I enjoy the spirits from time to time but I always take cabs home. I even live in a town where i have to call and wait for a cab to come get me (about 1/2 an hour) It causes no worries and lets me have as good of a time as I want. I drove drunk once in college (nothing bad happened) but I promised myself I would never do that again

My alarm goes off at 4:10 am. :(

[quote=wolf]You lose .08/hr once your BAL starts going down. Thing is, you can't know your BAL is on the downside unless your'e tested more than once. QUOTE]

And this is why PAs retroactive extrapolation rule gets you in trouble. Suppose you're busted and they take you down to the station and you blow a 0.05 an hour later. They then extrapolate backwards to the time of the stop and come up with a seriously illegal 0.13 (I think the figure they use is less than .08/hr but the problem exists regardless). Problem is, you were actually at, say, 0.04 when they caught you, but going UP. You peaked at 0.07 and then started going down. So you were never illegal but you're still going to jail.

How about drugged driving? One could be busted for driving with thc in their system from a joint they smoked 2 weeks ago. Is traffic safety really the concern here? Then why isn't the Prozac user also busted?

Wisconsin Drugged Driving Law Challenged in Court

Drugged driving is much harder to prove, I would think. Drug urine screens just detect presence of a substance without providing any information about amount or time of usage, just so long as the substance is still at detectable levels. Even the blood assay results that confirm still don't give you a lot of data to work with.

We've all seen the scene in the movies, though, where the stoner rolls the window down and the cloud of pot smoke billows out toward the cop ... no doubt there. (Yes, this really happens in real life, although the effect is not as dramatic.)

I didn't know about that extrapolating back stuff. Interesting. Once it was winter and I'd been sitting in my car with the windows just barely cracked because of the cold, and using a solvent to remove some icky gung that a child had spilled all over my car. I finished the job and drove my car up to a spot where I used to like to go for walks. I walked maybe 100 feet from my car when the police drove up and waved me back to inform me that I was tresspassing on private land (the property had changed hands and the new owner was a Nazi). I had forgotten my license and they couldn't find me on their computer, so they took me down to the station to run me from there. At the station they gave me a BAC test and it came up something like .02 - must have been because of those fumes. I'd had nothing to drink for literally days. But I suppose they could have extrapolated back that somewhere in the day I started out with a picture of margaritas. How can that extrapolation stuff be legal?

.02 could be within the standard error for the particular machine. Also, if they don't calibrate them right, AND they don't reset them properly after use, it is possible to get false readings from an AlcoSensor. Which is why breath-tests are not admissible in court ... but likely why the blood draw from the ER (and the subsequent extrapolation to BAL at time of the offense) is.

The alcohol limit here in Australia is 0.05, and has been for many years. We started off at 0.08, but that only lasted for a few years. Learner drivers and provisional drivers (restricted license for three years), must have a zero level (I think it is officially 0.02 to allow for cough medicines, etc.).

I didn't drink and drive even before breath testing came in (must be about 30 years ago now), but I have given up the evil booze entirely, so I don't have a problem with it anyway these days.

I must admit that sometimes I still feel like a drink. I miss my wine, especially.

Me, too. Never gotten a DUI, but that's only because I never got caught back in the day when I was partying. Speaking of which, I can't even remember the last time I had a drink--wait, yes I can....two years ago on my birthday I had a margarita.

Now, as to the special car plates, sure, I think it's a good idea. And as for plates for the other bad guys, why not? We have sex offender registries, for instance. I think if you see a sex offender tag on a car parked at the local playground, you're gonna watch your kids a hell of a lot closer.

It's a shame that things are getting to this point, but with everything out there protecting the criminal, and with the fact that they aren't drooling through their fangs, we should be able to have some way of identifying them in order to protect ourselves. I for one would be far more careful driving around a person with a drunk-driving tag. I'd make sure I kept far away from them on the road.


Sidhe

That leads me to speculate about a brand on the forehead that would only become visible when a lunatic's meds were below therapeutic level that would read "insane."

When I drank steadily, there were very few weeks when I didn't drive drunk at least two or three times. Miraculously, I never got a DUI. I even got stopped once driving home shitfaced from my convenience store job back in the 80's, and the cop just told me to slow down after running my license and plates to make sure I was a good guy. I think what saved me was that I still had my Quik Trip smock on and we always gave the cops free stuff.

I don't miss the fear that I always had, though. Sobriety has numerous benefits.

I got a DUI when I was 18. The left blinker was out in my VW bug. There was an opened bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor (from the night before) and I'd actually left the party early to drive home and be good. HA! My blood alcohol level was .001 over the legal limit, which resulted in over a year of bus hell and many years of expensive auto insurance.

Needless to say, it never happened again.

Oh, imagine the possibilities:

Quietly desperate women in bars at 2:00 am whose foreheads say "Fertile"

Quietly desperate men in bars at 2:00 am whose foreheads say "Liar"

Dangerous looking teenage boys who aren't attending school (and who are ineffably appealing to your teenage daughter) whose foreheads say "Stupid"

I love this idea!

Hot damn, I want one of those tags if it will keep people away from me on the road. Hell, I'd wear it around my neck in the mall since they won't let me carry an Uzi anymore. :D

If you are legally carrying in PA (so you'd need a Class III plus a CCW) the only thing they could charge you with in the mall is trespassing ... and that's only if you refused to leave after you were discovered to be carrying. And that only applies if there's a "no weapons" clause in the "Mall Code of Conduct/Courtesy."

(Yes, I asked a cop about this one. His best advice ... "If you have something going on, and you really have to shoot someone, try to do it out in the parking lot. It will be less hassle for you.")