this.
Incidently they always breath test both drivers at every accident they attend.
Last year I was coming home very late one night approx 3 am on a rural road near my home there was a car in the ditch. I was fetching my son who had been partying in town. The young male driver was wandering around in the middle of the vey dark road on a bend. I offered to give him a lift home but he became abusive, so I called the police who picked him up a few minutes later. He wa so drunk he didn't get charged until the following morning. I have no sympathy for him, he could have killed somebody.
They might save a life or two getting a drunk driver off the road, that's good. But let's not be naive, this is a money maker for the government.
I agree that drunk driving is dangerous. However, what is worse, drinking with a .08 alcohol (the legal limit for "drunk driving", or the medical system? In this country alone, between 150,000 and 800,000 people die from properly administered prescription drugs (depending on how that number is calculated). Shall we abolish the medical system?
For what it is worth, I have simply quit driving later than early afternoon on New Years Eve, and also all of New Years Day.
For all their Carrie Nations-like bossy morality, the MADD people were on TV this morning saying that New Years has about 150% of the drunk driving fatalities of any other day of the year - including other holidays.
I think the checkpoints are legal and constitutional, but cannot agree at all with enforced blood extractions.
I also think that the notion of manditory HIV test to get a drivers license is very simply - INSANE.
I know more than a few people who take "prescription" drugs and drive. They are worse than drinking impaired drivers!
Or people sending TEXT MESSAGES while driving.
It may not be much of an issue in the real world, but I saw a MythBusters episode which showed that driving ability was more impaired by 30 hours without sleep than it was by being slightly over the legal .08 alcohol limit.
Having said that, I am a car enthusiast and am strongly against drunk driving - but forcing people into a blood extraction for this seems to be a violation of basic freedom.
