In Australia it’s 0.05
I am over here wondering when it went up to .08 over here because it was .05 when I turned 21.
Mother Against Drunk Driving decided all of it.
Nobody can defend drunk driving, but the fact you give up your rights during a stop should make you angry.
If you get charged with any other crime you are allowed to talk to a lawyer except in drunk driving. You are tried and convicted on the side of the road and the evidence they use to convict you (your breath) isn’t preserved… it just blows away in the wind.
Nobody should be drunk driving but we still need to change the way we handle suspected drunk driver’s
I’m pretty sure that if they find a person drunk they have to take that person to a hospital to get a blood test and accurately gauge the alcohol percentage, the test also stands as proof.
If you were accused of murdering and taken to the hospital for a blood test with a lawyer present people would lose their minds
But suspected drunk drivers it happens all the time without a lawyer present
How many other crimes are directly defined with a time-sensitive impairment?
If they allowed you to both call a lawyer and wait for them to arrive you could arrange for your lawyer to be a) 2+hrs away, b)alseep or c)any other time delaying tactic.
I agree I don’t like the status quo, but if you have a reasonable alternative that still allows them to catch people who are drunk driving, I’m all ears.
It shouldn’t be 0.0%, but 0.08% is quite generous. At 0.02%, it is clearly detectable with equipment but you aren’t likely to notice. Some people also naturally have a constant BAC in the 0.01% range. At 0.05%, you definitely feel it and are twice as likely to cause an accident than sober.
4 beers in an hour is a significant amount. People who drink that much and drive are not hardasses. They are murderers.
Get off the road.
It should most definitely NOT be .00. That would lead to massive abuse by the police as having a sip of cold medicine could land you a dui.
A bit of whipped cream made with vanilla extract could put you over 0% since the extract is mostly alcohol and it isn’t being cooked.
I’d rather it be zero. Walk, public transit, or taxi your way to drinks. Stay in a hotel.
I say this as someone who grew up driving home from the club and such when I most likely should not have been. I know a lot of people who got OMVI/DUI/DWI/whateverYourJurisdictionCallsIt and nearly lost my bandmate.
I recently tried to plan a night out in “the city” and was looking for a hotel since I would like to have a few drinks. I can’t believe how stupid prices are.
A shitty motel is like $400 a night, so you would have to hire a cab already to drive you to a cheaper hotel like 15-20 minutes away.
Nicer hotels are going like $600-$800 a night.
How on earth does anyone afford a vacation for prices like that?
We normally do budget hotels which thankfully are far cheaper than that for where we go. We have to stay (or hire someone to drive our car followed by a taxi to take the driver on) whenever we go into the city since it’s a ~50 minute walk to our station mostly in the dark and in an area with bears.
For people in the city (or nearer stations, I guess), it’s a lot easier than for those of us who live further away.
Get ready to face DUI charges when you take cough medicine, eat some overripe fruit, or have some yogurt, among other things. Trace amounts of alcohol exist in a number of foods, so you could easily fail a 0.0 test by simply eating breakfast.
Don’t cite things on a gotcha response as if it were even momentarily researched.
- Police aren’t usually pulling over random people and randomly testing them. If you’re being pulled over for drinking it’s usually because they already suspect something based on your driving. The only exception are checkpoints, but we’ll come back to that.
- You would have to be doing something weird even to get a result from almost any of the items listed in your own source. An evidentiary breath analysis unit can read as low as 0.020. The highest ABV in that list (that is food, not an extract) is ~2% for soy sauce. You could drink a pint of that soy sauce, (eeugh!) and by the time the alcohol evaporated from your mouth (it lasts several minutes and would prevent an accurate reading) your BAC would likely be below the detection threshold. Procedure (at least where I was, but likely anywhere) would require a second confirmation test 15 minutes after the first to make sure the first wasn’t caused by oral residue.
So, worst case scenario, you chug a pint of soy sauce in your car, immediately drive up to a checkpoint on the way to a hospital because of the amount of salt, they test you randomly and get a positive result from the oral residue, and then get nothing when they retest unless you are so small and light that you are probably a literal child.
Hold up, police aren’t randomly pulling people over? That power hungry group of asshats are doing whatever the fuck they want. “Suspicious driving” is their go to fuck you card. Drunk driving is a problem, more unmitigated police power is not the solution.
IIRC, it used to be 0.10, but was lowered to 0.08 because some studies (and maybe some advocacy groups) found out that there was significant impairment at 0.08 BAC.
The number really shouldn’t be round. It should be the number where 99.999% of people are not too impaired to drive a car.
Driving simulation studies show impairment far below 0.08.
0.08 is pretty fucking drunk.
Isn’t 0.08 around 3 beers for the average person?
While I wouldn’t drive at that level that is definitely not “pretty fucking drunk”
TBF, I think most drivers are impaired at 0.00.
It’s been really bad on the roads lately.
In many states, like NY anything above 0 is illegal. Above 0.08 is criminal.
4 12oz beers is NOT small, be responsible.
The answer for why is MADD and the reason it’s illegal to drive above zero is MADD. They lobby hard for zero tolerance whatsoever. They want the criminal limit to be zero as well. Once they get that they’ll try to ban cars entirely.
BTW I don’t drink so I don’t necessarily care. My criticism is about the goalpost moving of a successful non profit after it gets what it wants. You change the goal to keep your org and funding. They’ll never ever go “mission accomplished, let’s wind this down”…
The mission was never close to accomplished, and more people are driving high on pot.
This is one of those “idk man I think it depends”. I think the average median person probably should not drive, let alone drink and operate 2 ton vehicles near where people walk. But the law is bs and clearly isn’t nearly effective enough for what the policy it sounds like they advertise for. But on the surface level I’m like 🤷♀️ maybe it should be lower, but everything related to the enforcement of the law is so fucked idek
My gripe is MADD’s original sole goal was getting a legal limit for drunk driving and an appropriate consequence for it. They succeeded, and each time they succeed they change what their mission is. Here in Canada they’re part of the reason liquor stores close so early or aren’t open on weekends in different provinces.
Again, I don’t drink so whatever, but my complaint is they just don’t stop and go “ok we won let’s shut it down” instead they change the goal and keep pushing harder. I think they might reach a crisis point if they manage to prohibit alcohol again, but I guess then they just start lobbying for harsher laws on other drugs.
Liquor stores being closed on the weekend always bothered me. It sounds like a minor inconvenience, but if you’re a hardcore alcoholic then being cut off from your supply for a weekend can kill you.
It feels like a thorny thing too, because like, I get their mission. Drunk driving kills people, so campaigning to stop people from getting killed feels noble. But banning substances has been proven time and time again to cause more harm than good because if people can’t get their fix safely, then they’ll get it unsafely.
A bit of a tangent, but I think about people who campaign against needle exchange programs and injection sites. They probably believe they’re doing good because it’s very easy to see how drugs can ruin lives. I think it’s also a natural but naive outlook to think that if your city is facing a drug problem then these programs can be seen as encouraging drug use.
But shutting down these programs doesn’t fix the reasons why people struggle with addiction. A person will continue to get their fix, even if that means they have to share needles, even if it means injecting in a public bathroom or at the library. Shutting down those programs makes the drug problems more visible, more dangerous, and can lead to a public health crisis. Not to mention being away from medical staff makes overdoses deadlier.
Back to booze, you can look at the Temperance movement and the Prohibition era as a fine example of when things go too far. There you had people who thought they were doing the right thing - but their actions indirectly (and sometimes directly) lead to more deaths.
Do I think MADD is going down the same road? Today, probably not. But if they keep shifting the goalposts, then who knows where their future leads?
Yeah I agree completely, and I also agree with MADDs original mission: make tangible consequences for driving drunk.
They achieved it, and like you say having stores closed on a weekend means an alcoholic might turn to isopropyl alcohol, washing alcohol, hand sanitizer .etc it isn’t going to make them stop… If anything it shifts the burden onto our already overtaxed healthcare system as alcoholics destroy their bodies even more.
Edit: it also turns out most provinces have moved away from doing this, since most of them closed on at least Sunday.
Thanks for more of the background esp with Canada. Yeah fuck them
change the goal to keep your org and funding
This right here. The anti-smoking groups dried up as soon as they got everything they wanted and more, it’s a cautionary tale for other “public safety” activist groups. Dog catching the car and all that.
I think that being impaired with anything above 0 is illegal. You could be at .06 but have such a low tolerance that it affects you pretty badly and get cited for it. But 0.08+ is automatically considered impaired, no matter how good your tolerance may be, if you get tested at that level.
What’s the practical difference between illegal and criminal in the US? To me, a Brit, they are the same thing.
All things criminal are illegal, but not all things illegal are criminal. Speeding and other traffic violations are illegal, but they’re not criminal. Overstaying your visa (most common form of illegal immigration) is, IIRC, a civil violation but it’s not a criminal one either.
That said, I don’t think what the initial post said is entirely true either and will make that a separate reply.
I think it’s misdemeanour and felony probably? Like the difference between petty theft and theft over $5000
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Is it really? People get popped for 0.00 and the cops just say they must be on drugs. After spending thousands in lawyer and court costs it gets dropped but you already went through the same (or worse) bullshit than if you were actually shitfaced.
Meanwhile cops drive drunk all the time.
Now that could be a basis for a good lawsuit
Yep had uncle who was a cop. Rode with him once he bought pack of beer and pop one open on the way home. I asked what would happen if he got pulled over? He show his badge. Fucker wasn’t even in his justification. Guess being a cop gave him immunity. That was in the 90’s.
The safe amount of alcohol science recommend for an adult is zero.
Alcohol is one of the few substances for which these is proven evidence that any quantity is bad and will cause progressive and irreversible damage to you.
I do drink albeit not much, like a few times a year, so I am not against alcohol at all, it’s your body your choice.
But given the above, I am only happy if the tolerance on driving under any alcohol influence at all is punished
Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is an answer to a question OP didn’t ask. They were asking for a descriptive answer to the driving limit, not a normative opinion of what you think the limit should be.
Also your conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise. (I could be wrong; but it really doesn’t matter anyway considering the first paragraph of my response)
Yes you are right, but I think a good answer to op question had to consider that zero tolerance at the driving seat is the correct answer, and my take is not on saving the children, as other stated, but that on a dangerous substance there cannot be a itching other than zero tolerance on drunk driving.
Let’s say a different take.
Alcohol is one of the few substances for which these is proven evidence that any quantity is bad
I’ve seen some researches pushing this agenda. They mostly focused on one thing, like cancer, or cut out the “zero consumption” cohort. More comprehensive research shows that while any amount of alcohol increases cancer risks, good done to dexterity of vascular systems overweights it in terms of life expectancy overall at around 7 drinks a week.
Link to that study. Bullshit.
Aside from cancer and liver disease, ethanol is a neurotoxin. It immediately toxifies the cerebellum giving the drinker ataxia.
There are zero health benefits from alcohol that outweigh the drawbacks. As someone in medical, your comment is outdated misinformation people use to rationalize their drinking.
I like whiskey but I am not under the guise that it is anyway helpful to my body.
Nope, your data is outdated. The explanation for that invalid argument is quite interesting actually.
The sober (sicker) quitters phenomenon that messed up this data for so long is fascinating!
Yes and my grandmother lived to 80 because she drank wine every lunch and dinner.
No, that’s not true and alcohol doesn’t help the vascular system in any meaningful way. You can find scientific research that says anything and the opposite of that, that’s why what you need is scientific evidence on quality studies that have been repeated abd confirmed by the community at large.
It’s hard to understand how science works, but having studies says one thing is not enough, you need comprehensive studies and meta research as well to get a solid conclusion and that says alcohol doesn’t do any good to your body, and I am not talking about cancer but also mental degrade, damage to neurons and so on.
Why does even-ness matter? Just because our number system is decimal doesn’t mean nature fits into that pattern nicely.
at 0.08 you can be measurably tested to have worse reaction capability, so that’s where they set the limit.
4 beers at 12 oz isn’t exactly 0.08, that’s just approximately what it takes in the average person. Some people will be more, some less. Time and other factors affect it too.
Why does even-ness matter?
Because significant figures.
0.1 means you have a margin of error of ±0.05 (i.e. the true value is between 0.05 and 0.15).
0.08 means the margin of error is ±0.005 (i.e. the true value is between 0.075 and 0.085).
OP’s question can be rephrased as “how did we obtain a value to this level of precision?”
I mean, that’s just an issue of notation. OP could have just as easily meant 0.10 but chopped off the trailing zero out of habit.
OP actually did write 0.10, but I think it’s pretty clear from context that they meant it with one sigfig.
It was .10 pretty much everywhere when I was a kid, .08 became a thing little by little during the 90s, I think. MADD, mothers against drunk driving, is the reason behind this and many of the things surrounding drunk driving some find too restrictive or punitive. They were a very effective lobbying group.
Even though their founder is or was a drunk and caught dwi after dwi while heading MADD. Kind of seems the irony speaks for itself and that no one did their background check.
What is the entire post, honestly?
Were you actually trying to get an answer to the question you originally posted? Or do you have some bizarre pro-dui agenda to push.
This whole post reads like someone who is upset that got caught driving at .09.
Would you perfer I ask something like why in the states is the enlistment age is 18 but the drinking age is 21? Or how about why on cigarette packs they offer help but only if you are 21 meaning you have to be addicted for 3 years? But your not one who gets why I post just look at my profile.
MADD had a fundraiser effort by offering breath mints for donations at bars and restaurants.
I sat on the Board of a disease charity for 15 years. A charity can start with the best of intentions and integrity, but a single CEO can just change that to a money machine. The mandate becomes just rasing money.
It’s hard to say there was one specific act that caused it because each state has its own legal limit laws, but
From before 2000 to 2004 Mothers Against Drunk Driving protested, rallied, and lobbied to decrease the limit from between 0.1 to 0.15 down to 0.08 and federal congress passed an act to withhold 10% of transportation funding from any state which refused to comply.
The idea behind the movement is this: if you drank any alcohol, you should strongly consider not driving at all. “Buzzed driving is drunk driving”. Generally if people aren’t pressured as such then they will judge for themselves whether they think they’re safe to drive, and drunks are horrible judges.
The US also doesn’t label alcohol content effectively - % alone is not helpful.
In Australia for example, all booze containers tell you how many “standard drinks” they contain. 1 standard drink is the average amount of alcohol a body can process in an hour. If you have no more than 1-2 standard drinks in you, you should still pass a breathalyzer, depending on weight/gender.
A ~5% beer can is ~1.5 standard drinks. So if you drank 4x beers over the last 3 hours, best spend another hour drinking water before you drive:
4 beers x 1.5 = 6 standard drinks. - 3 hours = 3 standard drinks
Even what is called “1 standard drink” isn’t standardised across countries though.
For you, and also us in NZ it’s 10g of ethanol (approximately 12ml), in the UK it’s 8g. The US does in fact have a standard measure too, but 14g (and I don’t know enough to know how widely it’s actually used).
So as well as the standard drinks per bottle, the rule-of-thumb has to differ between countries too.
Some countries take it further and anything above a tiny amount (like 0.02) will get you a criminal record… although usually at such small amounts it’s just a fine and/or points on your licence, using bans and prison sentences for higher levels (like the US levels you describe).
This to me is the right approach - it’s long been proven that even regular drinkers suffer an impact on reaction times and anticipation with even a small amount of alcohol, so it really should be zero tolerance. I can’t think of any other situation where you’d be allowed to control a two ton piece of metal at 60+ mph around other people, houses, cars etc without having proper control.
It’s pretty wild really. In my country, it’s pretty “normal” to drink 2 beers and then drive home. However, if I drink a sip of beer before work, I’d be immediately fired, because it’d be unsafe for me to have any kind of alcohol in my blood.
So we acknowledge that even tiny amounts of alcohol can impair you to the point of being a danger, unless you’re driving a 2 ton heavy machine at 130 km/h on your way home…
In Canada, there is zero tolerance for new teen drivers, but once they get their full licence, they can drink and drive. Really sends a message, and 20 somethings get killed every single weekend.
It’s because of the children
