- Joined
- Jun 2, 2017
Most DUI laws should be lifted.
Yes.
I know your potential knee-jerk response. You might think I’m condoning drunk driving or the lives lost in the act. You might think I’m stupid or naive for entertaining the idea that recklessness should be legal.
But there are three reasons why DUI laws as I know it kinda make me intellectually upset.
First, cops’ reports of apparent intoxication are often arbitrary. Several visits to DUI attorney websites may reveal that you can be charged for as little as:
- Abnormal eye, face, or body movements. Many of these can be normal, everyday behavior for people with autism, motor disorders, etc.
- Slurred or inappropriate speech. Again, this can be part of a condition. Alternatively, it can be just part of a person’s normal speech, whether it’s cultural, regional, generational, etc. One’s ability to speak perfectly smooth Oxford or PBS English has little to do with their ability to operate a motor vehicle.
- Excitability. See the above.
- Inability to follow arbitrary actions to a T, such as recite a given portion of the alphabet and going past a certain letter, or singing instead of speaking it.
- Inability to balance on one leg. See the above portion on motor skills. Driving is something you do sitting down.
- Driving below the speed limits. Someone who lives in an area where only freeways are marked 55mph might intuitively drive 35 on a city road. This can still be a problem but might not suggest as severe of intoxication.
Second, objective chemical tests are flawed.
Roadside breath tests are known to be thrown off by alcohol still in the mouth, and cops are supposed to wait if one consumed the drink immediately before the test, but they might not do that.
The blood tests are made with the assumption that (1) BAC peaks immediately after alcohol is consumed and (2) alcohol leaves the person’s body at a predictable rate. However, BAC can rise after you drink, especially if you had food with your alcohol, meaning a significant spike can happen when the food, alcohol and all enters your small intestine. Gastric emptying rates are slower in women, so that’s something to think about…
Third, the laws are enforced so inconsistently and seem to be based on preventative, hypothetical justice.
Murder and manslaughter by vehicle are already crimes. And DUI is enforced so inconsistently that unless there is a murder, many people get away with this crime on a regular basis.
Imagine someone who now has to completely replan their life, is now in severe debt, is without transportation that can keep them out of potential heatstroke, and now is a Webster’s-textbook criminal, because she had a single margarita with her meal. Fuck that, especially considering that so many people are never caught doing much more. Most of the people who decided to drink went home with a comparable amount of alcohol in their systems.
Does the punishment fit the crime? Isn’t just speeding also a risk? Why does this hypothetical warrant a more severe punishment? Especially considering that a poor, young, or unestablished person might feel the effects of it more strongly. One little margarita changed my friend’s life for good. It might have cost her a potential career as an animator. I don’t even think she’s an alcoholic per se, any more than your average joe who enjoys a beer every once in a while.
The law is an excuse for police officers’ synapses to deny their power by offloading its apparent source onto a bunch of sacred squiggles suggesting sounds that give their very biased discretions said power. These words have no more meaning than we allow them to have, and I don’t think they convey truth itself as much as they convey whatever the dominant culture considers worth compartmentalizing and talking about. Fuck this discretionary worship of THUH LAAA based on flimsy science. It’s ruining people’s lives claiming it’s fair, while being very unfair in how inconsistently it’s enforced.
Yes.
I know your potential knee-jerk response. You might think I’m condoning drunk driving or the lives lost in the act. You might think I’m stupid or naive for entertaining the idea that recklessness should be legal.
But there are three reasons why DUI laws as I know it kinda make me intellectually upset.
First, cops’ reports of apparent intoxication are often arbitrary. Several visits to DUI attorney websites may reveal that you can be charged for as little as:
- Abnormal eye, face, or body movements. Many of these can be normal, everyday behavior for people with autism, motor disorders, etc.
- Slurred or inappropriate speech. Again, this can be part of a condition. Alternatively, it can be just part of a person’s normal speech, whether it’s cultural, regional, generational, etc. One’s ability to speak perfectly smooth Oxford or PBS English has little to do with their ability to operate a motor vehicle.
- Excitability. See the above.
- Inability to follow arbitrary actions to a T, such as recite a given portion of the alphabet and going past a certain letter, or singing instead of speaking it.
- Inability to balance on one leg. See the above portion on motor skills. Driving is something you do sitting down.
- Driving below the speed limits. Someone who lives in an area where only freeways are marked 55mph might intuitively drive 35 on a city road. This can still be a problem but might not suggest as severe of intoxication.
Second, objective chemical tests are flawed.
Roadside breath tests are known to be thrown off by alcohol still in the mouth, and cops are supposed to wait if one consumed the drink immediately before the test, but they might not do that.
The blood tests are made with the assumption that (1) BAC peaks immediately after alcohol is consumed and (2) alcohol leaves the person’s body at a predictable rate. However, BAC can rise after you drink, especially if you had food with your alcohol, meaning a significant spike can happen when the food, alcohol and all enters your small intestine. Gastric emptying rates are slower in women, so that’s something to think about…
Third, the laws are enforced so inconsistently and seem to be based on preventative, hypothetical justice.
Murder and manslaughter by vehicle are already crimes. And DUI is enforced so inconsistently that unless there is a murder, many people get away with this crime on a regular basis.
Imagine someone who now has to completely replan their life, is now in severe debt, is without transportation that can keep them out of potential heatstroke, and now is a Webster’s-textbook criminal, because she had a single margarita with her meal. Fuck that, especially considering that so many people are never caught doing much more. Most of the people who decided to drink went home with a comparable amount of alcohol in their systems.
Does the punishment fit the crime? Isn’t just speeding also a risk? Why does this hypothetical warrant a more severe punishment? Especially considering that a poor, young, or unestablished person might feel the effects of it more strongly. One little margarita changed my friend’s life for good. It might have cost her a potential career as an animator. I don’t even think she’s an alcoholic per se, any more than your average joe who enjoys a beer every once in a while.
The law is an excuse for police officers’ synapses to deny their power by offloading its apparent source onto a bunch of sacred squiggles suggesting sounds that give their very biased discretions said power. These words have no more meaning than we allow them to have, and I don’t think they convey truth itself as much as they convey whatever the dominant culture considers worth compartmentalizing and talking about. Fuck this discretionary worship of THUH LAAA based on flimsy science. It’s ruining people’s lives claiming it’s fair, while being very unfair in how inconsistently it’s enforced.
