NTSB recommends BAC of .05

[Barrister]

There are actually very few career paths where DUI is an immediate bar to employment, or even a significant negative.

Being convicted of an impaired would ruin my career path.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's about shaping the culture.

We actually have come a long way.  30 years ago people routinely drove home while blitzed.  Now people are very conscious of drinking and driving - yet the problem still persists.

The thinking used to be "it's okay to drink and drive".  Now it's "you can't drink too much and drive".  The problem is people are pretty poor estimators of what "too much" is.  I've seen a lot of files where to be sure the driver is the most sober one in the vehicle, but they're still nicely over the legal limit.

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive".  And lowering the limit to 50 is a big part of that.

That's unreasonable--people should be able to have a drink for dinner. Just because some of you are stupid teetotalers hung up on various psychological/religious problems with alcohol you should not be able to imprint your personal morality on everyone just because you're too much of a loser to have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

You make good points that laws against certain BAC are easier to enforce, I agree with you there--BAC is measurable while other forms of impairment are more difficult to measure. But to me, that's totally beside the point, the question should be "what level of impairment are we willing to accept in drivers?" If the answer is legitimately zero, then I want the same penalties for talking on a cell phone--in any form, as you'd get for DUI. I want bluetooth hands free banned from cars, radios removed from cars, and I want drinking, eating, or etc prohibited while driving as well.

[garbon]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive".  And lowering the limit to 50 is a big part of that.

In non-urban areas, that must make going out a pain/costly.

[OttoVonBismarck]

This isn't the same as blood/breath draws, which are evidence collections (and should require a search warrant IMO.)

Terrible idea.  Blood / breath demands are very time sensitive.  Alcohol is being eliminated by the accused every minute that goes by.  Obtaining a warrant takes time.  Much better to take the sample and let a judge rule after the fact whether the taking was warranted.

Rights are not there to be put aside whenever they are inconvenient for criminal investigations.  This is standard and understood here on basically every other issue, unless you've got "hot pursuit" or "exigent circumstances" you generally need a warrant and I'd argue nothing about DUI would realistically qualify as an exigent circumstance if not for all the kooky "exceptions" to standard Constitutional interpretation the SCOTUS has promulgated in regard to DUI cases.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There are actually very few career paths where DUI is an immediate bar to employment, or even a significant negative.

Being convicted of an impaired would ruin my career path.

In the U.S. speaking from experience it would only affect probably less than 2% of people in their careers. Like I said, it's no bar to government employment, high security clearance, it's not a bar to transportation jobs (the field it would be the largest concern in), isn't a bar to getting a teaching job, and virtually no corporations would decline to hire over DUI. Now, this all is assuming "past DUI" as in a few years old. Someone with a fresh one will have trouble anywhere, but that's true for any misdemeanor. Misdemeanor drug possession is way different though, misdemeanor possession of marijuana here is a true black mark for many government jobs and private sector jobs alike.

Here in Virginia, Commonwealth's Attorneys are elected officials who oversee criminal prosecution in their jurisdictions (typically a county.) Their Assistants/Associates are civil servants who do the actual prosecutorial work. We had one here who had five DUIs on his record while working for the CA before he was fired (his fifth one in the newspaper was when he got the can.) So it's not a bar to a similar career path here.

[Barrister]

It's about shaping the culture.

We actually have come a long way.  30 years ago people routinely drove home while blitzed.  Now people are very conscious of drinking and driving - yet the problem still persists.

The thinking used to be "it's okay to drink and drive".  Now it's "you can't drink too much and drive".  The problem is people are pretty poor estimators of what "too much" is.  I've seen a lot of files where to be sure the driver is the most sober one in the vehicle, but they're still nicely over the legal limit.

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive".  And lowering the limit to 50 is a big part of that.

That's unreasonable--people should be able to have a drink for dinner. Just because some of you are stupid teetotalers hung up on various psychological/religious problems with alcohol you should not be able to imprint your personal morality on everyone just because you're too much of a loser to have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

You make good points that laws against certain BAC are easier to enforce, I agree with you there--BAC is measurable while other forms of impairment are more difficult to measure. But to me, that's totally beside the point, the question should be "what level of impairment are we willing to accept in drivers?" If the answer is legitimately zero, then I want the same penalties for talking on a cell phone--in any form, as you'd get for DUI. I want bluetooth hands free banned from cars, radios removed from cars, and I want drinking, eating, or etc prohibited while driving as well.

And in fact with a 50 limit you can have a drink with your dinner.  Unless you're a petite female you can have two.

The problem is a 50 driver can quickly become a 100, and then a 150.

Using bluetooth is not that same kind of slippery slope.  We don't need to crack down on someone changing the radio station so that we can also prevent someone from recording a new song while driving down the road.

[alfred russel]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive". 

Why?

[OttoVonBismarck]

You don't have to crack down on changing the radio station, that's hard to enforce. Just require cars not be sold with radios. In many States your car is subject to a mandatory annual inspection, if a radio is found installed after-market in the car, it fails inspection. If you get pulled over for some other reason and a radio is found installed in the car, you're punished the same as you would be for DUI. Or you can make them like DVD players in the front driving area, they have to be installed so that they are non-operational when the car is out of park or you're in violation of the law.

[Barrister]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive". 

Why?

Because in 2010 1,082 Canadians were killed by drunk drivers.  63,821 Canadians were injured by drunk drivers.

http://www.madd.ca/madd2/en/impaired_driving/impaired_driving_statistics.html

[ulmont]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive". 

Why?

Because in 2010 1,082 Canadians were killed by drunk drivers.  63,821 Canadians were injured by drunk drivers.

http://www.madd.ca/madd2/en/impaired_driving/impaired_driving_statistics.html

If only you had laws about vehicular homicide or reckless driving to weed out the drunk drivers that actually hurt someone else, as opposed to a driver who made it home safely...

[Barrister]

There are actually very few career paths where DUI is an immediate bar to employment, or even a significant negative.

Being convicted of an impaired would ruin my career path.

In the U.S. speaking from experience it would only affect probably less than 2% of people in their careers. Like I said, it's no bar to government employment, high security clearance, it's not a bar to transportation jobs (the field it would be the largest concern in), isn't a bar to getting a teaching job, and virtually no corporations would decline to hire over DUI. Now, this all is assuming "past DUI" as in a few years old. Someone with a fresh one will have trouble anywhere, but that's true for any misdemeanor. Misdemeanor drug possession is way different though, misdemeanor possession of marijuana here is a true black mark for many government jobs and private sector jobs alike.

Here in Virginia, Commonwealth's Attorneys are elected officials who oversee criminal prosecution in their jurisdictions (typically a county.) Their Assistants/Associates are civil servants who do the actual prosecutorial work. We had one here who had five DUIs on his record while working for the CA before he was fired (his fifth one in the newspaper was when he got the can.) So it's not a bar to a similar career path here.

That's all well and good - but you are talking about people who have an impaired in the past.

A lot of the people I prosecute risk losing their jobs not because of the conviction, but by losing their license. Yes maybe they can get it back again in a year, but that's a hard sell.

[Barrister]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive". 

Why?

Because in 2010 1,082 Canadians were killed by drunk drivers.  63,821 Canadians were injured by drunk drivers.

http://www.madd.ca/madd2/en/impaired_driving/impaired_driving_statistics.html

If only you had laws about vehicular homicide or reckless driving to weed out the drunk drivers that actually hurt someone else, as opposed to a driver who made it home safely...

But you can't.

We have laws against all kinds of things that are only potentially risky.  The reason it is against the law to carry a concealed weapon isn't because carrying that weapon is risky in and of itself - it's because it might be used.  Same for unsafe storage of firearms laws.

[ulmont]

But you can't.

You can't prosecute a drunk driver for vehicular homicide?  I doubt that.

We have laws against all kinds of things that are only potentially risky.  The reason it is against the law to carry a concealed weapon isn't because carrying that weapon is risky in and of itself - it's because it might be used.  Same for unsafe storage of firearms laws.

I'm not sure that analogies to restrictive firearms laws are going to be your best argument for harsh DUI laws here, Barrister... 

[DGuller]

Is doubling a reason to give a DUI? I think not, but obviously it is a judgment call. Talking on a cell phone, texting while driving, and speeding all increase the risk too. Some of those are against the law, but very rarely do they have the draconian punishments associated with a DUI.

That's a good point.
"Moderate secondary tasks" also double accident risk according to the NHTSA.
That would include things like eating, inserting/removing a CD, combing hair, dialing a handheld, or "looking at an external object" (sorry Caliga).  It also would presumably include actively using a GPS to navigate although the NHTSA study didn't break that out specifically.
None of those activities are necessary but yet most of them would not be considered serious candidates for regulation.

How is the risk defined on a time scale?  Are you at double the risk of a crash for the entire trip if you play with your GPS once during an hour-long trip, or are you at double the risk only for the few seconds you're playing with it?  It's very hard to compare such behaviors with drunk drivers (who are obviously drunk through the whole trip) without knowing the exposure base of these stated risks.

[alfred russel]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive". 

Why?

Because in 2010 1,082 Canadians were killed by drunk drivers.  63,821 Canadians were injured by drunk drivers.

http://www.madd.ca/madd2/en/impaired_driving/impaired_driving_statistics.html

Those people were presumably drinking more than one or two drinks. If you want to hammer people that drive while seriously impaired, I'm with you. I'm just not convinced there is an epidemic of serious accident and injury caused by people who have had minimal alcohol intake (which would be impacted by the prohibition you want to move toward).