Drunk Driving
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Wikipedia-Article "Drunk Driving"
Drunk driving or drinking and driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle after having consumed alcohol (ethanol) or other drugs, to the degree that mental and motor skills are impaired. It is illegal in most jurisdictions within the U.S..
The specific criminal offence is usually called driving while intoxicated (DWI) or driving under the influence [of alcohol or other drugs] (DUI). Such laws may also apply to boating or piloting aircraft.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 17,013 people died in 2003 in alcohol-related collisions, representing 40 percent of total traffic deaths in the United States. Over 500,000 people were injured in alcohol-related accidents in the US in 2003. Alcohol-related is defined to include any driver, passenger or pedestrian involved in a fatal crash who has any trace of alcohol or suspicion of alcohol usage. According to the NHTSA, no other country uses these criteria in their statistical computations.
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Laws
Most states in the U.S. designate a "per se" blood or breath alcohol level as the threshold point where a person is presumed to be impaired. The most common blood alcohol content (BAC) "legal limit" in the United States is 0.08 (which is in units of milligrams per deciliter, and so represents 80 mg of alcohol in 100 deciliters of blood). Some states include a lesser charge — often known as driving while impaired — at a BAC of, say, 0.05 or above but less than the legal limit for the more serious charge. Prior to wider emphasis on drinking and driving in the 1980s, standards of 0.12 were also in place in some states. The legal limit for aircraft pilots and commercial drivers in the U.S. is set at 0.04. All states also observe a much stricter standard — known in some of them as "TCP," standing for "Trace Constitutes Positive" — for drivers under the age of 21, which, since 1989, has been the uniform minimum purchase age for alcoholic beverages throughout the nation (prior to that year about half of all U.S. states formerly observed a lower drinking age, most commonly 18; the trend toward raising the age commenced in the late 1970s, with much of the impetus for doing so provided by a federal law passed in the mid-1980s mandating a reduced allocation of federal highway funds to any state which refused to raise the age to 21).
Unlike DUI cases that involve alcohol, there is no "per se" or legal limit that is employed for persons accused of driving under the influence of prescription medication or illicit drugs. Instead, the key inquiry focuses on whether the driver's faculties were impaired by the substance that was consumed. The detection and successful prosecution of drivers impaired by prescription medication or illegal drugs is therefore quite difficult. Similarly, although urinalysis toxicology screens can detect the presence of such substances in the driver's bloodstream, these analyses are unable to demonstrate that the substance was actually causing impairment at the time of driving. In response to these problems, several jurisdictions are currently considering legislation that would establish "zero tolerance" laws for those drivers arrested for DUI and found to have drugs or medication in their system. Additionally, breathalyzers have been developed for the purpose of administering roadside or laboratory tests that can detect the actual level of a controlled substance in an individual's body.
Many jurisdictions require more serious penalties (i.e., jail time, larger fines, longer DUI program, the installation of ignition interlock devices) in cases where the driver's BAC is over 0.20, or 0.15 in some places. These additional sanctions are an attempt to deter and punish the operation of a vehicle at extremely high BAC levels and the concomitant danger posed to the safety of persons and property by heavily impaired drivers. In many cases, the reason given for these additional sanctions is because an average person would have passed out from that much alcohol. To be able to drive at that level, a person has to have gotten drunk regularly for years, to increase his/her alcohol tolerance, and therefore is likely to have driven drunk repeatedly. However, since there is currently no standard test to measure alcohol tolerance, proponents of high-BAC additional penalties point to some studies that indicate that high-BAC offenders are more likely to be involved in a crash and more likely to recidivate. Critics of such laws point out that, due to the wide variation of alcohol tolerance, people with a high tolerance will suffer the additional penalties, even though they may be much less impaired than people with a low tolerance that were driving with a much lower BAC.
Some U.S. states also increase the penalties for drunk driving (even to the point of making it a felony) if certain other aggravating circumstances besides a very high BAC are present, such as if the drunk driver caused an accident requiring the hospitalization of another person lasting greater than a specified period of time (often 72 hours), in cases where an accident resulted in property damage exceeding a certain amount (often $500), or where the driver has prior (and relatively recent) convictions for drunk driving. In addition, most states observe administrative laws that further penalize people convicted of DUI, typically enforced by the department that issues driver's licenses, usually titled Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), or Department of Licensing. Also, in many states, persons under 21 who purchase, or even attempt or conspire to purchase, alcohol can have their driving privileges suspended (if they already are licensed drivers) or delayed (if not) even if they were not caught actually driving while intoxicated.
History of drunk driving laws
The first jurisdiction in the United States of America to adopt laws against drunk driving was New York in 1910, with California and others following. Early laws simply prohibited driving while intoxicated, with no specific definition of what level of inebriation qualified. The first generally-accepted legal limit for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was 1.50.
In the US, most of the laws and penalties were greatly enhanced starting in the late 1970s, and through the 1990s, largely due to pressure from groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Driving Drunk (SADD) and leaders like Candy Lightner. These organizations — MADD in particular — are also widely cited for getting the drinking age raised to 21 in those states where it had once been lower. Also during this era, enforcement of drunk driving laws became a priority for police for the first time.
In some areas of the country, including New York City, it's part of police procedure to impound cars of arrested drunk drivers. The offenders forfeit the cars permanently if they are convicted.
The offence of DUI Manslaughter is unique to US law. British and other Anglo-Saxon systems do not recognise intent to harm or kill in drunk driving and sentencing under 'Dangerous Driving while Drunk' is correspondingly lower.
Legal measures to reduce drunk driving in the USA have proved largely ineffective when compared with measures deployed in the UK and Australia where drunk driving accidents have been reduced from around 50% of all accidents to around 18% in 20 years
British and Australian experience indicates that frequent random breath testing combined with loss of licence on a first offence, and prison for a 2nd offence is more effective as a deterent than harsh sentencing for DUI manslaughter. Average sentences for DUI Manslaughter in the UK and Australia are around 3 years while in the USA it is 10 years, yet per capita consumption of alcohol is higher in the UK and starts at 18, while road traffic offenses involving alcohol are 50% lower than the USA.
Sample timeline of a typical DUI arrest
The following is what can happen when a law enforcement officer has a reason to suspect a driver is intoxicated. Some possible reasons are erratic driving, poor coordination, and/or the presence of the smell of alcohol.
Field sobriety test
The officer will administer one or more field sobriety tests (FSTs). Some common FSTs include having the driver:
- try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.
- tip his or her head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of the nose with the index finger.
- stand on one foot.
- reciting all or part of the alphabet.
FSTs are better at determining the level of impairment than they are at estimating the driver's BAC.
The (US) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has scientifically determined that three FSTs are statistically reliable in detecting impaired drivers. These three "standardized" tests (SFSTs) are the "Walk and Turn" test, the "One-leg Stand" and "Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus" in which a law enforcement officer observes the discrete movements of a person's eyes when tracking a stimulus across their field of vision.
Chemical test
If arrested, the driver is brought to the police station, and given one or more chemical tests: breath, urine, and/or blood. Breath test results are usually available immediately and are sometimes given before the actual arrest takes place; urine and blood samples are sent to a lab to determine the BAC. In some jurisdictions, refusing to take a breathalyzer test is an offense in itself, often creating an automatic assumption of guilt under the law.
Chemical tests are better at determining the driver's BAC than they are at estimating the level of impairment, but their accuracy is disputed by some (see blood alcohol test assumptions). In any case, tests can only determine the BAC at the time the test is taken, which sometimes can be higher than when the vehicle was actually operated, in the case of a driver who drank a large volume immediately before drive
Next step
If it is determined that the person is not legally intoxicated, they might be released without any charges. However, many jurisdictions have charges which don't require a particular BAC, and tests for some drugs (such as GHB) will not show up in a test designed for alcohol.
Most of the time, the driver will either be kept in a holding cell (the "drunk tank") until they are deemed sober enough to be released, or sent to jail to wait for their first court hearing (or until they can get bailed out).
See also
- Driving under the influence (for issues that are not U.S.-specific)
- Breath Analyzer Accuracy