Part of the problem is that it takes a lot more verbage to illustrate what's wrong with the current situation than it does to put signs up on the interstate about how this person and that was "killed by a drunk driver" and thereby facilatate irrational, emotional responses that lead to insane policies.ASUG8 wrote:I was going to read some of this thread, but when every other post became a chapter of a book I stopped.
BDKJMU wrote:So what your saying is that a person with extremely distorted speech, balance problems, and coordination problems due to a prental viral infection, and on top of that had a few drinks, was out driving?JohnStOnge wrote:
They are not experts at assessing human impairment level. I'll give you an example involving the instance that has me particularly inflamed right now: The cop stopped a person who has neuromuscular problems due to a prental viral infection. The guy has extremely distorted speech, balance problems, and coordination problems. So how is that cop going to judge the extent to which that individual is imparied by alcohol? He can't. He'd never seen the guy before and therefore had no frame of reference. And he wasn't qualified to judge human impairment level even if he had. Then he took the guy back to the police station and they made him do the thing that biases the BAC estimate upwards. Even after that they barely got him to over 0.08; which means that even if they hadn't intentionally biased the test the result wouldn't have shown his actual BAC was over 0.08.
So he saw the guy go out of his lane onto the shoulder once. You don't think that happens to people who aren't too imparied to drive? Have you ever gone onto the shoulder a little when you're not too impaired to drive?
Don't tell me they don't stop people who aren't impaired or when there's really not that much of a reason to do so. It's happened to people I know. Like having a perfectly sober person run over some of those lane reflectors and having some cop stop her then tell her how he calls the reflectors "drunk bumps." Heck, I've had it happen to me, come to think of it. I was leaving on a long trip and was looking for something in my car and kind of went out of my lane a little. Next thing I know some cop's pulled me over and is asking me a bunch of questions (including if I'd been drinking), wanting to look in my trunk, etc. Please.
A lot of people think cops are wonderful until they run into the reality of dealing with them when they've really done nothing wrong but the cops are convinced that they did. Another thing: They don't like being wrong. Once they decide somebody's done something they're not going to be objective.
Sounds like a person with a medical condition like shouldn't be driving even with zero alcohol in his body.
If it can't be mindlessly articulated on a bumper sticker, then it must be a revolutionary concept....& bad...JohnStOnge wrote:Part of the problem is that it takes a lot more verbage to illustrate what's wrong with the current situation than it does to put signs up on the interstate about how this person and that was "killed by a drunk driver" and thereby facilatate irrational, emotional responses that lead to insane policies.ASUG8 wrote:I was going to read some of this thread, but when every other post became a chapter of a book I stopped.
Classic Witch Hunt situation.