I mean, I'm not trying to bag on you or be all high and mighty. I used to drink a lot, and sometimes I'd drive home. Used to. It was fucking stupid, and I had no excuse other than being young and fucking stupid. Thankfully I realized how fucking stupid it was, and is, before anything bad happened, and that was it. That was like 6 years ago.

 

Oh i didnt take it that way..LOL I understand Ive wreck two of my cars from drinking and driving but luckily no one was around I put my Type R in a ditch and then Hit a curb doing 50+ in my si

 

well I got plastered and thankful for the radford public officials I had a sidewalk available for my disposal.

 

sorry to hear this man, but in every bad situation theres always a bright side and in this one its a good thing hes still alive. which leg did he lose?

 

Sorry, but current DUI laws are not geared towards preventing loss of life. They only exist to appease MADD and generate revenue. DUI is the only crime where you can be punished for what you might do. Are you aware that you can be convicted of DUI for simply having your car keys in your hand? Sleeping it off in your car is not even a defense...you might "wake up and drive off and kill somebody." This is also the only crime where you receive a punishment before you are even found guilty...administrative license suspensions are effective from the arrest date regardless of whether or not they are guilty. What ever happened to due process?

How about the reliability of the evidence? People are convicted of violating DUI laws based on faulty evidence. Breathalyzers are designed to measure the amount of methyl compounds in your breath. The problem is that those compounds are similar in molecular structure to 70-80% of the compounds that normally exist in a person's breath. The machine cannot differentiate between alcohol and one of those other substances. Due to this, a person can blow a .05 (the AMA's recommendation that a person is impaired) after eating bread. You can blow a .12 after painting a room. Even pumping gasoline can elevate the breath alcohol level. It also bases the number on a fixed ratio of alcohol in the breath to alcohol in the blood when that ratio can vary significantly. There are many more problems with breathalyzers, and the portable ones are even worse. And keep in mind that this evidence is often accepted despite being scientifically proven faulty in court.

While I agree that we need harsher punishments for real offenders (and I don't make excuses for anyone who drinks and then decides to drive), I believe that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed before we can do that. We need to get rid of the inaccurate and unscientific testing methods and fix the laws so that responsible behavior is not punishable. By enacting harsher punishments now, we only increase the chance for punishing the innocent...or are the real political goals of DUI laws to simply increase revenue?

 

... and NASA faked the moon landing.

 

And legal journals commonly publish rumors...especially the American Bar Association:

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/n...r_dui_defense/

edit: This topic became an interest of mine in 95 after one of my soldiers was awakened and arrested for DUI. He was sleeping in a parked car outside of a bar. He was convicted of DUI and since the post had a zero tolerance policy on DUIs, he received some harsh UCMJ action. The CO immediately reduced his rank to E-1 and forfeited his pay for 3 months. The post commander decided that an example needed to be set so a court martial was held and he ended up with a BCD. All because he got drunk at a bar and decided to sleep in his car.

 

i agree with the first paragraph 100% and in this past weekend, i was the DD. i'm 23 of course i some drinks throughout the night but obviously nothing stupid or over the limit, i had to work at 6:30 am the next day and knew i'd be driving around my friends. well the night is still early and i'm leaving one house in ODU to go to my friend's sister's place. i'm driving down that road back behind all those fancy dorm rooms and what not, and i pass a cop. well knowing that it's a cop i make sure not to do anything stupid tell my friends to not be idiots and throw anything out the windows and shit (since they were drunk and i'm not sure if they saw the cop or not). on this note i do believe i was bumping george micheal's Faith. oh well i come up to a stop sign. stop for a second then turn and sure enough this fucking cop hits his lights and comes after me.

pulls up to the car...
cop: you know why i stopped you...
me: no?
cop: you didn't stop at that stop sign..
me: uh...ok? (thinking the whole time, bullshit yes i did)
cop: can you step out of the car?
me: uh..ok?
*cop brings me around back in front of his car*
cop: say your abc's don't sing them.
me: a.b.c. etc...
cop: do you know why i pulled you out of the car?
me: no?
cop: you have beer in the back of your truck.
me: yeah, my friends are drinking. (yeah asshole, it's in the back area or the "trunk" of my suv like it's suppose to be)
cop: it also smells like alcohol in there.
me: yeah, cause they're drunk? (typical fucking reason/lie, i highly doubt it smelled like alcohol)
cop: so have you had anything to drink tonight?
*at this point me and him exchanged some words but came down to me admitting that i had had a beer where i just left from*
me: yes i had a beer at the last house we were at, but i'm driving tonight. i've got work at 6:30am, i'm just the dd.
cop: ok, go sit in the truck.
*i sit in the truck for fucking EVER. fucking cop is just fucking with me at this point, waiting on me or my friends to do something stupid. in this time another cop comes up behind him chills a while etc.*
FINALLY the cop comes back up to the truck.
cop: ok i'm writing you this ticket for disregarding that stop sign.
me: ok.
cop: can you come back here to my car and sign this ticket?
me: yeah? (fucking asshole, i know god damn well a cop never asks you to step out of your car AGAIN to sign a ticket. at this point i know he's just waiting on me to so much as trip or sway or even take a weird step. all possible with my fucked up knee)
Cop: this is a prepayable ticket.
me: ok, thanks.
cop: here you can call this number and they'll tell you how much it is so you can pay it.
me: ok. (i'm not prepaying thsi fucking ticket asshole. i'm going to court, cause you probably won't show thinking i'm gonna prepay it since you know it was bullshit to pull me over)
cop: you know you could have been in a lot of trouble if you had gotten in an accident cause you have had something to drink)
me: really? i didn't know that. (fucking faggot, i'm not gonna get into an accident. and i didnt' run this stop sign. you're just a cunt trying to catch someone riding dirty and you've got the wrong guy.)
cop: here you go be safe. blah blah blah.
me: ok thanks...

the cop the whole time was just trying to give me a DUI. I WAS GUILTY UNTIL I PROVED MYSELF INNOCENT. fucking faggot.

 

^^Norfolk cop?

 

So you were supposed to be the DD and you were drinking and driving? That's exactly what we are talking about. You might not think you were impaired, but you were.

My post was concerning the people who are innocent or trying to act responsibly and get arrested and convicted. You were caught driving after drinking and are lucky that you got off, or didn't get in a wreck in kill someone.