The drink driving laws are a form of tyranny

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Headache in a Suitcase said:
in 2005 i was pulled over after getting off a train because i had a tail light out. before i got on the train i had a few drinks.

my BAC was just a hair over the legal limit. if it had been 2 years earlier, my BAC would have been well below the legal limit and they would have let me go on the spot.

i was arrested by a NY State Trooper and brought to their station house... i did not have to spend any time in jail and was released within a few hours.

i had a good lawyer whom i had known most my life who just happened to have worked as an assistant DA with the Judge whom i was assigned to. because my BAC was so close to the legal limit, and because i had a good lawyer, i was able to cut a plea, dropping the DUI to a charge of DWAI (driving while ability impaired).

i served 40 hours of community service... which i did at a local state park doing manual labor. i served my last 8 hours during a blizzard, clearing snow away from some of the buildings on the boardwalk as unbelievably cold wind whipped in off the Long Island Sound.

i was suspended from a volunteer coaching position.

had to pay $500 in fines, lawyer fees (thankfully less than they would have been due to my longtime relationship with the lawyer... he was my neighbor), and another $750, payable over 3 years, in "driver assesment fees"

i had a conditional liscense for 6 months in which i could only drive to work/school. had my photo ID taken away from me during this period.

my car insurance sky rocketed... it has only just recently come back down, but is still much higher than it should have been... i had to live with my parents for much longer than i ever would have wanted to because of this. all the fines and extra fees and insurance strained my finances, hurting my credit score.



and it's all my fault. i have every reason to be bitter about it... i was barely over the limit, a limit which was just recently changed. i wasn't speeding, i wasn't swerving all over the road... i was on a straight stretch of road 10 minutes from my house, and the only reason why i was pulled over was because my taillight was out.

but i'm not... it was a stupid decision, one i regret, and one i'll never make again. i still drink, but have not and will not ever get behind the wheel of a car again after doing so... even after having just a couple. i would gladly pay the occasional obscene cab ride fare to get the thousands of dollars that i have lost in fines and increased insurance rates.

so yea... these fines and rules are a major pain in the ass. and that's the point. it was the most humiliating time of my life... one i will never go through again.

knowing how embarassing it is... how financialy deblitating it can be... if you continue to do it regardless of all that, then you need to check yourself into rehab, because you obviously can not make rational decisions when you drink.

everyone makes mistakes along the way... if you can not learn from those mistakes, then you have a problem.
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Sounds like you were unlucky. Still, it's good that you learned the requisite lesson.
 
Vincent Vega said:
I think the other part is: "If I don't think it's wrong, then it is not wrong."
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on the flipside, and im not specifically talking about drunk driving, "oh well its against 'the law' so it MUST be wrong."

like underage drinking or marijuana usage, gambling & prostitution etc etc. things that should probably be legal, and MOST people probably wouldnt mind them being legal, but arent since the powers that be think it shouldnt, for whatever reason.
 
Of course you can take both points to the extreme. :) And you can argue the validity of many laws, the reasons behind or the structure of penality. But in the end one point remains, as long as something is illegal, you can't break the law and justify yourself by saying, "But I don't like this law/the penalty!" And those who repeatedly break laws on purpose put themselves in a very bad position to argue their validity.
 
I don't think it's wrong to speed either. It's just wrong to crash. I prefer personal responsibility. I've had plenty of nights where I knew I couldn't drive, and I didn't. I've had plenty where I knew I'd be fine and I was.
 
HyperU2 said:
I don't think it's wrong to speed either. It's just wrong to crash. I prefer personal responsibility.
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And speeding increases your likelihood of crashing, so where does "personal responsibility" come in? Where does "personal responsibilty" come in when you can't brake quick enough in order to avoid a crash?


HyperU2 said:
I've had plenty of nights where I knew I couldn't drive, and I didn't. I've had plenty where I knew I'd be fine and I was.
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You joked about being impaired enough to bring home the "ugly" girl, but yet you think you have complete control over an automobile? Do you honestly think there isn't a delay in reaction time due to alcohol?
 
BVS said:
And speeding increases your likelihood of crashing, so where does "personal responsibility" come in? Where does "personal responsibilty" come in when you can't brake quick enough in order to avoid a crash?




You joked about being impaired enough to bring home the "ugly" girl, but yet you think you have complete control over an automobile? Do you honestly think there isn't a delay in reaction time due to alcohol?
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Take a fucking joke. I have time to stop myself in both cases.
 
financeguy said:
Indeed. Or "if the government thinks it's wrong, then it must be."
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Is it not possible that intelligent people, of sound mind, are able to come to their own conclusion and it just so happens to coincide with the government's? I mean, I know it's a shocking concept...
 
Distracted Driving Summit

At the Department of Transportation's Distracted Driving Summit, Secretary Ray LaHood kicked off the two-day conference to battle what he described as a menace to society: the problem of texting while driving, one LaHood deems an endemic that "seems to be getting worse every year."

Numbers released this morning by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveal that drivers younger than 24 are the worst offenders, but that it's a growing trend among all ages. In 2008, drivers who weren't paying attention took nearly 6,000 lives and caused half a million injuries. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving but, ultimately, LaHood said, he would like to eliminate texting while driving nationwide.
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Apparently Congress is looking to link highway funds to state laws curtailing texting while driving and President Obama has prohibited all federal employees from texting while driving on state business.:up:

As I said much earlier, I am personally much more concerned about distracted drivers than drunk drivers so I applaud the attention the problem is receiving.

So, are anti-texting laws a form of tyranny?
 
i can drive drunk better than i can drive and text. in fact i can drive drunk better than i can text period.
 
We have fines on texting and phoning since 2004 or so. Still you'd often see people text. I don't mind if they get caught. It's a hell of distraction, especially since cars in Germany are usually manual. You can't shift gear and text at the same time. And you can't take calls or make calls without losing sight of traffic.
You are allowed to phone while driving only with hands-free equipment. Basically a good thing. Only problem which you often see is that people now have to plug in the earphone and get the speaker in position while driving.
When you drive a car, you drive a car. No need to do thousand other things. And you don't need to be available any damn second.
 
Vincent Vega said:
When you drive a car, you drive a car. No need to do thousand other things. And you don't need to be available any damn second.
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Exactly. No human being needs to be that available, maybe their egos just make them need to feel that important. If you're a doctor on call there's always vibrate.

It's not need, it's want and it's lack of attention span and the need to share everything with everyone..the reasons why people can't be in a two hour movie or at a play or a concert or whatever without texting or checking their messages. Sometimes constantly to the point where it's really just another addiction.
 
CULTURES MOVE in slow motion. Thirty years ago, when I was at the peak of my drinking life, it was more than acceptable to drive while drunk. The question of fitness-to-drive was at best a non-issue, an attitude of indifference to the law being regarded within the drinking culture as a badge of honour.
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I do not believe that people then were indifferent to the risks to themselves and others. There was simply a different way of thinking. For one thing, we were more governed by a sense of fate and providence than obtains now. We did not tend to see things in the sociological way that today, due to a particular form of media influence, is almost second nature. A person’s attitude to driving while drunk was regarded as pretty much his own business, neither approved nor disapproved of. If you had an accident or got caught you were regarded as unlucky. If someone got killed, the driver responsible became an object of pity, almost to the same degree as the family he had caused to become bereaved.

Our culture has moved a considerable distance. A drunk driver is now an unambiguously shameful figure and we have had some high-profile cases in which this became abundantly clear. It is widely agreed that, in this context at least, there can be no cultural trading off of human lives for a skewed idea of freedom.
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At the back of the plaintive lamentations of FF backbenchers is the deep-seated belief that it is impossible to enjoy yourself without getting pissed. A majority of Irish people still seem genuinely puzzled by the concept of non-alcoholic enjoyment. (“What? – you can have fun without drink? – tell me more!”) Across a range of pursuits – sport, music, conversation – our culture insists that alcohol is a sine qua non of full enjoyment. This equation of freedom with a deadly drug has made it difficult for us to see as clearly as we otherwise might the real life-and-death issues gravitating around our misconceived ideas of what it means to be happy and free.
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It is difficult to be heard on this subject if you have, like myself, left the bottle behind. Irish society tends to adopt a self-serving dismissiveness towards such interventions on the basis that they “obviously” signify a desire to spoil everyone’s fun. Thus, our diseased drink culture protects itself from the logic of those among its casualties still capable of speaking out.

The real issue, which urgently needs to be placed before our younger generations, is that Irish drink culture is neither normative nor incapable of renovation, that drug-induced pleasure comes at a huge cost, and that sobriety is a door to a different and healthier way of seeing reality.

If we have any responsibilities to the next generation, we have surely a duty to tell them what we discovered when we tried to be free.
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Driving drunk a skewed idea of freedom - The Irish Times - Fri, Oct 23, 2009
 
HyperU2 said:
Scary line.
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How so?

There's freedom and there's stupidity.

As a parent, I know I'll be trying to teach my son the things I did that were stupid (thinking I was "free") so he doesn't have to learn the hard way like I did.
 
(AP) 10/23

NEW YORK — A mother accused of drunkenly causing a high-speed wreck managed to pull her own 11-year-old daughter from the mangled, overturned car as another girl lay dying on the roadside, prosecutors said Friday.

The mother, Carmen Huertas, had brushed off warnings that she was too drunk to drive, piling seven children in her station wagon to drive them to a slumber party at her home, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.

He said she played a morbid guessing game as she sped up a highway at nearly 70 mph, asking her young passengers to raise their hands if they thought they would crash.

Morgenthau called Huertas' behavior "outrageous" as he announced that she was indicted on charges including manslaughter, assault and driving under the influence of alcohol. She remains hospitalized with a shoulder injury; her arraignment isn't expected until mid-November.

Meanwhile, prosecutors said they continue to explore whether others – such as the adults who noticed her condition – might face legal consequences.

Huertas' lawyer didn't immediately return a call Friday. Her family has said she is suicidally distraught over the Oct. 11 crash.

After gathering a half-dozen of her daughter's friends for a weekend sleepover at her Bronx home, she took them to a family birthday party in Manhattan, prosecutors said. She downed enough cognac and other drinks there that her former boyfriend told another man in her life, the father of her toddler son, she wasn't fit to drive home, according to prosecutors.

After confronting her about his concerns and being rebuffed, the father got his 14-month-old boy out of the car – but left the other children, prosecutors said. No telephone number could be found for the toddler's father or Huertas' former companion.
Story continues below

Huertas drove off after midnight, teasing and terrifying the children, according to prosecutors and a survivor's family. The relatives have said she ignored pleas from the girls – including her 11-year-old daughter, Brittany Gonzalez – to slow down.

"If you think this is bad, wait until we get on the highway," the parents of one of the girls, Kayla Fernandez, told reporters in the days after the wreck.

When Huertas lost control of the car on the Henry Hudson Parkway, it swerved violently and flew off the road, rolling upside-down as it landed on the road's tree-lined shoulder, authorities said. Three children were hurled to the ground from the station wagon's back compartment; one, Leandra Rosado, died within minutes.

Huertas crawled free and rescued her daughter, prosecutors said. They said the other children in the car managed to get out on their own.

One of the girls, Yiselle Rosario, remains hospitalized in serious, but stable condition.

Prosecutors said a breath test taken at the scene showed Huertas had a blood-alcohol level above 0.13 percent; the legal limit is 0.08 percent.

Huertas, 31, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

The crash came about three months after another mother, Diane Schuler, drove her minivan the wrong way on the suburban Taconic Parkway and hit an SUV, killing herself, her daughter, three young nieces and three men in the SUV. Authorities say toxicology tests found she had been drinking heavily and smoking marijuana, which her husband disputes. Westchester County medical examiners have stood by their findings.
 
Okay now here's a story for you! On Halloween night my roommate and I had a party. There were those there who were 19 and 20 and drinking but that was their own risk we did not give it to them. The stupid rednecks next door also had a party and they had loud rednecks and slutz over there. We were both playing music but theirs was louder. Someone somewhere called the cops which I never thought would happen because this is a shithole crack neighborhood where no one wants cops around but whatever someone did. Somebody told us there were 8 cops on the street who got out and were walking around with flashlights. We turned off the music and the lights and layed low. I didn't realize the terror of the situation at the time because I was so drunk but everyone came into my room and sat on the bed and looked out the window. Luckily they never came to the door or bugged us about noise, underage drinking, etc, and they left. We thought it was over but....

after they were gone awhile some of the party goers decided to leave. There were two girls 19 and 20 and the one driving was drunk and pregnant. Next thing I know the passenger girl called me on her cell phone and was crying that they had been pulled for drunk driving and the other girl was being pressed against the car, searched and getting handcuffed all the while shrieking that because her mom was a cop in the next town they couldn't do her that way. Both girls were arrested for underage drunkeness, and the driver was getting a DUI when the cops actually called and verified that the girl's mom was a cop at which point they apologized and let them both go! SO! If you are 19, pregnant and driving drunk but your mom is a cop, it's not a crime!

A guy who had also left was gotten for DUI because he did not have a relative who was a cop. So the moral of the story is:

If the cops are watching the party and leave, don't think they're gone, they're hiding down the road waiting for you to leave so they can nab you for DUI because this is a bigger moneymaking crime than just disturbing the peace or underage drinking. This proves that they do not care about safety only money. If they really wanted to keep the road safe from my friends they'd have been spying on them getting into the car and then gone up and said, hey, you're drunk, don't you drive that car, I'll take you home or call you a cab or you go back in your friends' place but don't drive. No, they only wanted the money. That is, unless someone's mom is a cop, then it's perfectly fine.

See how twisted and stupid it all is?
 
Leave the car at home and walk, you'll be fine fined.

Police: Drunk Lebanon County man hitched a ride from a state cop
By CHRIS A. COUROGEN, The Patriot-News
October 30, 2009, 9:32AM
Scott E. Heffelfinger was walking home from a bar on Jonestown Road in Union Township, Lebanon County, when he tried to hitch a ride from a passing state police patrol car. Hefflinger got that ride home, but he also received a citation for public drunkenness, state police said.


According to police, troopers were on patrol around 1:30 this morning on Jonestown Road when they observed Heffelfinger, 47, of Hemlock Drive in Fredericksburg, staggering and struggling to keep his balance. When they approached him, Heffelfinger stuck out his thumb, apparently to hitch a ride, police said.

Troopers questioned Heffelfinger, who told them he was walking home from Pa's Place, a bar in the 400 block of Jonestown Road. Police said he displayed multiple signs of being intoxicated.
 
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