Blogs Dec 30, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Comments

1
I knew this bitch that had one of those in her car... she got away with a lot of crap.
2
This state is so fucking wishy-washy on DUI. Is it a crime or not, Washington State?
3
Reminds me of a scene from 40-Year-Old Virgin, where Steve Carrell meets a very drunk woman at a bar who offers to drive him home. In the car, she pulls out the interlock device, asks him to blow in it and explains "the judge recommended I get this."
4
A third DUI should mean ten years in pokey. Lifetime ban on driving should come with DUI #2.
5
I would just have my sober friend breath into the device.
6
I was never so self-conscious starting a car as when I borrowed a friend's truck to haul some stuff and he showed me how you had to use one of these before it would start. I thought every passerby was noticing, of course.
7
All I can say is, I'm back in the saddle again.
8
I'm not sure of those premises. Another, more likely set of premises would be:
1) A high number of people with revoked licenses are driving anyway.
2) If they're driving anyway, it would be better if they did so while sober
3) Allowing them to drive legally provided that they do so sober means less drunk drivers on the road and less people taking up a taxpayer-funded cell in a jail for driving without a license.

I'm not saying it's a foolproof plan, but I have a hard time believing that this law arises from the state wanting to cut drunk drivers a break. It looks like a harm reduction strategy -- we know that this thing will happen anyway, so let's create a legal option that addresses the major safety concerns and is cheaper than strictly punitive approach.
9
I'm sorry ECB, but regardless of how foolproof these devices are, they will always be more effective at keeping drunk drivers off the road than suspended licenses. I don't even know how you could imagine otherwise.
10
"For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint."
11
Sorry, 8 and 9, but no. It's a cynical move that further dilutes the consequences of DUI while allowing the state to continue collecting revenues based on the citizenry's automobile dependence.
12
Hmmm... Roger Goodman from Kirkland sponsored this fun bit of legislation? Interesting. Maybe because Kirkland has one of the highest rates of DUI arrests in the area (maybe even the state?) and this allows more drunks to pour into Kirkland bars?

Gee, I bet if someone digged, they'd find many Kirkland bar owners contributed to Goodman's last campaign.
13
Unlike ECB, there is a vast majority of workers who need a car- either for travel-heavy jobs like trucking, or for excessive commutes in which buses are unrealistic. These people have little choice but to drive, so allowing them to keep a license in exchange for using this device seems perfectly reasonable to me.

And Cato- What the hell are you doing driving drunk in a car with a sober person instead of having them drive in the first place?
14
Prior restraint is a Free Speech concept.

There's no fundamental right to drive.
15
So Unpaid Commenter, you take it as a matter of fact that drunk driving is acceptable behavior and we should make every accommodation necessary to keep these fine upstanding folks on the road?
16
Getting caught driving on a suspended license should mean confiscation of the vehicle, no matter whose it is, large fines (I'm thinking $10k here), and jail time. If the license was suspended for DUI, getting caught driving on it should be considered another instance of DUI, even if the driver is sober, and the rules in 4 apply.

If people can't drive sober, they need to be taken off the road, period, even if that means long, long jail terms.
17
I've known probably about a half-dozen people who had their licenses suspended for DUI.

NONE of them stopped driving because their license was suspended. Suspending a driver's license is not even close to an effective punishment or deterrent. This law may not solve the problem, but I don't fault them for trying a different route for DUI punishment.
18
not everyone convicted of a DUI is a multiple time offender, or an evil person that wants to mow down innocent bystanders without facing the consequences. what this law will do is to give those convicted of a DUI an alternative to driving illegally every day when they still need to go to their jobs. (how else are they supposed pay off the thousands in legal and court fees they are responsible for when convicted of a DUI?)
19
"This law may not solve the problem, but I don't fault them for trying a different route for DUI punishment."


Hernandez, your own statement itself defines the problem here. Instead of sticking to hard consequences for a damn serious offense, the state just keeps wiggling and looking for ways to "punish" without really doing so in order to keep car-related revenues flowing. And you know at least 6 people who have had DUIs? Really?

20
#11, jail time is punishment for DUI, not license suspension.

Suspending the license was always just a worthless attempt to keep drunk drivers off the road, and the breathalyzer devices are way more effective.
21
@19: The "Really?" meme was overplayed years ago. Come up with something original.

It's been well proven that a suspended license is no deterrent to most drivers. I may have doubts about this proposal, but at least someone is coming up with new ideas. You seem to favor continuing our currently ineffective practices.
22
laterite, I'm not condoning the behavior, I'm being realistic.

Urban sprawl has created a culture in which driving is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. I don't agree with allowing for 3 DUIs, but I think this should apply to first time, and theoretically, only one-time offenders.
23
That said, the actual punishment for DUI (the ones drunk driving assholes actually care about and can't avoid, like jail time and fines) should be increased, but stop pretending like suspending a license ever punished anyone.
24
Yeah, kyd @18, my heart tugs for those poor convicted drunk drivers and their burden of legal fees. If only I could see things their way! Sorry, but this is a crime of deliberation and intent. No one can "accidentally" get drunk and then drive a car. I would have more sympathy for someone who robs a store out of short-term financial desperation, or a dumb kid who gets caught up with some friends and ends up as part of a drug bust.


Now, I know alcoholism can play a role in this, and that's definitely a mitigating factor. But if you're at the point where you acknowledge your disease, and have had the opportunity for treatment and thus recognition and avoidance of situations involving alcohol consumption, and STILL do this, well, I can't really sympathize with you any longer.

25
Yes, I agree with you w7ngman, wholeheartedly. rjh, the ineffectiveness does start with license suspension, followed by this proposal to get around even that. That's the problem here. Oh, sorry for using a "played out" meme, I guess.
26
Why the hell does every suburban bar have a parking lot? These need to be outlawed.
27
Driving is a right, not a privilege.

Now get off my sidewalk, bikers!
28
@24 Can't say I condone the practice of driving drunk, but you have to realize that no one does so on purpose... The first things effected by alcohol are the judgement and reasoning centers of the brain.
29
"Urban sprawl has created a culture in which driving is no longer a luxury, but a necessity."

Oh for fuck's sake. Please stop with your bitch-ass whining about poor drunk drivers who can't afford to be without wheels. If their cars are so important, the solution is simple: DON'T FUCKING DRIVE DRUNK.
30
Of course people drive drunk on purpose. If you drive to a bar, you're drunk driving on purpose and should be locked up.
31
Ok, everyone, I really get frustrated at all this only because drunk driving is quite possibly the most avoidable crime imaginable, combined with having the most potentially lethal consequences, and thus anyone who commits it has to either have a preexisting mental condition or imbalance, or is pretty much just being a willful asshole. And I suppose my comment @2 has answered itself. The state is wishy-washy because people themselves are wishy-washy on this topic. Anyone who takes something resembling a hard stance on drunk driving is excoriated and all sorts of excuses are thrown up in the air, while much lesser crimes are given much less leeway. And now I'm off my soapbox.
32
@29,

Why doesn't this apply to other aspects of life?

If you're native american don't drink alcohol because of the genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Because if you know something has a propensity for bad consequences, don't undertake the action in question.

Oh, but that crosses a line of decency and racism because admitting that native americans have problems with substance abuse due to genetics is wrong.
33
Here's a better question: Why don't ALL cars come with a breathalyzer device? Sure the devices we have now are clunky and inconvenient, but I'm sure a more convenient solution could be devised (say, built directly into the front of a steering wheel) if automakers where required to research better solutions.

After all, we require all new cars to include seat belts, airbags and lights for safety reasons, why not this...?
34
I recall reading one news article about someone who had one of those things installed in their car due to prior DWIs and was caught trying to get their kid to blow into it. As I remember it, the kid freaked because they didn't want to be in the car with drunken mom behind the wheel so they called 911.

I had the bejesus scared out of me by those Highway Safety Films they showed us in high school. Signal 30. Mechanized Death. To this day I cannot fathom how anyone gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and why drunk driving isn't treated more severely by the courts. Every New Year's Eve I say a little prayer for all the people I know that they'll make it to New Year's day alive.

I appreciate the urge to find a technological solution, and who knows, maybe some day cars will have the smarts built into them to detect when the driver is incapacitated in some way, and be able to safe themselves. But in the meantime I would suggest that if there are a lot of people out there driving on licenses suspended because of prior DWI convictions, that the problem is they're not afraid enough of the consequences. Maybe that's harsh, but Christ take a look at the photos of drunk driver wreckage sometime.

Why are drug users treated more harshly by the courts then drunk drivers? It doesn't make sense. I'll bet if you cleared out the jails of people incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses, you could find room for the folks caught driving on suspended licenses. They wouldn't be on the roads then.

35
Suspending the license does not really deter folks from driving (just look at all those repeat offenders who are caught behind the wheel!), so this is a practical attempt to limit the drunks from driving. It's better than what they do now (remove the license and just tell them not to drive).
36
Re: parking lots at bars, not everyone goes to a bar with the intention of racking up a 0.08 BAC. Also there are DDs to consider.
37
@4 -- I agree with the mandatory jail time for dui drivers. And I agree with confiscation of a vehicle for dui offenders if they get caught driving while their license is suspsended, but the state already tried the impound rule and it had consequences for the poorest of the population. Most people have a suspended licenses for unpaid tickets - not dui.

Police stop older, beat up cars because they're supposed warrant wagons.

Most poor people drive older, beat up cars and don't fix the things wrong with them because they can't afford it. If you take the only method of transportation away from people who work two jobs just to stay afloat, they lose their job, and their house, etc etc.

Because people living in poverty live so close to the line of homelessness, the state used that logic to cease impounding cars for DWLS in the 3rd degree.

I'm all for punishing stupid selfish behavior like a dui, but not everyone with a suspended license.
38
So what policy would do the best job of preventing negligent property damage, injury, and manslaughter?
39
@37: Easy fix - if you are stopped while driving with a suspended license due to DUI, your car is confiscated. If it's due to unpaid tickets, no change from the current laws.
40
Your snarky attitude, if you want to call it that, toward this idea is akin to criticizing needle distribution for heroin addicts. It's a harm reduction strategy based on common sense. Only people with irrational grudges against alcoholics (or in your case, cars) fail to see the logic in this plan.
41
drunk driving is quite possibly the most avoidable crime imaginable, combined with having the most potentially lethal consequences, and thus anyone who commits it has to either have a preexisting mental condition or imbalance, or is pretty much just being a willful asshole.


Okay, so you know that driving while talking on a cellphone raises one's chance of an accident an equivalent amount to driving while impaired, right? Would you support a similarly punitive "throw them in jail and take away their car" approach to those who drive while talking on their cell? Would you apply the same rhetoric to that instance? If not, allow me to suggest that you are falling prey to the Puritanical impulse to punish those who engage in "immoral" behavior such as drinking, an impulse that values that kind of punishment as an end to itself.

In my lifetime the trend has been an across-the-board increase in the severity of penalties for drunk driving offenses. Initially these did yield substantial reductions in accidents, but my understanding is that the strictly punitive approach has yielded diminishing returns past the initial statistical bump. If the statistics on this idea are sound -- if it's been tried elsewhere and resulted in fewer repeat offenses among the group that had the breathalyzers put in their car -- then I would support it as a relatively cost-effective means of bringing down the number of accidents.

I understand the impulse to punish those who do Bad Things -- your posts and Fnarf's do a great job of summing up the rhetoric for that position -- but I prefer solutions that actually achieve the intended effect to solutions that make me feel better. And if you wouldn't apply the same reasoning to somebody talking on the phone that you are to people drinking, then it isn't really about safety, it's about moral superiority. If you don't refer to people who talk on their self-phones as "willful assholes" and murderers, then I submit that your outrage is illuminatingly selective.

Again, if the stats support it I see no inherent problem with this law. Fewer drunks on road = fewer traffic fatalities.

Hell, maybe all cars should come with built-in cell jammers too.
42
@37, @39: so your argument is, poor people shouldn't have to pay their parking fines? Fuck that. If parking fines are a serious burden to you, you'd think that you'd take extra precautions to PARK LEGALLY. Encouraging people to believe that the law doesn't apply to them, for whatever reason, is a large part of how you end up with George Bush in the White House, among other things.

If you absolutely cannot or will not follow the rules of the road, you should not be permitted to drive on them. PERIOD.
43
Well, the state is starting to institute harsher and harsher penalties for cell-phone use while driving, phenomenal for something that has not been in popular usage nor racked up the body count as long as drunk driving has (Not to say cell-phone driving isn't dangerous). I imagine the first ever car ride to have been to/from a party with imbibers. I also have no problem with drinking, believe me, and I do enjoy pot (Oh no, illegal!) so there's really no Puritanism running in my veins. But the fact remains that anywhere along the "hey, I drove here, hey, I'll have some drinks, hey, I'll get in the car, it's only a short drive home" chain of events, there is ample opportunity to stop or be stopped.


And again, my problem isn't just the act in and of itself, it's also that the state is willing to be complicit in easing the punishment in order to keep car-dependent revenues flowing in. There are escalating penalties for driving with a suspended license as well; why take away that chain of consequences from someone who's committed a DUI offense already?

44
Has anyone actually been charged under the new cell-phone law? They can't pull you over for it, but they can add on a charge if they pull you over for something else, in theory, but has this actually happened? I see cell-phone drivers just as much as I ever did, or more. I hardly call that "harsh" or "harsher".
45
Well, I guess I used "harsher" in the sense that there is are penalties now on the books versus none at all, say, 5 years ago.


Also, I just noticed this in the Times article, and am not sure to attribute it to the reporter or the state legislator, but notice that the story's lead lists the legislator's intent as "aimed at reducing the number of people who drive with a suspended license", not "reduce the number of drunk drivers."

46
@42: I didn't say poor people shouldn't have penalties for not paying their parking tickets. I said that for people who are pulled over with a suspended license, those whose license was suspended for a DUI should have ADDITIONAL penalties. Everyone else would pay the same penalties they do under the current laws.

You're usually so alert about straw men. Why are you building one from what I wrote?
47
A good friend of mine had a husband. He got behind the wheel drunk one too many times (he'd never been caught). He killed another motorist in an accident that night. He was given a 30 year sentence, leaving his wife and kids to fend for themselves.

No device or law or punishment would have saved his family or the one on the other side of the accident. The only thing that could have prevented that is disencouraging dui in the first place to the extent that he wouldn't have made that choice. Making the consequences more lenient will not accomplish this.
48
i don't feel sorry for people that have to pay DUI fines. i just think its counter-intuitive to charge those fines then take away people's ability to make money (because they can't drive to work). this law seems like a totally reasonable solution for first time offenders to me. repeat offenders, not so much.

and...WHERE are all the cabs when you need to go home at the end of the night? when my friend and i did not want to drive home at the end of a friday night, we had to walk around belltown and downtown for 45 minutes trying to find a cab home. why don't the buses run later? annoying, especially when you are trying to do the right thing.
49
@47,

maybe the wife deserved it given her permissive nature towards his drink driving.
50
You can't get a DUI on a bike.
51
@43: Nobody's arguing that drinking and driving is a bad idea. My point is that if this law works the way it's intended, it will reduce drinking and driving. You keep saying that its purpose is to keep car-dependent revenues rolling in, but I don't understand how you know that. It seems like conjecture -- do you have some evidence to support that claim?

And from the fact that you consider an absolutely toothless law about cell-phone use to be "harsh" and your complete absence of equivalent outrage on that kind of behavior, I feel like you must at least understand my point; I think at least some of people's anger about drunk driving is related to concepts of sin or some equivalent to that idea -- that those who do this are simply bad people and we should throw the book at them. Unfortunately that kind of anger drives a lot of bad policy in this country -- people tend to prefer punitive laws even when less-punitive laws achieve better results. We love our villains.

No matter what law gets passed, people will still die in traffic accidents. Laws can only hope to bring down that figure.
52
Because there are also penalties for driving with a suspended license in and of itself, and this proposed law would further remove the direct consequences for a DUI. Instead of suspending the license, which is intended to deter the offender, and carries its own subsequent penalties, now the state is saying, welcome back to the road, where the person will be free to continue pumping gas tax and car tab revenue into the state coffers while being "punished" with this contraption. Am I being cynical? You're damn right I am.
53
@12: "I bet if someone digged (sic), they'd find many Kirkland bar owners contributed to Goodman's last campaign."

I'll skip debating the merits of this, but will respond to Dave's ad hominem attack.

Actually, what you will find is donations from drug policy reform types of all stripes -- doctors, lawyers, cops, judges, academics and activists.

Roger Goodman has headed the King County Bar Association's Drug Policy project for years and is widely known nationally and internationally as one of the sharpest and most creative thinkers on the issue of drug policy.

His approach is eminently pragmatic and focuses on the most effective and efficient ways of reducing the social (and personal) harm caused by substance use. This law is just one example of his approach.

Oh yeah, he's smarter than all the commenters here combined.
54
Typically I agree with Erica's anti-car rhetoric, but this is just stupid.

Suspending someone's license does absolutely nothing. Once people are already breaking the law by driving, they don't tend to care if they are sober or not.

Creating a process in which people with drinking and driving problems are able to drive, but ideally only while sober, will prevent the majority of repeat drunk driving offenders. This is smart legislation. I hate having to drive my car (sober or drunk), and would love to have mass transit alternatives. But that doesn't mean that we can suspend licenses and expect that'll make any difference at all.

Great legislation. In the future when we all float in mass-transit pods, we can then go back to throwing the book at drunks.
55
@50 Yes you can. Don't drink and bike!

Please wait...

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