Drunk driving
The drunk driver of this car was left disfigured, blind, and permanently brain damaged
Drunk driving (Drink driving in the UK) is the act of operating a motor vehicle while under the debilitating effects of alcohol. In the US alone, 17,419 people died in 2002 in drunk driving accidents, representing 41 percent of total traffic fatalities in that country. Over 500,000 people were injured in drunk driving accidents in the US in 2001.
Drunk driving is illegal in most (all?) jurisdictions; laws prohibiting it refer, for instance, to driving while intoxicated (DWI), driving under the influence (of alcohol or other drugs - DUI), or drunk in charge (of a vehicle).
Such laws tend to define a particular level of alcohol in the blood as the threshold of drunkenness. The most common blood alcohol content (BAC) limit in the United States is 0.08% for the legal definition of intoxication. Only three states still use the more lax, original standard of 0.10%.
Many jurisdictions add extra penalties (more jail time and/or a longer DUI program) in cases where the driver's BAC is over 0.20%. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that an average person would have passed out from that much alcohol. To be able to drive at that level, a person has to have gotten drunk regularly for years, to increase his/her alcohol tolerance, and therefore is likely to have driven drunk repeatedly.
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2 Timeline of a typical DUI arrest 3 Philosophical Perspectives on Drunk Driving |
History of drunk driving laws
The first jurisdiction in the United States of America to adopt laws against drunk driving was New York in 1910, with California and others following. Early laws simply prohibited driving while intoxicated, with no specific definition of what level of inebriation qualified.
(When were first DUI laws enacted in other jurisdictions / nations?)
In the US, most of the laws and penalties were greatly enhanced starting in the early 1980s, and through the 1990s, largely due to pressure from groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
Chemical tests are better at determining the driver's BAC than they are at estimating the level of impairment, but their accuracy is disputed by some; see blood alcohol test assumptions.Timeline of a typical DUI arrest
The following is what typically happens when a law enforcement officer has a reason to suspect a driver is intoxicated. Some possible reasons are erratic driving, poor coordination, and/or the presence of the smell of alcohol.Field sobriety test
The officer will administer one or more Field sobriety tests (FSTs). Some common FSTs include having the driver:
FSTs are better at determining the level of impairment than they are at estimating the driver's BAC.Chemical test
If arrested, the driver is brought to the police station, and given one or more chemical tests: breath, urine, and/or blood. Breath test results are usually available immediately; urine and blood samples are sent to a lab to determine the BAC.