 Drunk driving (drink driving in the UK) or drinking and driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle after having consumed alcohol (i.e. ethanol) or drugs to the degree that mental and motor skills are impaired. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in the US alone, 17,419 people died in 2002 in drunk driving collisions, representing 41 percent of total traffic deaths in that country. Over 500,000 people were injured in drunk driving accidents in the US in 2001. Some people dispute these figures because they include all alcohol-related deaths, not only those involving drunk drivers. http://www. ...
Alcoholic beverages are drinks containing ethanol, popularly called alcohol. ...
Ethyl alcohol, also known as ethanol or grain alcohol, is a flammable, colorless chemical compound, one of the alcohols that is most often found in alcoholic beverages. ...
Many drugs are provided in tablet form. ...
The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectively conscious, such as personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. ...
A motor skill is a skill required for proper usage of skeletal muscles. ...
The United States of America — also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the U.S., America, the States, or (archaically) Columbia—is a federal republic of 50 states located primarily in central North America (with the exception of two states: Alaska and Hawaii). ...
2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Physical collision Dynamics Deflection happens when an object hits a plane surface In physics, collision means the action of bodies striking or coming together (touching). ...
A percentage is a way of expressing a proportion or a fraction as a whole number. ...
Western vehicular traffic is generally organized, flowing in lanes of travel for a particular direction, with interchanges, traffic signals, or signage at intersectons to facilitate the orderly and timely flow of traffic. ...
Death is either the cessation of life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ...
Injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical. ...
2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Laws regarding operating a vehicle while under the influence of drugs or alcohol Drunk driving is illegal in most jurisdictions; laws prohibiting it refer, for instance, to driving while intoxicated (DWI), operating while intoxicated (OWI), driving under the influence [of alcohol or other drugs] (DUI), or drunk in charge [of a vehicle]. Such laws also apply to boating, likewise often called boating while intoxicated (BWI) or boating under the influence (BUI). Laws also prohibit piloting aircraft while intoxicated. The term jurisdiction has more than one sense. ...
Law (a loanword from Danish- Norwegian lov), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow...
Boating is the activity of travelling by boat. ...
Most states in the U.S. designate a "per se" blood or breath alcohol level as the threshold point where a person is presumed to be impaired. The most common blood alcohol content (BAC) "legal limit" in the United States is 0.08 (i.e., 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood). Only Delaware still uses the more lax 0.10 limit. Prior to wider emphasis on drinking and driving in the 1980s, standards of 0.12 were also in place in some states. The legal limit for aircraft pilots in the U.S. is set at 0.04 while in the UK it is 0.02 for flight crew and 0.08 for groundcrew. Red blood cells (erythrocytes) are present in the blood and help carry oxygen to the rest of the cells in the body Blood is a circulating tissue composed of fluid plasma and cells (red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets). ...
BREATH is a Japanese popular music duo. ...
Look up Threshold in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A threshold is a fixed location or value where an abrupt change is observed. ...
Blood Alcohol Content (or Blood Alcohol Concentration), often abbreviated BAC, is the concentration of alcohol in blood, measured, by volume, as a percentage. ...
State nickname: The First State Other U.S. States Capital Dover Largest city Wilmington Governor Ruth Ann Minner Official languages None Area 6,452 km² (49th) - Land 5,068 km² - Water 1,387 km² (21. ...
Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
Unlike DUI cases that involve alcohol, there is no "per se" or legal limit that is employed for persons accused of driving under the influence of prescription medication or illicit drugs. Instead, the key inquiry focuses on whether the driver's faculties were impaired by the substance that was consumed. The detection and successful prosecution of drivers impaired by prescription medication or illegal drugs is therefore quite difficult. Similarly, although urinalysis toxicology screens can detect the presence of such substances in the driver's bloodstream, these analyses are unable to demonstrate that the substance was actually causing impairment at the time of driving. In response to these problems, several jurisdictions are currently considering legislation that would establish "zero tolerance" laws for those drivers arrested for DUI and found to have drugs or medication in their system. Additionally, technology is being developed for the purpose of administering roadside or laboratory tests that can detect the actual level of a controlled substance in an individual's body.
 The drunk driver of this car was left disfigured, blind, and permanently brain damaged. Many jurisdictions require more serious penalties (i.e., jail time, larger fines, longer DUI program, the installation of ignition interlock devices) in cases where the driver's BAC is over 0.20. These additional sanctions are an attempt to deter and punish the operation of a vehicle at extremely high BAC levels and the concomittant danger posed to the safety of persons and property by heavily impaired drivers. In many cases, the reason given for these additional sanctions is because 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. However, since there is currently no standard test to measure alcohol tolerance, proponents of high-BAC additional penalties point to some studies that indicate that high-BAC offenders are more likely to be involved in a crash and more likely to recidivate. Critics of such laws point out that, due to the wide variation of alcohol tolerance, people with a high tolerance will suffer the additional penalties, even though they are less impaired than people with a low tolerance that were driving with a much lower BAC. reprint of this image is granted by http://www. ...
reprint of this image is granted by http://www. ...
An ignition interlock is a breathalyzer installed into a car that will not allow the car to start until given a breath sample that has a lower Breath Alcohol Content(BAC) than the ignition interlock has programmed into it. ...
In most U.S. states, there are additional administrative laws that further penalize people convicted of DUI, typically enforced by the department that issues driver's licenses, usually titled Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), or Department of Licensing. A U.S. state is any one of the 50 states (four of them use the term commonwealth) which have membership in the federation known as the United States of America (USA or U.S.). The separate state governments and the U.S. federal government share sovereignty, in that an...
Administrative law is the body of law that arises from the activities of administrative agencies of government. ...
The Department of Motor Vehicles is a government department which handles matters related to automobiles, such as issuing license plates and drivers licenses. ...
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. State nickname: Empire State Other U.S. States Capital Albany Largest city New York Governor George Pataki Official languages None Area 141,205 km² (27th) - Land 122,409 km² - Water 18,795 km² (13. ...
1910 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Official languages English Area 410,000 km² (3rd) - Land 404,298 km² - Water 20,047 km² (4. ...
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) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Also during this era, enforcement of drunk driving laws became a priority for police for the first time. Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM...
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, is one of Americas most popular non-profit organizations. ...
Students Against Drunk Driving is an after-school program aimed at keeping students from drinking alcoholic beverages and then driving, and also keeping them off drugs. ...
In some areas of the country, including New York City, it's part of police procedure to impound cars of arrested drunk drivers. The offenders forfeit the cars permanently if they are convicted.
Sample timeline of a typical DUI arrest The following is what can happen 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: - try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.
- tip his or her head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of the nose with the index finger.
- stand on one foot.
- reciting all or part of the alphabet.
FSTs are better at determining the level of impairment than they are at estimating the driver's BAC. The heel is the prominence at the posterior end of the foot. ...
Toes are the digits of the foot of a human or animal. ...
Diagram of a human eye. ...
Human nose Anatomically, a nose is a protuberance in vertebrates that houses the nostrils, or nares, which admit and expel air for respiration. ...
For the network protocol, see finger protocol. ...
This article is about a foot as a biological structure. ...
An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ...
The (US) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has scientifically determined that three FSTs are statistically reliable in detecting impaired drivers. These three "standardized" tests are the "Walk and Turn" test, the "One-leg Stand" and "Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus" in which a law enforcement officer observes the discrete movements of a person's eyes when tracking a stimulus across their field of vision. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, often pronounced nit-suh) is a U.S. Government agency, part of the Department of Transportation, responsible for setting safety standards and verifying compliance by automobile manufacturers. ...
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 and are sometimes given before the actual arrest takes place; urine and blood samples are sent to a lab to determine the BAC. In some jurisdictions, refusing to take a breathalyzer test is an offense in itself, often creating an automatic assumption of guilt under the law.-1...
Biochemistry laboratory at the University of Cologne. ...
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). In any case, tests can only determine the BAC at the time the test is taken, which sometimes can be higher than when the vehicle was actually operated, in the case of a driver who drank a large volume immediately before driving. Critique of blood alcohol readings One of the greatest sources of error in blood alcohol testing is the misconception that an individual being tested is perfectly average in certain physiological traits. ...
Next step If it is determined that the person is not legally intoxicated, they might be released without any charges. However, many jurisdictions have charges which don't require a particular BAC, and tests for some drugs (such as GHB) will not show up in a test designed for alcohol. Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (4-hydroxybutanoic acid, C4H8O3) is both a drug and a naturally occurring compound found in the mammalian brain, where it could well function as a neurotransmitter. ...
Most of the time, the driver will either be kept in a holding cell (the "drunk tank") until they are deemed sober enough to be released, or sent to jail to wait for their first court hearing (or until they can get bailed out). This article is about courts of law. ...
Traditionally, bail is some form of property which is deposited or pledged to a court in order to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail (skipping bail is also illegal). ...
Philosophical perspectives on drunk driving An overview of the philosophical approach to DUI, especially with respect to ethical and pedagogical concerns, is James B. Gould's "A Sobering Topic: Discussing Drunk Driving in Introductory Ethics" in 'Teaching Philosophy' 21:4 (December 1998), 339-360. Philosophy (from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom), as a practice, aims at some kind of understanding, knowledge or wisdom about fundamental matters such as reality, knowledge, meaning, value, being and truth. ...
Gould's central point is that drunk driving offers an ethical case that, for most people, is clear-cut in the fundamentals, familiar from everyday life, and extraordinarily complicated in the details. In other word, it's ideal for philosophical analysis at the introductory level.
He cites the few articles by academic philosophers that he could find:
- Douglas N. Husak, "Is Drunk Driving a Serious Offense?" 'Philosophy and Public Affairs' 23 (1994).
- Bonnie Steinbock, "Drunk Driving." 'Philosophy and Public Affairs' 14 (1985).
- James D. Stuart, "Deterrence, Desert and Drunk Driving," 'Public Affairs Quarterly' 3 (1989).
These articles would be available in any higher-ed library, because the journals are among the most popular in the field. The disciplines of criminal justice and sociology probably have philosophical things to say about drunk driving.
European drink drive limits In Europe, the level is based on how much alcohol is in the driver's blood, expressed grams per litre (‰) of blood. (10 mg/100ml = 0.01 g/100ml = 0,1‰). Red blood cells (erythrocytes) are present in the blood and help carry oxygen to the rest of the cells in the body Blood is a circulating tissue composed of fluid plasma and cells (red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets). ...
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