Stop the madness…
Not since prohibition has the consumption of alcohol in this country drawn this much fire. That after word that the National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that all 50 states lower the legal limit for driver’s blood alcohol content to .05 percent, down from .08 percent.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” says Stanford’s main man Craig Glazer. “That would be devastating. I mean, it’s bad enough at .08.”
Here’s why.
“I did those tests where you take two drinks in a short period, then wait 20 minutes and they test your blood alcohol level,” Glazer says. “One time I came in at .04 and the second at .06. But here’s the thing, I could have gone out and flown an airplane – I wasn’t even mildly affected – but some of the girls who had the two drinks registered .07 and .08. This was when the limit was 0.1.”
The consequences of going to .05 would be epic, Glazer says.
“It will destroy the entertainment industry because police are going to have a filed day with this,” Glazer says. “Because almost anybody that’s out that has had a cocktail or two is going to be .05. It just means you’re going to see pretty empty streets in America after 9 p.m.
“It’s a close as you can get to just banning alcohol. And in the end, what are we reacting to. Are there really that many drunk driving accidents?”
What the new standard won’t do is get drunks off the streets, Glazer says.
Who this attacks is Joe Public who’s a good guy and has three beers and he’s leaving his kid’s high school graduation ceremony,” Glazer says. “Now he’s got a DUI. And 99.999 percent of the people who register .05 won’t have a car wreck.”
To Glazer’s thinking, it’s a revenue-producing scam by the government.
“Remember, DUIs cost the average person between $5,000 and $15,000,” Glazer says. “And the government likes it because the court gets to keep most of that money.”
The bottom line:
“if they pull this stunt, they’re taking the largest step towards taking people’s freedom away,” Glazer says. “It’s just ridiculous. It’s not about impaired driving, it’s about control by the government. It’s just one more step towards computers and 1,500 television channels keeping everybody at home. It’s another step towards keeping people imprisoned in their own homes.”
Boo f’n hoo! Designated driver. Problem solved.
One time I was invited with my friend Chong to the Amsterdam international film festival. They kept mistaking me for Burt Reynolds, my friend Eddie Torres made an appearance and it was generally the weakest of my buddy-stoner movies.
Anyway long story short the DUI limit in Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands is .05. Plus it is not illegal to have a DUI checkpoint there where they just breathylize everyone.
They seem to have lots of bars, clubs and other special shops there without issue.
You forgot to mention one very significant detail that separates Europe from us: their exceptional mass transit system. With petrol being nearly eight dollars a gallon, you can find a bus or train ride at virtually every block….unlike here where you can only find public transit downtown as opposed to the burbs.
Ya, I used to live in Holland and hardly anyone had a car. I mean, no one. No place to park the thing (it is a seriously crowded country), gas is ridiculously expensive, and you can bike/bus/rail everywhere. I rode my bike everywhere, you can even ride your bike to the bus or rail and take it with you to the next town over. That is why there are more bikes than people in Holland (seriously, google it).
This is a bunch of bs. I think the limit should be over .10 as it once was. This is just a money maker. Think of all the states that now have mandatory one-year license suspensions if you don’t blow, and interlock ignition devices on the first DUI. Do you realize the cost? Also, this will decimate the restaurant/entertainment industry. It already sucks as it is. This was never a problem before, and it still isn’t one. MADD came along and ruined it for everyone. Impaired drivers who kill people are almost always hammered, not just above .05, but above .25! Under 10,000 people were killed by drunk drivers last year, compare that to (and mind you these number overlap for those in both catagories) over 27,000 people killed in auto accidents because they didn’t put on their seat belts!
This is also a bunch of political bs. What politician is going to vote against a measure lowering the rate? It would be political suicide. Same thing as the ones who don’t protect free speech and votes their morality into our laws.
Stay away from my booze, pussy, and guns you bitches!
Aside: The designated driver in Holland is called a “Bob.” I never did figure out why. I guess its a dutch thing. They had all these pins that they gave away in anti-DD campaigns that basically translated as “Always designate a Bob.”
I definitely see Craig’s point here. Most of our neighbors are drinkers and none of us go out hardly at all anymore because of the fear of getting pulled over or getting a DUI. It’s much easier to stay at home and rent a movie or go to a neighbors house to hang out. I have friends that simply don’t travel anywhere when they know they will have a drink or two. And like Craig said, most people who go out will only have a few drinks and would be fine to drive without causing any kind of havoc on the roads. This won’t stop the people that are alcoholics that get tanked and are a danger to people on the roads but it will stop social drinkers from going out and having a good time. It’s not feasible to get a DD whenever you want to go have a few drinks somewhere.
If it’s not feasible to arrange for a designated driver, then it’s not feasible to go out for “a few drinks.”
The graveyards are full of people who went out “for a few drinks” and the people they took with them.
I’d be surprised if any of Glazer’s customers blew .01 immediately after slamming down two of his establishments “drinks.”
But Glazer? If you blew .04, you were impaired. Now you might not know this because you always walk around with .04, and that’s feels normal to you. But at .04, the alcohol has a hell of an effect on reaction time and even vision to a normally sober person.
Second, as you demonstrate, alcohol has different effects on different people. What raises your BAC to .04 might raise another person’s to .07, and that depends on lots of factors besides size and gender.
And your business will be affected only if you cater to drunks and you’re not creative enough to make lemonade (literally) out of this.
If you depend on drunks to make a buck, you got more problems than a new, lower limit on BAC. Such as, nobody sober thinks your comics are funny.
If need a creative thought, here’s one. Start advertising free soft drinks for “designated drivers” in a party. It will cost you next to nothing, you might encourage more parties to show up to your place, the other people might buy an extra drink or two, and you would be showing your customers that you care whether they make it home safe.
Whatever happened to self accountability? If you want sobriety at an entertainment venue, go to a church function.
It’s not so much about government control but government’s attempt to further line the coffers. Drunk driving is a hot button issue. It’s easy to lower limits and continue to charge HUGE fees to those who get popped because there’s not a politician alive who’s going to say the legal limits are too low. It’s all about the money.
Totally agree with Craig on this one.
There are only 4 winners here:
Attorneys
Increased Revenues from the Police Department
Increased Revenues from the Police Department
and
Increased Revenues from the Police Department
MADD is even opposed to it! And stop with the line “If it saves ONE CHILD……”.
This is a revenue grab, plain and simple.
Im not for drinking and driving. When we go out, I have one. Period. Doesnt matter how long we are out. Its just not worth it and its not responsible behaviour.
This has nothing more to do with saving one child than KCI’s new plan also claiming IT’S for the children too!
More senseless poopoo from your worried nanny state.
This is stupid, why not just outlaw alcohol again, it went over just ducky the last time we did it.
It’s discriminatory against women.
130 lb woman
2 glasses of wine
1 hour
BAC of .053
Sorry. There are much more factors than that. But as a general rule, it affects a 130 lb. man the same.
That would be a pretty tiny dude. Actually, in the parlance of our times, an average american woman is about 160lbs. Which sucks balls. Come on ladies, mix in a friggin salad once in a while and stop eating like hippos. I’m tired of looking at your muffintops.
The right time for a drunk taxi start-up. Who’s with me? Maybe I could change my screen name, then. Oh wait, I can’t even afford the property tax to renew the tags on my go-kart of a vehicle. Gotta love government! Within the next year or so, the frustration will reach a threshold and FEMA camps it is. Bush is like a saint now compared to these Fascist States of America. Keep in mind that Clinton threatened highway funding if the states didn’t comply to a drunk driving law back in 2000. Unfortunately these current guidelines will be enacted. Money never stops talking. Federal revenue that is. Push has come to shove. What are YOU going to do about it? Who’s got the balls and finally say America isn’t America?
Craig’s just frustrated because he picked up a parking citation at the legends the weekend of May 3rd….
Brother Sunday likes to drink.
A LOT.
Cops love Brother Sunday.
But that aside. I was in Australia for three months for work. Their .05 doesn’t hurt drinking ONE BIT. Crazy drunks in Australia. Legendary. The transit system stopped service around 12:30 or 1am in Melbourne. Plus it didn’t service the entire area of the city. In the eastern suburbs, where I drank, there was a LOT of drinking. So throw out the transit bit please. Australia also has bar fight swat teams standing by on Saturday night. Equipped with gas and pepper spray, these guys come in full on. But the limit is only .05. Hmm… Well at least their drivers are sober.
Australia throws you in jail FOR A FEW DAYS on your first offense. They deport Americans, on their first offense. No questions asked. Little bit harsher than KC.
But here in KC. People are getting it… slowly. There are still those people who will just drive wasted. Get a cab. Oh wait… sometimes they just leave you sitting in Lee’s Summit for three hours and then eventually just cancel the ride. Lovely. Lee’s Summit, Olathe, Blue Springs… its IMPOSSIBLE to get a cab. Forget it. Unless there is a local cab company, which have started and failed several times in east KC. It sucks so very bad.
You could always get a party bus and then fall out of it and get run over by three cars. There’s that.
I think places like Prairie Village who just pull you over for NO REASON between 12 and 3:30am are a little crazy. Prairie Village is completely out of control regarding harassment of drivers at night. Then again, they do make a LOT of money. Most of it comes on 75th street.
Funding to police drop, they start harvesting cash from the residents. So quit cutting taxes, please.
Money grab, pure and simple. God forbid I have two glasses of wine with dinner. The gestapo police around here are killing nightlife. Walk into somewhere like Tanner’s at 10 or 11 at night and see how dead it is. Didn’t use to be that way. All the fun has been sucked away by cops and lawyers.
Cool nearly 100% agree with me on this issue. WE have to stop the witch hunts my friends, DUI’s are now a Witch Hunt there is no reality anymore, just mean spirited arrests, fines, pay the PO and pre PO and the lawyer, the court, the police…has ZERO to do with protecting you ZERO,ZIP THEY DON’T GIVE A CRAP///never did. A fact. So lets not let this end our relief from stress at work and home. Lets not end baseball and football beers and a few laughs. LETS NOT CHANGE THE FACE OF A FREE AMERICA, OR WHATS LEFT OF IT.
I am SURE Glazer didn’t predict doom and gloom when it was lowered to .08…or when the smoking ban went into affect.
Not so, I did interviews on the smoking ban and did say it was going to hurt the entertainment biz. It did and has. Trying to put all these laws around people’s daily stress relief like smoking, drinking, smoking a joint, well speaks for itself. As long as they aren’t hurting anyone its their life to live with some freedoms. Yes we have gone overboard. Not the first time. We used to burn and hang people that we the ‘good guys’ decided were witches. We hung runaway slaves and locked up folks for having a bottle of homemade booze in their basement…the dogooders are always at work. Thank the lord.
Translation: public safety is meaningless when it comes to CG’s BOTTOM LINE.
Why would this kill the nightlife? Oh because we are KC and we don’t know what a taxi is for. I got it. It would not prohibit drinking, just keep those of us who don’t drink safer.
Bill Nigro did a nice job on front page story on this issue in KC Star. There is no reason for changing or lowering an already low threshold on DUI’s. It serves zero purpose other than to take your few freedoms away. In Australia they likely don’t much enforce that law, here it would be a field day on DUI stops. In fact at night our law enforcement is nearly totally dedicated to this issue or traffic tix rather than looking out for YOU and your safety from serious crimes. I’d like to see officers out there protecting US. Seeing if we are OK instead of making us targets of such usually small issues which can really hurt people’s careers and lives for usually no good reason. Most police agree.
Oh yeah… Even on weeknights in Australia. There is at least one “Booze Bus” out almost every night somewhere in Melbourne or suburbs. That’s the term for a checkpoint. They also may test for drugs – somehow. It’s pretty damn serious there. But it does nothing to curb drinking. To do that they raised taxes like crazy on beer – effectively putting the cost out of reach of most young people looking to buy a lot of it in a liquor store. Then the kids switched to hard alcohol – wait, woops… yeah that was really bad I was told. So they raised the taxes WAY high on spirits. It was 30 bucks (US) a 750 for low grade vodka there. So what I did was buy WINE! Yeah buddy! Good wine, bad wine, its all good there when its cheaper than bottled water. (true)
Like I said, crazy drunks – those Aussies. Especially after football/rugby/Australian rules football games. Drunk riots… Man, I miss it.
Cheers!
Just don’t ban the Rumple Minz? Yeah, ok thanks.
“There is no reason for changing or lowering an already low threshold on DUI’s.”
– two provinces in Australia cut their limit from .08 to .05 and one saw an 8% drop and one saw an 18% drop in fatalities according one report. Coincidence?
NTSB chair Debbie Hersman points to scientific research for the reason behind the recommendation.
“We’re really relying on the science that tells us people are impaired at .05 blood-alcohol level. Their cognitive and visual functions diminish. Judgment and reaction times are affected. We know they’re 38% more likely to have a crash at .05.”
“It serves zero purpose other than to take your few freedoms away.”
– no one is stopping anyone from drinking & hence taking any freedom away – unless doing as one pleases is considered a birthright, law be damned. It is not unlike driving a car – you can drive & you can drive up to a certain speed limit -above that & you deal with the consequences. Alas, so too innocent others who may happen to get in ‘your (freedom’s) way’.
Cars, go to a track… drinks, drink at home – knock yourself out, x2. Beyond said, ‘fun’ be damned.
In the interest full disclosure, I’m not a drinker of alcohol… don’t like/have no need for it. My own experience & those observed by way others & told about by them convinces me that, as with most vices, it does more harm than good.
Regardless, the legal limit is the law – and I’m big on law whether I agree with all laws or not (and I don’t.) I just don’t flatter myself by imangining myself as above them. It’s a simple matter of order rather than chaos: if this person only follows laws they agree with, another only that which they like and I my select few & you yours, we have what some citizens call ‘freedom’; I call it $elfishness.
well spoken
+1