Frankly the legal side that important to me here, since it's easily proven that you were within the legal limit and that's it, but the moral side of it. The fact is that your blood alcohol level was at 0.06, and legal or not another fact is that that kind of level does have an effect on the average Joe's driving abilities.

"Driving irractically" isn't an effect alcohol has one one's driving abilities, it's only a result of the effects. Especially with little traffic your(as in any driver's, not necessarily Aramike's) driving can look perfectly fine outside, driving a car isn't very difficult after all, until you miss that one pedestrian or run a red light and have a collision thanks to a slower reaction time and misjudging the distance. Yes it affects your brain even at 0.06, and slowing down your reaction time is only one of the effects. Here the we have several cases of the police stopping people, who were driving perfectly well until that, because of a broken headlight or slight speeding, only to find that their blood alchol level is around 0.3 - 0.5. Personally I'd probably be passed out at those levels, so apparently training helps here too...

edit: You posted the last one while I was typing. No time to answer that one now, maybe later.

I think we have beaten this horse to death.

Aramike clearly has his viewpoint. I don't think he will change, nor will he change anyone else's opinion. That's ok, everyone is entitled to their viewpoint on this issue.

It is really not worth getting personal. :nope:

You're right: it's not worth getting personal. Also, I won't change. I will continue to follow the law. If they were to make the legal limit 0, I'd follow that as well (even though I'd disagree).

Passed out? Dude, you'd be dead.

Perhaps its because no one has written that they were pulled for being tired but were not really tired , so there is nothing to be outraged about on the tired front is there .

I have written it in a theoretical sense.

Besides, you want to guess the percentage of drivers on this board that regularly drive moderately fatigued? I'd bet 80%.

As such, where's the outrage?

While a bit off the subject - driving fatigued occurs constantly. However, there is no way a cop can prove that someone is simply to "tired" to be driving. No easy test for that one.

Plus, often being pulled results in a shot of adreniline for the subject, so they are now alert - until they resume their drive that is.

The only facet where fatigue driving is dealt with is in the trucking industry as far as I know. Unfortunately, its way too easy to run 2 logbooks....

Just awhile ago they found a woman I think who had driven her car around for some distance and eventually driven into a ditch. She had 0.7 level of alcohol. She didn't die.

Especially with the 'experts' (see: Drunks) the tolerance for high levels of alcohol is pretty amazing. It's all due to the fact that their livers develop a higher ability to burn off alcohol. Eventually though their livers will collapse due to the strain and this may lead to death.

I've heard stories about surgery patients who have been anesthesized for an operation only to get up and ask the doctor to give them something stronger. Really, some of these people have to be put out with like an elephant tranquilizer.

This is one reason why the level for DUI is very vague, the tolerance to alcohol is very different from person to person.

That's a good point. It's a very similar principle to drugs such as morphine - a dose that would instantly kill a healthy individual is often perfectly safe for someone in immense pain.

.5 does usually mean death, but you're right - not always.

Aramike, you should not have issues with the policeman who was just doing his job. It is apparant you disagree with the law allowing random pull-overs to give sobriety checks. If you want the law changed write your representatives.

You were legal by .02. That is cutting it extremely close, and if you have no way to test yourself before you get behind the wheel I think you will
eventually misjudge your level of sobriety. For most people, this close call you had would cause them to reconsider their habits.

But you have stated you will not change.

You are playing Russian roulette and I hope you stop before you hurt someone.

See, this is what happens when people don't read everything. :stare:

First off, I had no issues with the cop whatsoever. Him and I both expressed frustrations at the policy.

Secondly, I used very commonly accept charts in calculating my BAC. It was on the low end of .06 or high .05 - which is specifically what I tested at. It's not like I just looked into the sky, closed my eyes, and said "feels like I'm at .06."

Indeed, I'm not going to change ... I will continue to never operate a motor vehicle legally drunk.

And finally, why does EVERYONE keep ignoring the fact that it isn't people who are at .06 BAC - .08 BAC out there killing people?

I have some points I agree with and others I don't.

1) The police officer absolutely 100% has to have some probable cause to pull him over. Outside of states that allow marked DUI checkpoints, you have to have some probable cause or observe some fault of the law to be able to legally pull someone over.

That said, it isn't hard to get probable cause for a traffic stop if you want to. I'd reckon you follow anyone, no matter how careful, at somepoint they'll miss some minor traffic law - say go 1mph over the speed limit, cross a line where you aren't supposed to, heck even something as simple as dirt on your registration tab making it hard to read can be used as an excuse to pull someone over legally. It doesn't have to be anything truely dangerous or threatening, it just has to be something that is illegal or otherwise suspect.

I suspect the police office in Aramike's case did have some reason for pulling him over beyond just "stop, test, arrest" - it just didn't come up when the officer smelled alcohol on his breath, and Aramike failed to ask the officer why he pulled him over, and instead focused on the whole "stop, test, arrest" policy.

If for some reason the officer did not have a valid cause for pulling you over, and when pressed about such a cause said it was policy, then that is very clearly a violation of civil rights. But like I've said, its most likely that it didn't really come up at the time of the traffic stop due to the smell of alcohol in the car (although it should have come up, and if you asked about it they'd have to provide an answer and it couldn't be tied to the alcohol he smelled, it'd have to be something he observed prior to the stop).

2) The "stop, test, arrest" policy is valid, assuming a valid and legal reason for the traffic stop. In Aramike's case the officer smelled alcohol and so rightly proceeded with the STA policy. Again such a policy does need to have some sort of probable cause that leads into it (which may or may not be related to the causation required for the traffic stop) - and in the case being discussed in this thread, that causation for administering the BAC test was definately there.

Personally I agree with it, especially in the late evenings when people are commonly drunk on the roads.

3) I whole-heartedly agree with legal limits and for them to be set as low as they are.

See us human beings have proven as a group to be incapable of properly determining when we are sober enough to drive safely. I'd argue that such limits would be unneccessary if accidents related to drunk drivers didn't happen so often, but despite all the publicity about how its bad to drink and drive, despite all of the common sense people should have, it happens, and it happens a lot. The reason it happens is it is a judgement call, and people tend to vary greatly when called upon to make judgements about things. If you then set the limit at or near the level of actual impairment for the group as an average you run into a few problems.

One is those people with lower tolerances are going to be impaired while still under that limit - this is not ideal and encourages such people to drive drunk. Two is that people have to guestimate where they are at (since portable BAC tests are not practable as of yet) and so if they end up low balling their guess they could easily go over said limit and still think they are ok to drive.

While arbitrary limits are not ideal by any means, they are necessary for proper enforcement and to give people an idea of where they can be in a legal sense. And if you are going to have the limits at all, then they've got to be where they are to be able to be effective for the vast majority of the population and for them to be easily understood (could you imagine the calamity of you started making BAC limits a sliding scale?).

I realize that some people have got to have their drinks - but for god sakes how hard is it to plan ahead a bit? And to rely on something as imprecise as x drinks in y hours = z BAC is almost akin to playing russian roulette. Yes you were right at .06 that time, and maybe you'll be right one 100% of the time, but let me tell you the average person isn't going to get that right every time. And the consequence for failure very well can result in the death or dismemberment of other people.


One last note about the incident in particular - in Wisconsin the limit for you might be .08, however if you've had 3 priors it actually is .02, and if you had been under 25 or operating heavy machinery it would be .00. So kudos for not being the dumb arse whose gotten 3 priors and keeps on drinking and driving, but if you had been that person, no matter how you viewed yourself, you would've been legally DUI even at .06.

Umm, where are you getting that there as a smell of alcohol in the car?

The officer specifically told me that I was randomly stopped as part of the STA program.I can only be responsible for my own actions. What the average person does, they are responsible for.Indeed, possibly in the case of an epic failure. People at .08 aren't killing people.

You're typing that now for the 5th time or something... but that doesn't make it true, and you have yet to show proof. Heck one evening I was having 2 or 3 beers, can't remember that exactly right now, and although I surely would've been under the limit, I didn't drive, because on that day those 2 or 3 beers made me feel very drunk.

How, per se, does one show proof of a negative (something not happening)?

The burden of proof would be on the person claiming that something IS happening.

Also, as another poster pointed out, there is a difference between whether or not alcohol was present in someone in an accident and whether or not the presence actually contributed to the accident. In 2006, a whopping 55% of ALL alcohol-impaired fatalities were by drivers with a BAC of .15% - nearly twice the legal limit. That's amazing considering that, below that level you have drivers at .14, .13, .12, .11, .10, .09, .08 ... all illegal, no doubt the vast majority, that are only commiting 45%

And, none of these figures account for whether or not the accident would have occurred despite alcohol. While impaired drivers indeed disproportionately cause highway fatalities, the vast majority of accidents involve people who are not under the influence. Nearly 20% of fatal road accidents involve fatigue, even.

This is partly why .08 is the limit rather than, say, .05. The proportional contrasts between accidents involving people at .06 and people who haven't drank at all is negligible.

Again, I am completely against drunk driving, and believe the penalties should be harsh (on a scale with regards to *how* drunk). However, I am unwilling to make the stretch to believe that drivers with ANY amount of alcohol are dangerous - at least not moreso than drivers in general