Quite a few of the laws aren't written that way.
A 0.08 is dead to rights guilty--generally a DWI--driving while intoxicated.
However you very much can be convicted of DUI--driving under the influence--even if you blow significantly less than 0.08. This is especially true if the police also have you on video doing something stupid or speeding excessively.
I am trying to understand if this is an economic / urban / rural question or is really about a bright line between legal and illegal
if you're within the margin of error for measuring equipment that's just part of life. Applies to radar guns, applies to breathalyzers, and every other technical solution to a legal issue.
also the acceptable error on the GC/FID testing used for blood alcohol is 3-5%, depending on lab, etc. so that's 0.004. if you managed to get the cop's attention at 0.083, and you're drunk enough they bother to arrest you, instead of trying to find someone drunker to spend 2 hours arresting, the DA is still probably going to offer DWAI or less for your 0.083 unless you've got a long history of drunk driving.
On one side, you have people for whom right and wrong is defined by the law: if it's legal, then it's right, and if it's illegal, it's wrong. Therefore as long as people are making decisions that are consistent with law, they are fine.
On the other side, you have people for whom right and wrong is a fuzzier judgement of consequences somewhat independent of the law. If it's dangerous but legal, it's still dangerous. If it's illegal and not dangerous, then maybe it shouldn't be enforced by law.
It's sadly unlikely that either side is going to find any agreement with the other.
I'm firmly in the second camp on this particular issue: I don't care that the law says that anything up to .08 is okay; if you're close enough to .08 that a marginal error in a device could make it illegal, then I wish you weren't driving. Hell, if I'm out, I'll give just about anyone a free ride home, and take them back to their car in the morning, if that's what it takes to keep them from driving "a little bit" drunk.
That’s not what’s happening at all. No one here is asserting that .08 is some moral boundary. What’s happening is that some people here think that people convicted of criminal acts should be guilty of those acts as defined in the law. Other people think that pretty close is enough to declare someone guilty of a crime.
.08 is the legal boundary. If you’re driving at .07, you have not broken the law.
> I'm firmly in the second camp on this particular issue: I don't care that the law says that anything up to .08 is okay; if you're close enough to .08 that a marginal error in a device could make it illegal, then I wish you weren't driving.
That’s lovely but “I wish you weren’t driving” is not the law.
Usually, it's the boundary between “defintiely DUI [or DWI, where these are distinguished] by BAC” and “quite probably DUI by being under the influence, for which BAC may be supporting evidence”.
> If you’re driving at .07, you have not broken the law.
That's inaccurate.
0.08 is the legal boundary for per se influence of alcohol. If you aren’t at 0.08, you must be provably impaired by alcohol which is a different legal test. (0.07 could be supporting evidence, but so could the fact that you were at a bar, even if a BAC test was never administered.)
To my understanding, very few DUIs are prosecuted for alcohol DUI with BAC below .08. Even fewer are prosecuted successfully. The BAC of .08 is enshrined in law as the point of “intoxication”, making it difficult to prove the “influence” of alcohol below that level.
> That's inaccurate.
It’s exactly as accurate as saying you have not broken the law driving at 0.01. You might be guilty of DUI at any BAC theoretically, if you demonstrate impairment.
This is the only fair and democratic way to handle things. The law is defined by a legislature which (in theory at least) is responsive to public opinion on what should be considered acceptable behavior.
This does not mean the law is always correct about what's moral. There are many legal behaviors that I think are immoral, and many illegal behaviors that I think are morally fine. But if we put people in jail for doing things that somebody thinks is immoral, without going through the democratic process to make that actually illegal, then the rights that people have in a democracy are being infringed.
Then you should be advocating for a lowering of the limit. If by your judgement anyone who blows a .07 is above the limit, than the limit becomes .07.
Here is why I think your logic is broken; If we lower it to .07, I assume you call anyone at .06 guilty, no? It is "close enough". So if we lower it to .06, you'd call .05 guilty, rinse and repeat.
I am totally for lowering the limit to whatever we find most safe. Yet, the law needs to be set and followed. Fuzzy laws ruin lives.
Every technical solution will have a margin of error. that needs to be small enough not to invalidate the law.
If 0.08 is the limit, and you blow 0.08 (or within the margin of error to shown up over 0.08) then you broke the law.
The law is not "your actual real world BAC", its your "measurable and demonstrable BAC".
This applies to everything, from radar guns to other technical solutions. Margin of errors exist and always will to some degree.
If the devices are outside a reasonable margin of error, then the state and/or manufacturer should be responsible, but there needs to be a known and accepted margin of error within the framework of the law, because frankly to do otherwise is just ignoring reality
Ie, if 0.08 is the limit with a margin of error of 0.01, and you allow people to be in the margin of error, doesn't the limit simply become 0.09?
What if 0.08 was decided as the limit with a margin of error from 0.07?
At the end of the day, don't we always have hard limits? Whether the hard limit is before or after the margin of error seems to be a moot point in this discussion. And deciding that margin of error is a different discussion entirely, one mainly involved with the individual BAC testing units, effectiveness of BAC, etc.
edit: I feel like the down voter(s) are missing the point of my post. I was replying to someone in context of them saying that you cannot set a hard limit on which something is illegal. That is just silly. If a speed limit is 30mph with a margin of error of 2mph, than 33mph is over the speed limit. That is a hard limit you can absolutely set.
It does in terms of "reality overrides perception" and "what we want doesn't change whats real". Our ability to set hard limits in law doesn't change the fact our ability to actually test for those limits always have some margin of error.
In this case, the argument is the devices may be wrong because they're up to 6-10% off in some cases. Is that enough to invalidate measurements because of the margin of error? That's something the law doesn't deal with properly, but it really should.
What is the maximum margin of error allowable in a device used to determine legal status of an individual (in terms of drunkeness in this case)? without that being specified in law, what is the biggest margin of error socially acceptable? 0 is not practical or possible, so it has to be some sort of number.
You are completely correct, margin of error exists. That doesn't change the fact that if you blow beyond the margin of error, you are guilty.
There will always be a hard limit beyond the margin of error. I feel like you're arguing against that. It's confusing to me.
> 0 is not practical or possible, so it has to be some sort of number.
No one said that, myself included. This feels like a straw man.
The actual legal limit matters. You don't have a legal expectation as to the margin of error of the measurement.
You should have Legal expectation that whatever measurement is used, will only be considered evidence of a crime if the measurement exceeds the legal limit by more than the margin of error for that measurement.
I agree completely, and that is exactly what my point was.
If the hard limit is 0.09 because it's 0.08 with a margin of error of 0.01, then you're getting a ticket at 0.09.
Are you saying anything different?
The OP I replied to (originally) was saying that a 0.7 was "close enough", that you are in the wrong for doing that, etcetc. Of which, you cannot write laws around.
This conversation has nothing to do with measurements, this conversation has nothing to do with margin of error, this has to do with written laws vs moral laws.
I'm having to defend a nothing debate lol.
... This conversation is ENTIRELY about measurements and their margin of error. This conversation is specifically about how the margin of error relates the legal limit.
The parent was making the argument that the acceptable margin of error for a measurement device should be encoded in the law and measurements outside and thus a .08 limit with a .01 margin becomes an effective .07 limit.
You made the erroneous claim that margin of error didn't matter. It does: the margin of error needs to be codified in law if the limit is the limit as measured (as "uhhhhhhh" suggests). If the margin of error is not codified in law, then the limit must be exceeded by the margin of error for the measurement to provide evidence of law breaking.
You then made the erroneous claim that it doesn't matter if the margin of error is applied "before or after" the limit. (basically my stance vs "uhhhhhhh" ?)
I think it matters a great deal. If you mandate the margin of error in the law, then you make it impossible to make measurments in certain sub-optimal conditions (like in the cold) even when the subject is well beyond the limit. If instead, measurements come with an associated margin of error depending on the measurement device, it's configuration, and the measurement conditions, then you can use a variety of measurement techniques and make sure you can chose those, and only those, who you have clear evidence violated the law.
I disagree. The person I was replying to was indicating that 0.7 should make you feel bad. They were not saying that because your 0.7 might actually be a 0.8, they were saying that because morally you're playing with fire.
Margin of error does not matter in the discussion we were having, of morals vs law. Morals and margin of error are two completely different discussions.
> You then made the erroneous claim that it doesn't matter if the margin of error is applied "before or after" the limit.
How does this matter to morals? I said it doesn't matter before or after, in the context of how it affects the morals of 0.7 being morally incorrect.
This was a moral discussion, ya'll went sideways with it.
0.7 will make you feel dead, most likely.
No, you should have the legal expectation that the measurement error data will be available to you as a defendant, and usable as exculpatory evidence. OTOH, generally the law does not require each piece of evidence to be highly dispositive in isolation, only that it tend to show the fact for which it is offered is more likely to be true than it would be in the absence of the piece of evidence.
And in many (most?) jurisdictions being over the BAC limit is a sufficient but not necessary condition for DUI. E.g., in California it is illegal to be either under the influence of alcohol, or over the BAC limit, when driving. A BAC over 0 but under the limit is supporting but not dispositive evidence of being under the influence, so certainly a BAC above but with the MoE of the limit would also be.
It's perfectly reasonable to say you want 0.08, but you are willing to accept the margin of error as well.
Literally, I do not even get what you're arguing. The person I was replying to was fundamentally different than a margin of error, so first off this is already totally sideways. But fine, if you want to talk margin of error, lets do that. I don't get what your point is. A 0.09 because it's 0.08+0.01 is just 0.09. You get a ticket if your past the margin of error.
Are you saying something different? What the hell is going on lol.
You can also hold the stricter standard as what you believe is your personal moral obligation and simultaneously believe that the looser legal standard is what you can morally apply to others.
This is true for many issues, such as free speech. I might think what you are saying is immoral (due to my personal ethics) while also thinking my censorship of you are saying would be immoral (and illegal, due to the legal framework I live in).
What you're doing right now is giving the police even more ambiguous grey area to selectively enforce. And you're encouraging our laws to be inconsistent with their application.
The DUI laws mostly don't say that, anyway.
I suspect this is a rural v urban issue but i am not sure - can i ask where you live and how easy is it to get to a bar without a car?