DWI Question

[UpstateNYUPSer]

Filth, please don't hold back, tell us how you really feel about the ACLU.

Actually, I was watching the news Sunday night and they were talking about the "military style" road blocks that were set up in the rougher parts of Washington, DC. and, sure enough, some ACLU lawyer equated the road blocks to the road blocks over in Iraq and promised legal action.

[mittam]

3 dui's you should never ever be able to get a license back period not only should the supe letting you go into driving be held accountable but the judge letting you be allowed to ever drive again should be accountable also. Hold the judges acountable for multiple dui drivers and the rate of multiple offences would decline. I believe in giving a person a break or getting them help but 3 times and you are'nt getting it pal. hope you ain't in ohio it's easy to prove fear for life!!!!!

[Rantmuse]

[quote=mittam;351275]3 dui's you should never ever be able to get a license back period not only should the supe letting you go into driving be held accountable but the judge letting you be allowed to ever drive again should be accountable also.quote]

Agreed. Its far too high a liability risk. Having said that, what does everyone feel about current drivers who get DUI's? Should they be terminated? Relegated to non driving positions? Or, should we maintain the status quo: keeping it hush-hush in the company until the driver is issued a Cinderella license upon adjudication?

[trplnkl]

IMO, the DUI/DWI situation is separate and unrelated to driving a package car unless the driver was drinking and driving a UPS vehicle. If a judge sees fit to re-issue a DL to the offender then he can drive for UPS. Drinking on the job is a different story though, one shot and your gone, again IMO.
The company would suffer no more liability for allowing a legally licensed driver with past DUIs (provided the driver is sober when working)than a legally licensed driver that had a past speeding ticket.
A person that has a DUI, off the job, and regains a legal license and is insurable should not be punished again until he breaks the law again.
And NO, I have never gotten a DUI/DWI.

[newworker]

Originally Posted by alister

dumb@ss (aka newworker) is correct. in 2006 only 32 percent of fatalities was caused by drunk drivers but this was not always the case. the percentage has been dropping since 1982 when it was 60% of the deaths.

http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-dr...tatistics.html

duMb@ss (aka alister) is correct, I was correct. And I wonder how many of those fatalities were caused by a legally sober driver loosing control of their vehicle and plowing into a driver that had had a few drinks but was fully under control.

And some other idiots ( I normally wouldn't name call but from reading this thread I guess it's okay) actually think it's better to be killed by a sober driver than a drunk driver lol

WELCOME TO THE NANNY STATE!

Legalize Drunk Driving

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.


[Note: This column was written before the news came out last night that George W. Bush was arrested on a DUI charge 24 years ago. He was stopped in Maine for driving too slowly and briefly veering onto the shoulder of the road]

Clinton has signed a bill passed by Congress that orders the states to adopt new, more onerous drunk-driving standards or face a loss of highway funds. That’s right: the old highway extortion trick. Sure enough, states are already working to pass new, tighter laws against Driving Under the Influence, responding as expected to the feds’ ransom note.

Now the feds declare that a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent and above is criminal and must be severely punished. The National Restaurant Association is exactly right that this is absurdly low. The overwhelming majority of accidents related to drunk driving involve repeat offenders with blood-alcohol levels twice that high. If a standard of 0.1 doesn’t deter them, then a lower one won’t either.

But there’s a more fundamental point. What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment. The crime is having the wrong substance in your blood. Yet it is possible, in fact, to have this substance in your blood, even while driving, and not commit anything like what has been traditionally called a crime.

What have we done by permitting government to criminalize the content of our blood instead of actions themselves? We have given it power to make the application of the law arbitrary, capricious, and contingent on the judgment of cops and cop technicians. Indeed, without the government’s "Breathalyzer," there is no way to tell for sure if we are breaking the law.

Sure, we can do informal calculations in our head, based on our weight and the amount of alcohol we have had over some period of time. But at best these will be estimates. We have to wait for the government to administer a test to tell us whether or not we are criminals. That’s not the way law is supposed to work. Indeed, this is a form of tyranny.

Now, the immediate response goes this way: drunk driving has to be illegal because the probability of causing an accident rises dramatically when you drink. The answer is just as simple: government in a free society should not deal in probabilities. The law should deal in actions and actions alone, and only insofar as they damage person or property. Probabilities are something for insurance companies to assess on a competitive and voluntary basis.

This is why the campaign against "racial profiling" has intuitive plausibility to many people: surely a person shouldn’t be hounded solely because some demographic groups have higher crime rates than others. Government should be preventing and punishing crimes themselves, not probabilities and propensities. Neither, then, should we have driver profiling, which assumes that just because a person has quaffed a few he is automatically a danger.

In fact, driver profiling is worse than racial profiling, because the latter only implies that the police are more watchful, not that they criminalize race itself. Despite the propaganda, what’s being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself. A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn’t done any harm.

Of course, enforcement is a serious problem. A sizeable number of people leaving a bar or a restaurant would probably qualify as DUI. But there is no way for the police to know unless they are tipped off by a swerving car or reckless driving in general. But the question becomes: why not ticket the swerving or recklessness and leave the alcohol out of it? Why indeed.

To underscore the fact that it is some level of drinking that is being criminalized, government sets up these outrageous, civil-liberties-violating barricades that stop people to check their blood – even when they have done nothing at all. This is a gross attack on liberty that implies that the government has and should have total control over us, extending even to the testing of intimate biological facts. But somehow we put up with it because we have conceded the first assumption that government ought to punish us for the content of our blood and not just our actions.

There are many factors that cause a person to drive poorly. You may have sore muscles after a weight-lifting session and have slow reactions. You could be sleepy. You could be in a bad mood, or angry after a fight with your spouse. Should the government be allowed to administer anger tests, tiredness tests, or soreness tests? That is the very next step, and don’t be surprised when Congress starts to examine this question.

Already, there’s a move on to prohibit cell phone use while driving. Such an absurdity follows from the idea that government should make judgments about what we are allegedly likely to do.

What’s more, some people drive more safely after a few drinks, precisely because they know their reaction time has been slowed and they must pay more attention to safety. We all know drunks who have an amazing ability to drive perfectly after being liquored up. They should be liberated from the force of the law, and only punished if they actually do something wrong.

We need to put a stop to this whole trend now. Drunk driving should be legalized. And please don’t write me to say: "I am offended by your insensitivity because my mother was killed by a drunk driver." Any person responsible for killing someone else is guilty of manslaughter or murder and should be punished accordingly. But it is perverse to punish a murderer not because of his crime but because of some biological consideration, e.g. he has red hair.

Bank robbers may tend to wear masks, but the crime they commit has nothing to do with the mask. In the same way, drunk drivers cause accidents but so do sober drivers, and many drunk drivers cause no accidents at all. The law should focus on violations of person and property, not scientific oddities like blood content.

There’s a final point against Clinton’s drunk-driving bill. It is a violation of states rights. Not only is there is no warrant in the Constitution for the federal government to legislate blood-alcohol content – the 10th amendment should prevent it from doing so. The question of drunk driving should first be returned to the states, and then each state should liberate drunk drivers from the force of the law.

[PassYouBy]

Originally Posted by newworker

duMb@ss (aka alister) is correct, I was correct. And I wonder how many of those fatalities were caused by a legally sober driver loosing control of their vehicle and plowing into a driver that had had a few drinks but was fully under control.

And some other idiots ( I normally wouldn't name call but from reading this thread I guess it's okay) actually think it's better to be killed by a sober driver than a drunk driver lol

WELCOME TO THE NANNY STATE!

AND IT TOOK YOU 15 DAYS TO COME UP WITH THAT?!!! How many days of work did you miss scouring the internet looking for BS to make yourself look correct?

[atatbl]

Originally Posted by newworker

duMb@ss (aka alister) is correct, I was correct. And I wonder how many of those fatalities were caused by a legally sober driver loosing control of their vehicle and plowing into a driver that had had a few drinks but was fully under control.

And some other idiots ( I normally wouldn't name call but from reading this thread I guess it's okay) actually think it's better to be killed by a sober driver than a drunk driver lol

WELCOME TO THE NANNY STATE!

Originally Posted by PassYouBy

AND IT TOOK YOU 15 DAYS TO COME UP WITH THAT?!!! How many days of work did you miss scouring the internet looking for BS to make yourself look correct?

LMAO! You know what the best part is PassYouBy? He used an article from Rockwell. Hey idiot, wikipedia would have been more reliable. Almost every political assertion Rockwell has ever made is scoffed at by political theorists and policy makers on both sides of the fence. It's pretty well known that he is not taken seriously for a very good reason. He is a "shock jock" on paper. Maybe you should have used those 15 days to write your own article. At least the stupidity you would have spewed from your head would have been your own. Instead, you embarrass yourself by posting the most ridiculous source possible.

There is a reason everyone is calling you an idiot and breaking the normal rules of brown cafe...... because sometimes right is right.

[newworker]

if you are all so right and I am so wrong

why are you all so afraid of my view point?

[drewed]

Originally Posted by newworker

if you are all so right and I am so wrong

why are you all so afraid of my view point?

a drunk driving death is a 100% preventable, as are most road deaths. But drinking and driving is a conscious descision to be negligent in your actions that why

[trplnkl]

I agree with Rockwell's theory and I can't agree that all accidents are 100% avoidable, even ones where drunk driving are involved.
There was a case here of a young woman that was "legally" driving drunk, she hit a pedestrian that stepped off the curb in front of her car, killing him. Witnesses said there would have been no way this girl could have avoided the walker, regardless of her blood alcohol content. As it turns out the pedestrian was even drunker than the driver and contributed more to his death than did the driver. She was not speeding, weaving or otherwise driving erratically according to the witnesses. Yet, she is going to prison for causing a death while DUI.

The stats that are used to tell us of the dangers of drinking and driving are manipulated (a common trait of stats). If an accident happens and there is a six pack of Budlite in the back floor board, the police report says that "alcohol may have been a factor", this is added to the stats as an "alcohol related" accident, even if the driver had not been drinking at all. Using Alister's stat that in 2006, 32 percent of fatalities was caused by drunk drivers. This indicates that 68% were caused by sober people. Using stats alone one could conclude that if more people drove drunk, less people would be killed.
Back to Rockwell's column. We have had laws against murder for many centuries. Do we really need a law making it illegal to murder someone of a different ethnicity, calling it a racial hate crime? How long has it been a crime to drive reckless and cause a death? Is there really a need for another law that includes DUI caused deaths? Seems to me we already had that covered.

[Mike Hawk]

Originally Posted by trplnkl

Using Alister's stat that in 2006, 32 percent of fatalities was caused by drunk drivers. This indicates that 68% were caused by sober people. Using stats alone one could conclude that if more people drove drunk, less people would be killed.

The vast majority of drivers drive sober, so of course the statistics will say more fatalities are caused by sober people. In reality the 1% or less that drive drunk cause 32% of the fatalities.

If I drove down the road randomly firing a gun off and killed a bunch of people, the statistics would still say less people get killed by random gunfire on the road that sober auto accidents. Does that make it safe? NO Should it be legal? NO

Would you let a drunk surgeon operate on you? "Itchhh o kay, 99% of fatalities are caushed by sober surgeons." That statistic is most likely true, because surgeons are not dumb enough to practice drunk.

Driving is a privilege not a right, if you want to drive on government property(public roads) you have to abide by government rules set in place to protect innocent people from those that would recklessly endanger their lives.

[trplnkl]

One of my points is that you can make things look different simply by how you use statistics. So the use of stats is no way to prove a point to me.
Another point is that we already have laws to cover reckless driving, we don't need another.

You said: The vast majority of drivers drive sober, so of course the statistics will say more fatalities are caused by sober people. In reality the 1% or less that drive drunk cause 32% of the fatalities.

I'm not even going to challenge you to prove this stat, I don't believe there is a way it can be proven. There is no way anyone would know how many people drive drunk and cause or have no problems. The only drunk drivers you can count are the ones that get caught. Estimates are as shaky as proof as are stats.

[But Benefits Are Great!]

Originally Posted by jay11123

I am having a difficut time getting UPS management to give me a straight answer as to whether I am elligable to qualify to become a part time cover driver. I have had past DWI convictions, 3 to be exact, and I have recently regained my licence. I have spoken with management and I have been told many different things, such as...I have to posess my license for three years and keep it clean for tree years, then I will be elligable to qualify. My shop steward has told me that is wrong, and I am unable to get any answers from our local union business agent. Anyone know whatis right and what is wrong. I am frustrated!!!!!

Back to the original post - No, you will never get a driver position. On paper, requirements are that you need to keep a clean record for three years. Off paper, anyone who reviews your record would be an idiot to put you in a driver position, for obvious reasons. But, if you have reasonable intelligence, you already know this.

If I had a conviction for manslaughter, I would most probably not count on being a judge some day.

To everyone else arguing about DUIs, there is a world of difference between a person making a stupid mistake once and getting caught, and an alchoholic being caught three times. And yes, if you have been caught three times, it means you have driven drunk 300 times and were lucky enough not to get caught, and you are an alchoholic.

[Storm723]

Originally Posted by But Benefits Are Great!

If I had a conviction for manslaughter, I would most probably not count on being a judge some day.

Ummm.... do you think a convicted pedophile, could one day be a teacher? *joking*

[rod]

Originally Posted by Storm723

Ummm.... do you think a convicted pedophile, could one day be a teacher? *joking*

teacher - no

priest- yes

[trplnkl]

Originally Posted by But Benefits Are Great!

And yes, if you have been caught three times, it means you have driven drunk 300 times and were lucky enough not to get caught, and you are an alchoholic.

Another unprovable statement. Yet probably true.