DRUNK DRIVING

Drunk driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle whilst 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) in the United States is 0.1% for the legal limit of intoxication. Many states have enacted stricter measures by making 0.08% the legal limit of intoxication.

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?)

Critique of blood alcohol readings

This section is the previous content of this page. It needs wikifying and NPOVing.

One of the greatest sources of error in blood-alcohol testing is the consistently recurring fallacy that the individual tested is perfectly average in certain critical physiological traits. Put another way, obtaining an accurate blood-alcohol reading is completely dependent on the validity of a number of scientific assumptions. Unfortunately for the person being tested, these assumptions are usually incorrect: The person tested is rarely "average" in even one of these critical characteristics, let alone in all of them.

Counsel in a DUI case will constantly be confronted by these almost hidden assumptions. And it is very important that these false premises be brought out for the jury--along with the fact that the final readings fall with the presumptions.

Thus, for example, all breath testing devices depend on the assumption that the ratio between alcohol in the exhaled breath and alcohol in the blood is 1 to 2100. In fact, the machine is designed to produce a reading based on that assumption; the accuracy of the reading is directly tied to the accuracy of the presumption. Yet, the actual ratio in any given individual can vary from 1:1300 to 1:3000, or even more widely. Thus a person with a true blood-alcohol level of .08 but a breath-to-blood ratio of 1:1700 would have a .10 reading on an "accurate" breath testing instrument.

Put simply, these machines do not test individuals. Rather, they test the average person over and over again, but using the subject's breath.

Yet another example of the assumption of "averageness" can be found in urinalysis. When a subject's urine is analyzed for blood-alcohol, a presumption exists that there are 1.3 parts of alcohol in the bladder's urine for every 1 part of alcohol in the blood. This 1:1.3 ratio is as fallacious as the 1:2100 ratio--that is, it is based entirely on the ratio found in the average person. As is discussed more fully in 8.4.1 however, the actual ratio found in any given individual can vary greatly. And as the ratio is in error, so will be the final blood-alcohol reading.

Another example of this constant reliance on averages shows itself when the prosecutor offers evidence of retrograde extrapolation. The blood-alcohol level at the time of testing is not relevant to the charge, of course, and so the state will offer evidence to show what the level was when the defendant was driving. This is commonly done by extrapolating backward--that is, computing the earlier blood-alcohol level by estimating how much alcohol had been eliminated or "burned off" in the interim between driving and testing. But this requires two assumptions: The blood-alcohol level was declining, and the rate of elimination is known. This second assumption involves the further assumption that the "burn-off" rate was .015 percent per hour. How does the prosecution know that the defendant was eliminating (assuming he was eliminating) at that rate, and not at .005 percent or .3 percent! Quite simply, the prosecution does not know: It merely assumes that the defendant eliminates at the average rate. And, of course, error in such an assumption translates into error in the extrapolation. Reliable scientists treat such calculations as unreliable and unscientific.

This ubiquitous "average person" in the DUI arena is not limited to chemical analysis. We even find him with the arresting officer in the field. When the officer administers the increasingly common "horizontal gaze nystagmus'' test as part of the battery of field sobriety tests, he operates on the assumption that the suspect is "Mr. Average." The officer has been trained to "read" at what angle the suspect's eyes begin jerking. A blood-alcohol reading can theoretically be obtained by subtracting the angle from 50; jerking at 35 degrees, for example, would mean the suspect has a blood-alcohol level of .15 percent. Where does the magic figure of 50 come from? The average person. There is not, however, any valid scientific evidence or support for this "theory."

An alternative method of administering the nystagmus test is to "flunk" the person if jerking begins before 45 degrees. Why? Again, because the average person would theoretically have .10 or .05 percent alcohol in his blood at this point. In either test, of course, we do not know what the individual's actual "baseline" is--that is, the angle at which his eyes would begin jerking if he were sober. In both cases, the individual is assumed to be physiologically identical to the theoretical "average" person. Again, however, even in controlled laboratory studies, the rate of false positives was extremely high.

Don Nichols, one of the foremost DUI lawyers in the country today, points out to juries, in appropriate cases, that his client is female, Chinese, and deceased--despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He then explains that statistically there are more women than men in the world, more Chinese than any other nationality, and more dead human beings than living ones. Statistically, then, the average person is female, Chinese, and deceased--and so, according to the prosecution, must be his client. He usually also asks the jury how many of them have 2.3 children--the average in the United States.

Counsel must make clear to the jury in the course of the trial that the prosecution is making multiple erroneous assumptions about the defendant, and that these assumptions are critical to the validity of the blood-alcohol reading. As the computer technicians are fond of saying, "Garbage in--garbage out."

Modern Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Commercial Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Domain	Title
Books	California Drunk Driving Law (reference) Drunk Driving Defense, 2001 Cumulative Supplement (reference) How to Avoid a Drunk Driving Conviction (reference) Drunk Driving and Seat Belt Usage: A Survey of Attitudes in Oklahoma (reference) (more book examples)

Periodicals	Drunk Driving (reference) (more periodical examples)

Theater & Movies	Drunk Driving Can Make You Dumb (reference) (more DVD examples; more video examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Photo Album: DRUNK DRIVING

Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Only One Thing Tougher Than The New Drunk Driving Law. : Riding Your Bike In January. Credit: National Library of Medicine.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

Non-Fiction Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Subject	Topic	Quote
Civil Liberties	Czech Republic	On June 15, former television reporter Tomas Smrcek was acquitted of charges that he deliberately endangered classified information in a 1999 report on possible Czech intelligence service cover-up of one of its official's drunk driving offense. (references)
Travel	Uk	UK penalties for drunk driving are stiff and often result in prison sentences. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

Frequency of Internet Keywords: DRUNK DRIVING

Modern Translation: DRUNK DRIVING

Language		Translations for "DRUNK DRIVING"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
French		conduite en état d'ivresse, conduite en état d'ébriété (drink-driving, driving under the influence of alcohol). (various references)

Hungarian		ittas vezetés (drunken driving). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		�"っ払い運転 . (various references)

Japanese Katakana		よっぱらいう�"て�". (various references)

Pig Latin		unkdray ivingdray
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Anagrams: DRUNK DRIVING

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "d-d-g-i-i-k-n-n-r-r-u-v"
	-4 letters: drinking.
	-5 letters: dinking, dirking, driving, dunking, durning, induing, inuring, kidding, kirning, ridding, ruining.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Domain	Definition
Transportation	A highly dangerous driving behaviour under the influence of alcohol above the legal breath alcohol concentration (BAC) limit. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Domain	Usage
Movie/TV Titles	Drunk Driving (1939)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Expression	Frequency per Day	Expression	Frequency per Day
drunk driving	886	pennsylvania drunk driving law	16
mother against drunk driving	153	drunk driving death	15
drunk driving accident	148	information on drunk driving	15
drunk driving picture	112	wisconsin drunk driving law	15
drunk driving statistics	105	drunk driving pic	13
drunk driving article	62	drunk driving crash	13
drunk driving law	58	effects of drunk driving	13
drunk driving poem	54	drunk driving stats	12
drunk driving fact	50	drunk driving lawyer	11
drunk driving accident picture	42	drunk driving car accident	11
drunk driving story	37	michigan drunk driving	11
teen drunk driving	33	drunk driving newspaper article	10
drunk driving defense	29	wisconsin drunk driving	10
drunk driving victim	26	las vegas drunk driving lawyer	10
drunk driving attorney	20	massachusetts drunk driving	10
student against drunk driving	18	massachusetts drunk driving law	10
law on michigan drunk driving	18	drunk driving lawyer in las vegas	9
pennsylvania drunk driving	17	drunk driving penalty	8
drunk driving photo	17	drunk driving consequence	8
teenage drunk driving	16	texas drunk driving	6
		drunk driving california	6
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

DRUNK DRIVING

Specialty Definition: DRUNK DRIVING

Specialty Definition: Drunk driving

Synonym: DRUNK DRIVING

Modern Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Movie/TV Titles

Commercial Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Books

Periodicals

Theater & Movies

Photo Album: DRUNK DRIVING

Non-Fiction Usage: DRUNK DRIVING

Frequency of Internet Keywords: DRUNK DRIVING

Modern Translation: DRUNK DRIVING

French

Hungarian

Japanese Kanji

Japanese Katakana

Pig Latin

Anagrams: DRUNK DRIVING

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

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