How many OWI's are too many?
 

This guy just got arrested for his 11th. This time, he is in jail until his trial...maybe they'll keep him for a while.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/traffic-stop-high-beams-leads-211319685.html


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Back in 2020 or so I went around browsing LEO cams looking for attempts to save people from the results of a particular drug.

I tangentially ran into a video where a lady slipped her cuffs, locked the officer out of the car, swapped over to the drivers seat, and scooted off.

In looking up records on the embarrassing incident this wasn't her first arrest or first stolen car.

She sure could fake cry when the officers were looking her way.

Despite stealing a patrol car, driving while high, and being a multi time offender, the system let her out again a few weeks later. I was looking at her latest arrest and it was for murder. If memory serves she'd already been out and in again before the murder.

I think I read that in most of Europe it's one and done. You get your DL taken away permenantly?
11 is rediculous

When the judge decides to take the DL away....most of the time, it doesn't make a difference.
They just drive without.

I don't know what the answer is.


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Yeah, taking the DL of a habitual offender is ineffectual because they just drive without a license.

I remember they tried years back hooking up a breathalyzer to the ignition of an offenders car.

Never heard if that worked....a person could just get a friend to blow into it to get the car started.

.11 eh? No wonder his speech was slurred.
When my friend went through RCMP school in Regina, one of the lessons involved putting the trainees in a room with alcohol of their choice and a breathalyzer. My friend was amazed how many drinks it took to get him to .08, the legal limit in most of Canada. He said he considered himself impared long before he got to .08. My friend was not a big man.

Best
Les

Michigan is .08 also.
I wonder if I would pass it after 2-3 beers.

I'm sure that there are folks that get around it that way, but I think the repercussions if you're caught are considerable.
Per everything that I've ever seen, more than 2 is enough to get most men of an avg size to blow the limit. I'm pretty sure the .08 limit is pretty universal, at least in the US. < edit > just checked and confirmed "All 50 states and the District of Columbia have per se laws defining it as a crime to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at or above a proscribed level, 0.08 percent."

This chart seems to support the "more than 2 drinks" theory. I'm sure there are lots of factors that change things, time it takes, how full your stomach is, even individual body function, etc...
https://www.washingtonalcoholtrainin.../bac-chart.png

It seems that .08% is not uncommon, and about the max. Lots of countries have lower limits, 0.05%, 0.03%, 0.02% and several 0 tolerance places with a 0% limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_law_by_country

I like craft IPA beer and rarely is it less than 7% ABV and it's normally a pint.
So, if I'm driving, I never get a second one. I think two would easily put me over the legal limit with IPA's.

Not if they're of the Backwoods Bastard variety.

No, I mean drinking at a bar and grille. I've never seen BB at any of those, but some have IPA's that are higher yet. I was at one in Kazoo that had on tap 'Two Hearted Double'....which I think is 11%.(the same as BB)

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I had a Goose Island Stout a few weeks ago that was 13%

Death by car world wide is about 1.4 million a year...add concomitant injuries and the mayhem gets stark.

This is every year.

The OWI issues can be fixed with technology but, inextricably, there doesn't seem to be momentum.

Same with Operating While Distracted or Operating While Lazy (OWL).

It would be easy to solve with the resolve to do it.

The irony is that someone who's suspended, and really abides by it, knows they won't be driving, so they can drink more. If they're already prone to alcoholism, this exacerbates the problem. When I drove for Uber and Lyft, plenty of folks I picked up had a road soda in their hand and sometimes even put a small ice chest in the trunk. They knew they wouldn't be driving.

Another one I drove had to get weekly piss tests and the court made him go to a place in Mesa, even though he lived in N. Scottsdale. Very long drive, at least 45 min with no traffic. It was almost like they were trying to make him drive or no show. Seems to me they need to do regular piss tests of people in the program and make it at a lab right by their house or work, so there's no excuse for missing it. Eff that up and it's sit in jail for a while.

The only way to keep a habitual drinker from driving, is to put them in jail or if they kill themselves. Unfortunately, they are quickly released after an arrest, only to repeat it over and over.

Now it's OWI?

WTF? It used to be DWI - Driving While Intoxicated. Then for some reason it changed to DUI - Driving Under the Influence. Now it's OWI - Operating While Intoxicated?
I propose we adopt a universal DWFU and call it done. It could encompass drunks, druggies, road raging psychopaths, hormonal womens and basically anybody driving badly.

But wait...there's more.

The I is no longer intoxicated.

OWI is Operating While Impaired.

Even better!! There are all kinds of impairments! Being stupid, using your phone, talking to a passenger, a passenger talking to you, holding a goldfish in a plastic bag in your lap, driving with one hand for ANY reason, driving with a ferret sleeping on your shoulder, man, the list is endless.

And driving without enough sleep.

With the delays of an intoxication check offsite the levels might have fallen off or they may not even know which intoxicant to look for out of many.
The new definition makes a stop easier to hold up in court.
A spot check of capability on site is enough to meet the definition on its own.

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These days they install a recording camera with facial recognition and real time GPS location software. So they know who blew, who is driving when and where to. Also, if the driver is restricted to driving to and from work between such and such hours on such and such days the car can be rendered inop outside those parameters.

In addition, the driver can be on probation such that ANY infraction of ANY law or of any other condition of that probation the car can be disabled remotely.

By the way, many new cars come with most of that stuff already installed in addition to cloud-based black boxes, event data recorders and dash cams the control of which you DO NOT have.

If you also carry a smart phone (and who doesn’t?) your every single movement, destination and conversation is monitored.

^^^ That sounds fool-proof....unless the guy decides to buy a 'beater' car when drinking.

I have heard that they can track your speed and braking on most newer cars if you are involved in an accident. It's all stored in your cars computer.

On-board data storage is already old school.

Now the data is sent to the cloud. That way, if the car is totally demolished stolen or even disappeared the data survives. In addition, access to the data in the cloud does not even require possession or control of the car itself. The manufacturers are already saying, ‘All your data are belong to us.’

Such cars will potentially have much lower insurance costs because the data can relieve the insurance companies of their duty to pay. Also, eventually, the driving habits of the insured will be the determinate of one’s insurance costs rather than one’s actual driving record. The insured’s data will record the frequency and location of ‘harsh acceleration’, ‘harsh braking’, ‘hard cornering’ and erratic driving. Each incident can count as a demerit even if there are no accidents or citations. Right now, one’s driving habits can actually be recorded such that no one (including the cops) even has to witness your driving violations, which would include any speeding on two-lane country roads with no traffic in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon anywhere on earth. Think red light cameras on steroids AND YOU CANNOT TURN IT OFF.

2019, my one and only at 0.089, a kid in our weekend class (in lieu of jail) was under the limit but was nailed doing something silly (like the ferret on his shoulder). I'm assuming the overall punishment was not as severe but roughly paralleled a traditional drunk driving punishment.

Never had one....but probably should have in the early 70's when they lowered the drinking age to 18.
Those days, the cops were more likely to just dump your beer or send you home with a warning instead of giving a sobriety test.