In many states, like NY anything above 0 is illegal. Above 0.08 is criminal.
4 12oz beers is NOT small, be responsible.
The answer for why is MADD and the reason it’s illegal to drive above zero is MADD. They lobby hard for zero tolerance whatsoever. They want the criminal limit to be zero as well. Once they get that they’ll try to ban cars entirely.
BTW I don’t drink so I don’t necessarily care. My criticism is about the goalpost moving of a successful non profit after it gets what it wants. You change the goal to keep your org and funding. They’ll never ever go “mission accomplished, let’s wind this down”…
This is one of those “idk man I think it depends”. I think the average median person probably should not drive, let alone drink and operate 2 ton vehicles near where people walk. But the law is bs and clearly isn’t nearly effective enough for what the policy it sounds like they advertise for. But on the surface level I’m like 🤷♀️ maybe it should be lower, but everything related to the enforcement of the law is so fucked idek
My gripe is MADD’s original sole goal was getting a legal limit for drunk driving and an appropriate consequence for it. They succeeded, and each time they succeed they change what their mission is. Here in Canada they’re part of the reason liquor stores close so early or aren’t open on weekends in different provinces.
Again, I don’t drink so whatever, but my complaint is they just don’t stop and go “ok we won let’s shut it down” instead they change the goal and keep pushing harder. I think they might reach a crisis point if they manage to prohibit alcohol again, but I guess then they just start lobbying for harsher laws on other drugs.
Thanks for more of the background esp with Canada. Yeah fuck them
The mission was never close to accomplished, and more people are driving high on pot.
change the goal to keep your org and funding
This right here. The anti-smoking groups dried up as soon as they got everything they wanted and more, it’s a cautionary tale for other “public safety” activist groups. Dog catching the car and all that.
What’s the practical difference between illegal and criminal in the US? To me, a Brit, they are the same thing.
I think it’s misdemeanour and felony probably? Like the difference between petty theft and theft over $5000
All things criminal are illegal, but not all things illegal are criminal. Speeding and other traffic violations are illegal, but they’re not criminal. Overstaying your visa (most common form of illegal immigration) is, IIRC, a civil violation but it’s not a criminal one either.
That said, I don’t think what the initial post said is entirely true either and will make that a separate reply.
I think that being impaired with anything above 0 is illegal. You could be at .06 but have such a low tolerance that it affects you pretty badly and get cited for it. But 0.08+ is automatically considered impaired, no matter how good your tolerance may be, if you get tested at that level.
Why does even-ness matter? Just because our number system is decimal doesn’t mean nature fits into that pattern nicely.
at 0.08 you can be measurably tested to have worse reaction capability, so that’s where they set the limit.
4 beers at 12 oz isn’t exactly 0.08, that’s just approximately what it takes in the average person. Some people will be more, some less. Time and other factors affect it too.
Why does even-ness matter?
Because significant figures.
0.1 means you have a margin of error of ±0.05 (i.e. the true value is between 0.05 and 0.15).
0.08 means the margin of error is ±0.005 (i.e. the true value is between 0.075 and 0.085).
OP’s question can be rephrased as “how did we obtain a value to this level of precision?”
I mean, that’s just an issue of notation. OP could have just as easily meant 0.10 but chopped off the trailing zero out of habit.
OP actually did write 0.10, but I think it’s pretty clear from context that they meant it with one sigfig.
Mother Against Drunk Driving decided all of it.
Nobody can defend drunk driving, but the fact you give up your rights during a stop should make you angry.
If you get charged with any other crime you are allowed to talk to a lawyer except in drunk driving. You are tried and convicted on the side of the road and the evidence they use to convict you (your breath) isn’t preserved… it just blows away in the wind.
Nobody should be drunk driving but we still need to change the way we handle suspected drunk driver’s
I’m pretty sure that if they find a person drunk they have to take that person to a hospital to get a blood test and accurately gauge the alcohol percentage, the test also stands as proof.
If you were accused of murdering and taken to the hospital for a blood test with a lawyer present people would lose their minds
But suspected drunk drivers it happens all the time without a lawyer present
How many other crimes are directly defined with a time-sensitive impairment?
If they allowed you to both call a lawyer and wait for them to arrive you could arrange for your lawyer to be a) 2+hrs away, b)alseep or c)any other time delaying tactic.
I agree I don’t like the status quo, but if you have a reasonable alternative that still allows them to catch people who are drunk driving, I’m all ears.
Miranda Rights give you the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney
These rights go out the window because if you exercise them they simply charge you refusing to comply which carries the same penalty as a drunk driving conviction
I mean I’m not even American and I know Miranda rights only need to be read to apply to interrogation AFTER being arrested. Typically by that point theyve already determined you’re drunk driving based on questions during the detention period.
refusing to comply with breath tests during a vehicle stop is against the law - I’m not aware of it violating any US rights, though again I’m not american. That’d be like refusing to stop when they tell you to
In Canada you have the right to an attorney, without delay, simply being detained … except when you’re suspected of drunk driving
Section 10(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees every person the right to retain and instruct legal counsel without delay, and the right to be informed of that right upon arrest or detention.
It’s not so much a violation of your rights, but an elimination of that right during that specific situation
Chaterpedia is a great resource for us - the section 10 discussion explicitly discusses the legal situation of impaired driving.
https://justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art10b.html
However, such a limit is justified under section 1 because of the importance of reducing the harm caused by impaired driving
Because these are two different things, if you’re accused of murder they can use whatever you say against you, but in case of drunk driving it doesn’t matter what you say, what matter is the results of the test.
The courts have ruled we have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.
If you do that they then simply charge you with another crime.
I agree that traffic rules enforcement is not being done in the most fair way but it kinda works.
Let’s say they somehow manage to have lawyers present at the hospital in case of drunk drivers, how would a lawyer help suspected drunk drivers?
When I was a kid it was 0.10%. And I think it was pretty well attested by a lot of different studies that that was too high, so MADD succeeded in lobbying to get it dropped lower.
And you think 4 beers is “small” for the purposes of driving? I know some people have pretty strong tolerances, but there are definitely people I know who shouldn’t be driving after two. Maybe even one. Remember, you don’t have to be completely sloshed to be a danger to others. You just have to be a little bit slower, a little bit less observant, a little bit less in control of your muscles, a little bit more inclined to take unnecessary risks. Your body just has to respond a little bit differently than you’re used to. You just need to be a little bit more likely to nod off.
If 4 beers produces 0.08% (I have no idea if this is accurate), then it should probably be lowered by at least half as driving after 4 beers seems like a quite a bad idea.
I also have no idea if it’s accurate, I was just granting that premise. As the other person noted, with the definition of percentage being what it is, it necessarily has to be a different number of beers for people with different volumes of blood.
As a bigger guy with much higher volume of blood than most of you, no way would I drive after four beers, plus I think that’s wrong
While I agree with you, I feel like the more effective way to reduce risk on the road is to take the implications here all the way to their logical conclusions. Some people ARE a little slower, a little less reactive, more likely to take risks, or less capable behind the wheel.
It seems to me that the testing process to pilot a personal road missile ought to take a page from this and be more frequent and more strict.
I agree, but that doesn’t really work outside a city in the USA, given how little we invest in public transit. The entire economy in outlying areas would go to shit because everyone has to drive an hour to get to work.
Sort of, but I believe someone found that the actual risk isn’t so much in the low reaction time or impulse control, it’s in the change between the inebriated person’s usual faculties and what they’re experiencing under the influence of alcohol. Drivers who are used to having a 1-second reaction time are likely to continue driving as if they have a 1-second reaction time even if their actual speed is more like 1.75-second due to alcohol.
You’re not going to get any argument from me that it’s insane we allow anyone to pilot a four-thousand-pound vehicle after only a single one-hour test, and retain that permission indefinitely, though.
It was .10 pretty much everywhere when I was a kid, .08 became a thing little by little during the 90s, I think. MADD, mothers against drunk driving, is the reason behind this and many of the things surrounding drunk driving some find too restrictive or punitive. They were a very effective lobbying group.
Even though their founder is or was a drunk and caught dwi after dwi while heading MADD. Kind of seems the irony speaks for itself and that no one did their background check.
MADD had a fundraiser effort by offering breath mints for donations at bars and restaurants.
I sat on the Board of a disease charity for 15 years. A charity can start with the best of intentions and integrity, but a single CEO can just change that to a money machine. The mandate becomes just rasing money.
IIRC, it used to be 0.10, but was lowered to 0.08 because some studies (and maybe some advocacy groups) found out that there was significant impairment at 0.08 BAC.
The number really shouldn’t be round. It should be the number where 99.999% of people are not too impaired to drive a car.
Driving simulation studies show impairment far below 0.08.
0.08 is pretty fucking drunk.
TBF, I think most drivers are impaired at 0.00.
It’s been really bad on the roads lately.
Isn’t 0.08 around 3 beers for the average person?
While I wouldn’t drive at that level that is definitely not “pretty fucking drunk”
Is it really? People get popped for 0.00 and the cops just say they must be on drugs. After spending thousands in lawyer and court costs it gets dropped but you already went through the same (or worse) bullshit than if you were actually shitfaced.
Meanwhile cops drive drunk all the time.
Yep had uncle who was a cop. Rode with him once he bought pack of beer and pop one open on the way home. I asked what would happen if he got pulled over? He show his badge. Fucker wasn’t even in his justification. Guess being a cop gave him immunity. That was in the 90’s.
Now that could be a basis for a good lawsuit
The US also doesn’t label alcohol content effectively - % alone is not helpful.
In Australia for example, all booze containers tell you how many “standard drinks” they contain. 1 standard drink is the average amount of alcohol a body can process in an hour. If you have no more than 1-2 standard drinks in you, you should still pass a breathalyzer, depending on weight/gender.
A ~5% beer can is ~1.5 standard drinks. So if you drank 4x beers over the last 3 hours, best spend another hour drinking water before you drive:
4 beers x 1.5 = 6 standard drinks. - 3 hours = 3 standard drinks
Even what is called “1 standard drink” isn’t standardised across countries though.
For you, and also us in NZ it’s 10g of ethanol (approximately 12ml), in the UK it’s 8g. The US does in fact have a standard measure too, but 14g (and I don’t know enough to know how widely it’s actually used).
So as well as the standard drinks per bottle, the rule-of-thumb has to differ between countries too.
2 reasons, remembered from a lawyers lecture on the subject at uni, years ago, in the UK.
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Some people produce small amounts of alcohol in their gut. It’s generally not much (more becomes auto brewery syndrome) but not zero. This can blip the test up slightly, even when they haven’t drunk.
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The awkward fact that a small amount of alcohol actually improves driving. It’s somewhere between 1/4 and 3/4 pint of beer. It’s also the reason alcohol is considered a performance enhancing drug in some olympic sports.
The limit is set high enough that there is no arguing these points in a court. It also covers the residual alcohol in people’s systems the morning after. It’s well into the point where all but the heaviest alcoholic will definitely be impaired. That lets them use blood alcohol as a proxy for impaired driving due to alcohol.
On a side note. I know someone who blew red on the breathalyser. He knew something was wrong, since he has been teetotal for 20 years. He got arrested, only for the blood test to show 0.0. The police were quite confused, but let him go. It turned out, he had (unthinkingly) eaten a liqueur chocolate before being pulled over. It was enough to mess up the breathalyser.
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Some countries take it further and anything above a tiny amount (like 0.02) will get you a criminal record… although usually at such small amounts it’s just a fine and/or points on your licence, using bans and prison sentences for higher levels (like the US levels you describe).
This to me is the right approach - it’s long been proven that even regular drinkers suffer an impact on reaction times and anticipation with even a small amount of alcohol, so it really should be zero tolerance. I can’t think of any other situation where you’d be allowed to control a two ton piece of metal at 60+ mph around other people, houses, cars etc without having proper control.
In some cases insurance won’t pay for medical expenses or life insurance premiums if alcohol is involved.
It’s because of the children
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Legislators decide things like that…
The limit has to be somewhere. Most experienced drivers can still drive reasonably safely after drinking small amounts of alcohol, e.g. one glass of beer; they can’t after drinking ten glasses of beer. So a limit had to be drawn somewhere. It’s different in different jurisdictions, for example AFAIK there are some countries in Europe (Czechia?) where the limit really is 0.0 or very close to that.
It should be zero. No worries about the limit law if you don’t drink and drive. Drink as much as you want, just don’t drink and drive.
Understand now?
I get your intent, but it should definitely not be 0% as there are various reasons that it could be slightly more than 0 (some food recipes have tiny amount of alcohol, some medicines have small amount of alcohol, even natural digestive functions can produce small amounts). I’d be fine with it being lowered even more though.
