It’s Just A Decimal Point: The Dirty Secret Behind Breathalyzers
October 25th, 2007 Posted in Breathalyzers, DUI/DWI, James Baxter
In 1990, the New Jersey courts declared that the science was settled, the debate was over: breath analysis is a reliable and accurate means by which to determine blood alcohol content (BAC). This proclamation is known as the “Downie decision.”
The lead witness, who held the most sway in the court’s opinion, was Dr. Dubowski, a forensic scientist with a history of research experience dealing with Breathalyzers and alcohol breath analysis. A study he published in 1985 was considered the pre-eminent work in this field.
The Downie case revolved around the accuracy of breath analysis in terms of serving as a surrogate for actual BAC. One aspect would be of particular importance from the defendant’s perspective; how often does the alcohol breath analysis regimen overstate actual BAC?
Dr. Dubowski testified that his research determined that in only 2.3 percent of the tests did the breath reading overstate the actual BAC. This was the first time this number was made publicly available; it had not been presented in his 1985 report.
Another witness in the Downie case, Dr. Gerald Simpson, a physical chemist also testified, and attempted to describe the variables that could render a Breathalyzer reading inaccurate. The court largely disregarded his testimony in favor of the assured endorsement of breath analysis offered by Dr. Dubowski.
The court determined that the use of breath alcohol was scientifically valid for the purpose of determining BAC. Was that the end of the story? Not quite.
After the Downie trial, Dr. Simpson obtained the actual data from Dr. Dubowski’s 1985 report. In applying the same analysis to the data that Dr. Dubowski used, Dr. Simpson discovered a major error. The incidences when breath analysis overstated actual BAC were not 2.3 percent of the tests, as Dr. Dubowski had testified to in the Downie case, but rather 23 percent of the tests – a wandering decimal point!
Dr. Simpson then published his findings in a respected scientific journal. They were never rebutted and Dr. Dubowski remained silent on the subject.
Attorneys across the country have taken note of the breathalyzer’s failings. This has lead authorities to resort to more invasive measures, including letting officers perform blood draws with very little training.
Recent research proves that measuring breath to determine actual BAC is a horrendously flawed concept. Errors can approach 50 percent! Still, even 15 years ago it was known and could be proven that in almost one quarter of Breathalyzer tests the readings were higher than the actual BAC.
How many thousands of people had their lives turned upside down, suffered major financial losses, lost jobs, and had their reputations destroyed by a system that used junk science to push its agenda?
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the 2007 NHTSA safety facts overview. Most current I have, I am not sure if the 2008 figures are available yet or when they will be.
Phil,
What is the source of your numbers on alcohol impaired fatalities?
Bryan,
The advice I would give you is to not believe much of what you are told here. Instead gather information and then check the facts that are reported to you by NMA members. I am not a member, but I would expect that you check anything I write to you also.
Lets examine what Mr Young has tried to lead you to believe. That NHTSA has an overly broad definition of “speed-related” crashes and therefore the data that they report must be skewed to over represent crashes that are “speed-related”.
“NHTSA considers a crash to be speeding-related if the driver was charged with a speeding-related offense or if an officer indicated that racing, driving too fast for conditions, or exceeding the posted speed limit was a contributing factor in the crash.” Quoted directly from the 2007 NHTSA safety facts overview.(note they call it “speeding-related” not “speed-related”)
As you can see there is already a difference in what Mr Young told you to be fact and what is fact. Mr Young uses the term “speed-related” so that he can decieve you into believing that anything related to speed such as speed too slow for conditions would be lumped into this category, while NHTSA is quite clear when they say “speeding-related”. Mr You would even have you believe that an unsafe lane change would fall under NHTSA definition of “speed-related” Read the definition again does it?
“In 2007, speeding(as per NHTSA’s definition) was a contributing factor in 31 percent of all fatal crashes, and 13,040 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes.”
“In 2007, 39 percent of the 15-to 20-year-old male drivers who were involved in fatal crashes were speeding at the time of the crash.”
“In 2007, there were 12,998 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities. This is a decrease of 4 percent compared to 2006 (13,491 fatalities), and it represents an average of one alcohol-related fatality every 40 minutes.”
“The 12,998 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities in 2007 (32% of total traffic fatalities for the year) represent a 2-percent increase from the 12,757 alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities reported in 1997 (30% of the total)”
With regards to your post. According to the data that NHTSA is reporting 31% of all fatal crashes are speeding-related(refer to thier definition). Also according to NHTSA 32% of all fatal crashes involved alcohol-impaired-driving. Speeding related fatalities is second only to DUI fatalities. If you had specifically asked only about the alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities Mr Young would have told you that NHTSA over defines that category to over represent how many people actually die as a result of DUIs also.
I don’t want you to believe me I want you to check the facts google NHTSA 2007 traffic safety facts and read for yourself.Then ask yourself why Mr Young would decieve you in such a manner. Mr Young is a member of the NMA and you’d also have to consider that if he will decieve you so too will the NMA just read some of thier articles and check the reported facts in each and make that determination yourself but by all means don’t be a sheep and just believe what they tell you.
{My girlfriend did a report in college and tells me speeding is involved in more accidents and death than DWI’s. What kind of scum is involved in acting like their trying to protect people if this is true.}
That’s not even close to true. Even using the bizarre definitions used by NHTSA, where “speed-related” includes any involved driver over a posted limit, too slow for conditions, too fast for conditions and unsafe lane changes, speed as a cause of crashes is about 5%-7%.
{Can we get somebody on this, surly the Department Transportation would get this right, wouldn’t they?}
No. Their goal is not always public safety.
My girlfriend did a report in college and tells me speeding is involved in more accidents and death than DWI’s. What kind of scum is involved in acting like their trying to protect people if this is true. After speeding or before, ? was, inattention. Then, maybe even, something else before DWI’s. Can we get somebody on this, surly the Department Transportation would get this right, wouldn’t they? If the economy goes bust will DWI’s stay as huge?
people please stop responding to phil his crack in…and i got $20 says phil CANNOT sit aside and say nothing. no matter what you say he takes it as a poke in the chest and no amount of persuasion can impress him.
let’s say he works all day in a garage and has NO drinks at all…might his breathalyzer show a reading. too bad phil, you are f*cked. fiortunately there are lots of us folks who are working to see that you get a fair trial…you just better hope there are no mccrackins on that jury…
crummy science? you bet.
drunk drivers…bad.
better 100 guilty go free than a single innocent be wrongly convicted.
Hell, given the amount of these type chemicals in use in the average garage, the girl who answers the phone would blow a false positive on a cool day with limited ventilation.
To all those who read these blogs. I am YOUR advocate and I am only correcting the misinformation that is being given to you by the NMA and James Baxter. Read his article up there and then google Dr Simpson and read some of the transcripts or summaries of testimony that come up. Pay special attention to the following issues:
1) The 2.3% vs 23% that James Baxter has asserted was Dr Dubowski lying on the stand. What those two numbers represent are two entirely different things that any reasonably educated person can discern simply by reading the testimony.
2) Dr Simpson’s field of expertises is something other than Blood Alcohol Content or breath testing as it relates to Blood Alcohol Content. Note that Dr Simpson although, a physical chemist was retired when he became interested in B.A.C. and Breath testing for B.A.C.
3) Dr Simpson Regarded Dr Dubowski as a leader in the field of Breath testing. Dr Simpson did write articles on this subject but performed NO ORIGINAL EXPERIMENTS in this field but rather relied on other researchers data for his analysis. One of those researchers just happen to be Dr Dubowski.
4) Take note of the breathalyzer actually has a tendency to underestimate B.A.C. some 11%
5) Take note that in the case cited by Mr Baxter there is testimony about the alternatives to testing the Breath to determine B.A.C. They discuss drawing blood because they point out how logistically it could not be done in the field. If Mr Baxter read this testimony, as he would have you believe, He wouldn’t say anything like “This has lead authorities to resort to more invasive measures, including letting officers perform blood draws with very little training.”
6) To address the issue of Mr Baxter’s assertion that “The court largely disregarded his testimony(Dr Simpson) in favor of the assured endorsement of breath analysis offered by Dr. Dubowski.” Dr Dubowski’s testimony was corroborated by the testimony of both defense and prosecution witnesses. Dr Simpson himself testified that Dr Dubowski was a leading authority in this field.
7) Also take note that there is a difference between the forensic science community which has different standards of scientific rigor than “mainstream” scientists.
8) Simpson in his testimony estimated that about 90% of the
total uncertainty of testing B.A.C. through the use of breath came from biological factors associated with the blood-breath ratio not the instrument. Wjile Mr Baxter would lead you to believe that it is the instrument that is faulty that creates variations in tests.
Now all those reading this far should ask themselves some important questions:
1) Do you want to be a follower and simply believe what Mr Baxter is telling you without checking any facts? It didn’t take me long at all to verify that Mr Baxter was mis-informing his readers.
2) Why is Mr Baxter referencing a case from the early 1990s when there are more recent cases that deals with this very same issue? As recent as the decision date of January 2007? I’ll tell you why he wouldn’t use a case that new. Because by using the 1990 case it makes it look as if the science is old and that the Courts only decided in favor of the Breath testing because they are corrupt.
3) How do you feel being lied to by Mr Baxter and being used as a pawn like Surftrunks in Mr Baxter’s personal agenda?
I don’t expect you to believe me and all I really want is for you to check the facts that Mr Baxter is using as evidence this method of testing intoxication is “horrendously flawed”. Then ask yourself after you see that Mr Baxter has lied to you if you can trust anything he writes on any subject here, if you can trust the NMA to be what they claim to be or are you just pawns in thier grand scheme to accomplish an angenda?
Jim Collins would have you believe that simply walking around absorbing minute amounts of chemicals in the air would cause everyone to test positive for alcohol in thier system. Not only does he believe that you’d be positive but that you could be labeled intoxicated by the results. This is simply untrue and I believe his anecdotal evidence to be fabricated along the lines of what he believes to be true. I have several rebuttals to his theory:
1) Most mechanics wear latex or other protective gloves while working with any of these chemicals to avoid absorbing them through thier skin and masks to prevent from inhaling the vapors. Actaully most hobby mecahnics also do the very same thing which causes me to question how you could have absorbed enough, while working around a gas tank to create a high positive reaction with the Breathalyzer, If you were wearing protective gear. If the answer is you weren’t wearing protective gear I question your ability to make good decisions.
2) If there is enough ethanol based chemical absorbed through the skin, by failure to wear protective gear, to cause a B.A.C. reading high enough for you to be considered intoxicated aren’t you intoxicated even though you had no intent on being intoxicated?
I’m not going to read all of the comments to see if this has already been posted. Breathalyzers do NOT measure alcohol. They measure the amount of certain methyl groups of chemicals of which ethyl alcohol happens to belong.
Last Saturday I helped a friend change the fuel tank in his van. It took us the entire day to complete the job. Later that evening my friend came with me to a meeting of an Explorers club that I work with. My friend happens to be a local Police Officer and was there to give the usual “Don’t Drink and Drive” presentation that he gives every year at this time. He brought a brethalyser with him and the kids were taking turns being tested. One of them came up to me and asked why I wasn’t taking a turn, so I agreed to do it. Imagine my surprise when my reading came back .28. My friend looks at me and says “That can’t be right! I was with you all day.”. He then decided to test himself and came up with a .23. He said that he was calling the company that maintains the breathalyzer on Monday to have it checked. Monday night he calls me and tells me that the machine checked out fine. When he told the tech about what happened, he was asked if he was around gasoline or any other chemicals. When he said “Yes”, the tech told him that the body’s absorption of these chemicals could distort the machine’s readings.
The breathalyzer was not originally intended to be the sole instrument used in deciding if a person was intoxicated, it was to determine if there was cause to take a person to a hospital to have blood drawn for a more accurate measurement.
I don’t know what, if anything Phil does for a living, but let’s say that he is a car mechanic. Through out his day he is exposed to chemicals like gasoline, brake cleaner, solvents, hand cleaner and possibly paint. When Phil is done for the day, he stops on the way home for a couple of beers. After having 2 beers in about an hour, Phil leaves the bar. On his way home, he gets stopped at a DUI checkpoint, a breathalyzer test is administered and Phil blows a .09. How much of that .09 is the 2 beers and how much of that .09 is the chemicals that Phil was exposed to through out the day, that his body is now purging from his system through his breath? A simple way to tell, would be to have a lab test a sample of Phil’s blood and measure the different chemicals and their levels, but, this doesn’t have to be done. The State says that the breathalyzer is always right. It is up to Phil to PROVE his innocence. In the mean time the chemical levels in Phil’s blood are changing by the minute, how is he to obtain evidence to prove himself innocent? Tough luck Phil. You are screwed.
I am aware that certain substances and chemicals will effect the Breathalyzer. I am not certain if the 10% ethanol that gasoline contains is one of them. However if the Breathalyzer operator is doing his job correctly exposure to a substance that will effect the breatalyzer will be detected prior to the administration of the test. That being said your story sounds fabricated. Even if your story is not fabricated the breathalyzer measures ethyl alcohol content of the blood. It does this because the ethyl alcohol is absorbed through various membranes and into the blood as the blood passes over the alveoli The alcohol evaporates because it is “volatile” in a solution, meaning that its molecules do not combine with the liquid that it mixes with, allowing it to be released by the person’s breath. That alcohol content of the breath exhaled into a breathalyzer then reacts with the solution of sulfuric acid, potassium dichromate, silver nitrate and water. the alcohol is then absorbed into the liquid solution, where the potassium dichromate proceeds to break it down. The alcohol is broken down into chromium sulfate, potassium sulfate, acetic acid, and water. This portion of the process causes the color change. The dichromate ion is reddish-orange, while the chromium ion that the dichromate is broken down into is green. The observed degree of color change is based on the amount of evaporated alcohol expelled in the breath. The chemical reaction takes place in only one vial. The other vial remains in its original state, as part of the photocell system. The instrument then passes light through both vials at a photocell and measures how much the solution in the test vial has changed compared to the vial that contains the unaffected solution.
Some natural and volatile interfering compounds do exist. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has found that dieters and diabetics may have acetone levels hundreds and even thousand of times higher than those in others. Acetone is one of the many substances that can be falsely identified as ethyl alcohol by SOME breath machines. A study in Spain showed that metered-dose inhalers (MDIs) used in asthma treatment can also cause a false positives in SOME breath machines. Substances in the environment can also lead to false BAC readings. For example, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a common gasoline additive, has been alleged anecdotally to cause false positives in persons exposed to it. Tests have shown this to be true in SOME older machines. Any number of other products found in the environment or workplace can also cause erroneous BAC results. These include compounds found in lacquer, paint remover, celluloid, gasoline, and cleaning fluids, especially ethers, alcohols, and other volatile compounds.
However, newer machines such as the Draeger Breathalyzer and Alcotest 7110 detect this interference and either filter out or compensate for it.
I would assume your friend who is the Police officer is a part time Police officer and the instrument that he is afforded to utilize for his talks is actually an out of service smith and wesson model 900 or 900A that utilizes two vials of the above mentioned compound which is subject to the adverse effects of other volatile compounds.
You, as many others often do, seem to assume that a person is arrested based upon the results of this scientific instrument. That is not the case a person who exhibits poor judgement while driving and becomes suspected of driving while intoxicated is pulled over and put through a series of field sobriety tests. Only after he fails these field sobriety tests demonstrating his inability to properly operate a motor vehicle is this person arrested and subsequently given a breathalyzer. There are procedures in place that help an officer determine if a DUI suspect has been exposed to substances that may skew the results. Many of the substances that can skew the results do so in an adverse manner, meaning that the results would indicate a B.A.C. so high that it is unbelievable to the operator because a person with that high of a B.A.C. should have died from alcohol poisoning. I would without hesitation sit and take a breathalyzer anytime I have been driving with absolute confidence in it’s results.
Just as I thought “Surftrunks” You have done little to no checking of the so called facts spewed upon you by the author of this article and the NMA.
I am stupid? You read the misinformation that the NMA provides in order to propagandize you into believing that there is a huge injustice that they are trying to right. Have you read anything about this subject or are you merely taking the NMA’s word for it? Lets examine actually where the NMA is misdirecting you. Dubowski testified in the Downie case (aka State vs Downie Supreme court of N.J. January 1990) The NMA would have you believe that Dubowski lied under oath when he stated that in 2.3% of cases would the breathalyzer over state the actual B.A.C potentially to the detriment of the accused. Mr Baxter leads you astray by implying that the actual B.A.C would be overstated in 23% of cases, which is a misinterpretation of facts. The 23% that he eludes to is actually 22.7% of the time that a persons partition ratio will be within 2.58 standard deviations of the 2100:1 partition ratio assuring 99% confidence that the Br.A.C. accurately represents the B.A.C. of arterial blood flowing to the brain, which is something altogether different. Mr Baxter also misdirects you to believe that Dr simpson wrote the article using Dr Dubowski’s data as related to his being a physical chemist when in actuality he was retired when he wrote that article. Dr Simpson designed and performed tests on the intoxilyzer 4011-A and the Alco sensor III both pocket breath screening devices not breathalyzers. Dr Simpson also has never conducted an original experiment with regards to breath-testing but rather relies upon the published works of others for his analysis. In testimony on this subject Dr Simpson recognizes Dr Dubowski as a leading figure in the breath-testing community. Mr Baxter goes on to imply that, because Dr Dubowski didn’t rebutt Dr Simpson’s article, Therefore, Dr Simpson must be correct. What Mr Baxter doesn’t tell you is that another Scientist in the breath-testing community Dr Jones of Sweden (Who simpson also regards in testimony as a leading figure in the breath-testing community) published rebuttals of several of simpson’s articles. Dr HLastala also testified for the defense in the Downey case within that testimony Dr HLastala agreed that using a partion ratio of 2100:1 tended to underestimate the B.A.C. not overestimate them as Mr Baxter would have you believe. For Mr Baxter to state or imply things like “Recent research proves that measuring breath to determine actual BAC is a horrendously flawed concept. Errors can approach 50 percent! Still, even 15 years ago it was known and could be proven that in almost one quarter of Breathalyzer tests the readings were higher than the actual BAC.” There are studies available, alot more recent than those Mr Baxter cites, which show that actual breathalyzer result of the Intoxilyzer 5000, the 900, 900A models and the Alcotest 7110 all correlate well with actual B.A.C. while demonstrating a low bias by under estimating the B.A.C. some 11+% of the time primarily because of the 2100:1 partition ratio used. Most people have a partition ratio of 2300:1. However 2100:1 is used as a rough estimate that has been calibrated to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused in most instances. 1 additional point you have to ask why Mr Baxter is using such old articles and citing such an old case there have been cases more recent that dealt with this issue and more current articles in the Journal of forensic science that address this issue. The immediate Error you make is that you believe Mr. Baxter and the NMA When they tell you that the methodology is faulty. This methodology has been tested and has been recognized in high courts as reliable. That Mr Baxter would stoop so low to be intellectually dishonest in order to further his own agenda is unforgivably sad. That you fall in ranks behind him like a sheep and believe everything he says to you without ever checking a fact is pathetic. To misrepresent facts in a manner to try and discredit the best method we currently have of removing drunks from the roadways is condoning drunk driving. The plight of those wronged by drunk drivers is equaled only by how they are wronged by your ignorant support of the likes of James Baxter and the NMA.
good lord you’re stupid phil. and your blowhard bullshit must surely be tiresome to those who know you. we all know a guy like you…the guy we all groan about when we find out we have to deal with because you are a full of sh*t know it all. i am reminded of cliff claven on cheers. it’s a little known fact that…
those who wish to sweep under the rug the fact that many tens of thousands of otherwise law abiding drivers have been b*tch slapped by the “science” behind the breathalyzers must be heartened that they have douchebag mccrackin to carry water for them and divert the discussion from proved faulty methodology to the plight of those truly wronged by those truly drunk.
here it is S L O W for you you retard…no one here is excusing drunken driving. the topic is the publishing, use, and reliance upon faulty test results.
it is not illegal to drink and drive…it is illegal to drive drunk. for the state to have the right to imprison someone their basis must be sound.
everybody, please stop feeding the troll. note the sheer number of posts he issues…
Quote from James Baxter’s article “How many thousands of people had their lives turned upside down, suffered major financial losses, lost jobs, and had their reputations destroyed by a system that used junk science to push its agenda?”
To answer this question NONE. The causation of the financial loses, lost jobs, destroyed reputations and having thier lives turned upside down falls squarely upon the shoulders of those who consumed alcohol then made the conscious decision to operate a motor vehicle in clear violation of the law. Why do all of you sheep think that there is no link to Dr Simspon’s findings that were alledgedly published in a scientific journal? Another interesting point is that the NMA claims that the breathalyzer is inaccurate (which any scientific intrument can be if used improperly). In order for the above quote to be able to be answered with an affirmative answer the scientific instrument would have to be capable of rendering false readings that indicated that there was a B.A.C. when no Alcohol was present in the blood.
I know what it is I have just never saw it referred to as GERD. The Disease itself will have absolutely no effect upon the breathalyzer. Often what happens is people who have been arrested for DUI rationalize why they were not DUI and that the breathalyzer was wrong because….. This appears to be one of those times with the extent of my knowledge of the breathalyzer that disease will have no adverse effects on the reading of the breathalyzer. Some of the medications taken for that disease on the otherhand may have an adverse effect the breathalyzer’s reading. If you are arrested for DUI you will be asked “are you taking any medications” so that a list of medications currently in your bloodstream at the time of testing can document thier presence, both for prosecution and defesne use.
GERD stands for GastroEsophageal Reflux Disease. It is a chronic condition that results from esophagus deterioration from stomach acid eruption over time.
Dunleedon mentioned in one of his comments that GERD can mess up with the breathalyzer. Could anyone in this blog please give me references were I can learn more about it. Thanks
Clarify what is meant by GERD I am unfamiliar with that term.
Nicely put Andrew
Joe,
You are really started to show the true color of your wool..
Joe writes “I know what I know and I don’t need you to tell me otherwise.”
But you don’t Joe, you don’t know anything…You just told us “Well Phil I don’t have the time, inclination, or see the fruitfulness of this debate. I don’t have the time to look up all the material and websites that contradict much of your ink.”
You haven’t looked up anything, researched anything, or tried to find the entire truth about what you have been commenting on, You read what the N.M.A. wrote here and you RAN with it.
You haven’t looked up anything because you don’t have the inclination to, You haven’t studied any reports because you don’t have the time.
You just showed exactly what I was talking about, not doing any research for yourself…just following blindly like sheep.
Please Joe, I mean this sincerely, here are some rules that you can follow throughout your entire life.
1) Take a moment to think and know what you are commenting on before you comment.
2) Don’t believe EVERYTHING you read.
3) If it’s to good to be true, it probably isn’t true.
4) Don’t talk out your A$$, people will smell it quick.
See ya..Joe..BAAAAHHHHH
Joe writes(Well Phil I don’t have the time, inclination, or see the fruitfulness of this debate. I don’t have the time to look up all the material and websites that contradict much of your ink. Has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong. I know what I know and I don’t need you to tell me otherwise.
In fact I’m not sure what the purpose of any of this is because I seriously doubt you’ve changed anyone’s mind so I don’t see the objective. Your arrogance is itself is enough to turn off most folks. We will simply have to agree to disagree. And Andrew, drink some more of Phils Kool-aid)
My purpose was to try to open your eyes so that you’ll read about both sides and make an itelligent decision rather than believing everything that is printed here for you that so conveniently lays out that there is a gov’t conspiracy against drivers. If you wish to not read the other side and have a predetermined view then by all means move on. But then you can’t blame anyone but yourself when it turns on you!
Phil if your purpose was to open my eyes, you have been successful. The last few months I’ve been busy writing my legislators instead of blogging. Now that our state legislative session is finished for the year I have a little bit more time to monitor these blogs. Turning your attention to your favorite legislator instead of blogging is something all of you should be doing. Putting it more bluntly, wagging your mouths on the Internet will not change anything. Writing your elected representatives might. The rogue, misguided law enforcement, and revenue generating efforts of municipalites of the world love you for staying disengaged from the political arena. If you agree with Phil than stay disengaged. They’ve learned the fruitfulness of political involvement, you the sheepeaples haven’t. They all have legislative agenda’s and lobbyist to push them. Whose lobbying on your behalf? So it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that laws have been and will continue to be passed that are beneficial to them and that generally means your on the losing end (not a conspiracy Phil).
Phil, you and I, as well as many others have a fundamental disagreement and that’s fair. But Andrews character assassination does nothing for his credibility. Both of you can totally discount my views. That’s obviously your prerogative but I believe I hold the popular view. Pretty much everything you have stated about me is incorrect but the issue is not about me.
I don’t think your eyes are open Joe. I doubt you did anything other than activly lobby for the bad information that the NMA has filled your head with. Things like “Attorneys across the country have taken note of the breathalyzer’s failings. This has lead authorities to resort to more invasive measures, including letting officers perform blood draws with very little training.” From the article above. Every scientific instrument has faults when operated incorrectly. The NMA purposely misdirects, misinterprets and misinforms on this issue. I challenge you to quote 1 municipality that is allowing untrained officers perform blood draws of suspected DUI offenders. When you can’t I then extend the challenge that you quote 1 municipality that is actively pursuing legislation that will allow this. Stating things like this on this blog is nothing more than a scare tactic designed to enrage the public into supporting the NMA.
Well Phil I don’t have the time, inclination, or see the fruitfulness of this debate. I don’t have the time to look up all the material and websites that contradict much of your ink. Has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong. I know what I know and I don’t need you to tell me otherwise.
In fact I’m not sure what the purpose of any of this is because I seriously doubt you’ve changed anyone’s mind so I don’t see the objective. Your arrogance is itself is enough to turn off most folks. We will simply have to agree to disagree. And Andrew, drink some more of Phils Kool-aid
Andrew writes(You know, it REALLY sounds like we should be taking Phil very seriously. It seems like he is the only one on this entire site that has read the entire transcript of Dr Dubowski testimony.
Maybe we should ALL read it instead of following blindly like dumb sheep.
I believe Phil is the only educated one on this site, not because he has the gift of intelligence but because he took the time not to be a sheep.
Keep giving them the truth Phil, they can’t stand that…lol
See you….BAAAAHHHHHHH)
Andrew I have not had the opportunity to read the actual transcript of the Downie trial or the Decision rendered. I have been unable to locate either online. However I have read the Report by Dubowski that is referenced above It doesn’t even come close to saying what the NMA claims if you read it in it’s entirety. You can however misinterpret parts of it if they are quoted out of context. All I am trying to accomplish is to give the people who are intelligent enough, the opportunity to make a well informed decision rather than following blindly like sheep because they are anti-authoritarian.
You know, it REALLY sounds like we should be taking Phil very seriously. It seems like he is the only one on this entire site that has read the entire transcript of Dr Dubowski testimony.
Maybe we should ALL read it instead of following blindly like dumb sheep.
I believe Phil is the only educated one on this site, not because he has the gift of intelligence but because he took the time not to be a sheep.
Keep giving them the truth Phil, they can’t stand that…lol
See you….BAAAAHHHHHHH
hah, phil is laughing that y’all are taking him seriously.
people people…will you stop feeding the dullard and ignore him so he will go somewhere else to hear himself talk in between having his crack filled in.
Joe writes(I never said they were ALL corrupt. I never said we didn’t need traffic control, I never said we didn’t need speed enforcement.)
Then maybe you could present your case more clearly.
I thought it was you that said that the motivation of officers issuing speeding tickets was monetary and I believe someone else actually used the word greed in thier post. Accusing officers of monetary motivations to write tickets is corruption although you never actually said the words corrupt or corruption in your posts.
If you feel that traffic control is needed please outline for us the circumstances under which you feel traffic control is needed.
If you feel that speed limits and speed enforcement are needed then outline the circumstances you feel both are appropriate.
be prepared for my response though because I intend to tell you where I agree and disagree and why I agree or disagree.
Why don’t you also add something in your reply that is on topic like your views on current DUI/DWI laws. Where and when you feel they should be enforced, how vigorously and methods of enforcement.
Joe writes(First Phil, I threw the ice chest story in to lighten up the debate a little and you took advantage of it to throw it back in my face.)First, I never said they were ALL corrupt. I never said we didn’t need traffic control, I never said we didn’t need speed enforcement. Having said that, I do have serious problems with the over all system….in this state.)
You guys are all the same you imply that the cops are corrupt and laws are wrong but when called to task on it you claim I never said that that they were ALL corrupt.
Joe writes(As for running for public office to change laws and policy, you know that’s a safe thing for you to say. That’s one of the firsts things a cop would say for the very same reason. I’ve explained all this in great detail in past posts. You and Randy are so uncompromising. You can’t debate with a brick wall.)
If by uncompromising you mean poking holes in your stories or pointing out flaws in it then I guess you could say I am uncompromising to those who feel that I should heed thier words as gospel when in fact my education and experience tell me that there is something wrong with what they are saying. You present as if you are presenting evidence in a case against authority but when I the jury request more information for clarification or point out inaccuracies you treat me like I am not the jury you are trying to convince but part of the authority you hate so much.
Donleedon writes(Well, if I had a scanner, I could send you the copies of the reports… you know what I could keep going with the rest of this, but hey, like I said before, it is pointless… You are once again mixing up what I have said, etc… Doesn’t really surprise me.
You are right Phil, no one has ever been innocent of a crime but found guilty. An old saying comes to mind, something about arguing with fools or something or other.
However, one very last thing… if you had read more of the articles (you don’t even have to read Lawrence Taylor’s commentaries) on a certain website, you would know that the Supreme Court doesn’t care about any one’s constitutional rights in regard to DWI, and I don’t have that kind of money. Peace out and keep those eyes closed, while half reading posts.)
I will take this post to mean that you didn’t appeal and that you didn’t hire an attorney to sue because your civil rights were violated. I just don’t get you guys you refuse to actually try to make changes yet you complain about the way it is. My name appears in case law because I wasn’t affraid to make a change when my Wife’s civil rights were violated. Keep complaining on blogs amybe someday someone who can make a change will read your plight. BTW you don’t need money to sue for civil rights violations it works very much like personal Injury law, where the lawyer gets a cut of what you recover.
What did I mix up? Maybe you can lay it out and give me a clearer picture. I am not saying that it is impossible for an innocent person to be accused and convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. However, what would the statistical possibility be that a single person be accused of two separate crimes and be innocent of both? Where is James Young when you need him to layout statistical possibilities anyway?
Phil says (I don’t have a problem with the DUIBLOG they are doing exactly what I’d expect them to be doing there The DUI Lawyer is looking to increase his client list by telling those who have been arrested for DUI that the laws are wrong, the scientific instrument is fault ect ect.).
Joe replies(It sounds to me like you have a problem with them. You just stated it. If your so knowledgeable, you should be able to present you argument quite adequately. You seem to dominate this blog so well. What’s the difference? Go over there and try your hand.)
That I disagree with them does not mean I have a problem with them. They are doing exactly what I would expect a blog so named to be doing. How exactly does that equate to I have a problem with them?
I don’t have a problem with this forum. I am just trying to present the other side of the coin that wouldn’t be seen by your readers.
First Phil, I threw the ice chest story in to lighten up the debate a little and you took advantage of it to throw it back in my face. First, I never said they were ALL corrupt. I never said we didn’t need traffic control, I never said we didn’t need speed enforcement. Having said that, I do have serious problems with the over all system….in this state. I don’t know anything about your state.
As for running for public office to change laws and policy, you know that’s a safe thing for you to say. That’s one of the firsts things a cop would say for the very same reason. I’ve explained all this in great detail in past posts. You and Randy are so uncompromising. You can’t debate with a brick wall.
Phil says (I don’t have a problem with the DUIBLOG they are doing exactly what I’d expect them to be doing there The DUI Lawyer is looking to increase his client list by telling those who have been arrested for DUI that the laws are wrong, the scientific instrument is fault ect ect.).
It sounds to me like you have a problem with them. You just stated it. If your so knowledgeable, you should be able to present you argument quite adequately. You seem to dominate this blog so well. What’s the difference? Go over there and try your hand.
Well, if I had a scanner, I could send you the copies of the reports… you know what I could keep going with the rest of this, but hey, like I said before, it is pointless… You are once again mixing up what I have said, etc… Doesn’t really surprise me.
You are right Phil, no one has ever been innocent of a crime but found guilty. An old saying comes to mind, something about arguing with fools or something or other.
However, one very last thing… if you had read more of the articles (you don’t even have to read Lawrence Taylor’s commentaries) on a certain website, you would know that the Supreme Court doesn’t care about any one’s constitutional rights in regard to DWI, and I don’t have that kind of money. Peace out and keep those eyes closed, while half reading posts.
donleedon writes(Not solely for this reason, but I now no longer live in that state. And I don’t believe that the police were just picking on me either. Also, I do not believe that all of them are corrupt or incompetent either.
I am wondering what kind of behavior that you mentioned, as I passed the FSTs and gave the officer every thing he asked for immediately. In fact, my lawyer in the second case (we won’t even discuss the one in my first case, he was a bonehead that told me I would be better pleading out after taking my money, second lawyer would have definitely fought it, so I guess I was the bigger bonehead by listening to lawyer 1) said that the only thing that would lose my case was if the judge was having a bad day and threw out my evidence as the odor of alcohol was not enough to convict.
He also stated that they had lost cases they should have won, and won cases they should have lost and that this particular judge was bad about that.
I guess its whining if you truly believe that an injustice has been done not only to you, but many. Not every one is cookie cutter like the current laws suggest, and I am not talking about tolerance levels. I guess if I was one of the guilty that got away with it I should do the opposite and celebrate. I know that I would not be silent if it were any other crime that I did not commit but was found guilty anyway…)
That is all unprovable hearsay evidence. How can you prove to me that you passed your field sobriety tests? You could have been slurring your speach, stumbling while trying to walk the line and poking yourself in the eye while trying to touch you nose for all I know. Then you tell me you passed and I am to believe that you did indeed pass and you were arrested for DUI soley because your tail light was broken? I have a better working knowledge of how it works than that sorry. If you are telling the truth then I’d like to know at what step you are at in your appeal process and how close are you to having your case heard by the Supreme court? If you truly believe that what happened to you was injust and truly wanted to make a difference in the world you’d have apealed the decision and a case of your reported magnatude would have had lawyers chomping at the bit to fight it to get an overturn then sue for a violation of your civil rights.
Not solely for this reason, but I now no longer live in that state. And I don’t believe that the police were just picking on me either. Also, I do not believe that all of them are corrupt or incompetent either.
I am wondering what kind of behavior that you mentioned, as I passed the FSTs and gave the officer every thing he asked for immediately. In fact, my lawyer in the second case (we won’t even discuss the one in my first case, he was a bonehead that told me I would be better pleading out after taking my money, second lawyer would have definitely fought it, so I guess I was the bigger bonehead by listening to lawyer 1) said that the only thing that would lose my case was if the judge was having a bad day and threw out my evidence as the odor of alcohol was not enough to convict.
He also stated that they had lost cases they should have won, and won cases they should have lost and that this particular judge was bad about that.
I guess its whining if you truly believe that an injustice has been done not only to you, but many. Not every one is cookie cutter like the current laws suggest, and I am not talking about tolerance levels. I guess if I was one of the guilty that got away with it I should do the opposite and celebrate. I know that I would not be silent if it were any other crime that I did not commit but was found guilty anyway…
The point that I have been trying to make here is that what the NMA has posted for you to read about Dr Dubowski is not all there is to read. I think that if we were able to read the transcripts of his testimony what he said was that there is a 2.8% chance that a random DUI suspect’s BAC would be overstated by a random Breathalyzer. That is different than the 23% that the NMA has said. Maybe the NMA will make those transcripts available to us.
Joe writes(Several of my co-workers and I got a laugh when one of our other co-workers got stopped twice in one night for simply having a ice chest in the back of his pickup. Of course he in fact had not had anything to drink so he never was charged with anything.)
So I guess the point to this story is that
1) not ALL cops are corrupt enough to arrest the innocent
2) Cops actually have criteria for those that get arrested for DUI. Like they are driving under the influence of alcohol or something like that.
Joe writes(I’m a basically a non-drinker although a small amount of wine daily is supposed to be good for heart deasese, which I have, I generally dont’ keep any on hand, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. Having said that I am highly suspectionous of the governments claims and some soles like you simply because of my experiences with the speeding enforcement problem.
The totally illogical way in which traffic enforcement is conducted around here cast suspection on all traffic enforcement activities.
If you have a problem with this DUI blog why don’t you try to convince them as you are over here on this site. There must be a way to communicate to them.)
If you have a problem with the way traffic laws are enforced where you live, run for office and make some changes.
I don’t have a problem with the DUIBLOG they are doing exactly what I’d expect them to be doing there The DUI Lawyer is looking to increase his client list by telling those who have been arrested for DUI that the laws are wrong, the scientific instrument is fault ect ect.
Donleedon,
Your story is very compelling. However, most people while consuming alcoholic beverages don’t realize the effects of those beverages and although your story is compelling it isn’t unique. If I ask any person convicted of DUI or DWI I get a similar story on how they were doing nothing wrong and the police were picking on them. I think that if I lived in your state given the glum outlook you have portrayed about the dishonesty of the police force I would probably refrain from ever doing anything close to having a drink then driving and if circumstances did arise where I exhibited that behavior and got caught doing it I am sure I wouldn’t whine about it afterwards.
Several of my co-workers and I got a laugh when one of our other co-workers got stopped twice in one night for simply having a ice chest in the back of his pickup. Of course he in fact had not had anything to drink so he never was charged with anything.
My last post was for Phil. Sorry ’bout that.
I’m a basically a non-drinker although a small amount of wine daily is supposed to be good for heart deasese, which I have, I generally dont’ keep any on hand, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. Having said that I am highly suspectionous of the governments claims and some soles like you simply because of my experiences with the speeding enforcement problem.
The totally illogical way in which traffic enforcement is conducted around here cast suspection on all traffic enforcement activities.
If you have a problem with this DUI blog why don’t you try to convince them as you are over here on this site. There must be a way to communicate to them.
Wait Phil, the story’s not over…
Just after the wonderful breathalyzer paid off, the officer took me to the hospital to get my blood drawn. Right before the nurse drew my blood, my copy of ‘Catcher in the Rye’ fell out of my pocket, all the alcohol in my blood disappeared! The wonderful officer then escorted me to my lavish suite that I was awarded for the night.
The next morning, way too sober for daily functioning, I was amazed that I had only gotten through half of my 30 pack in my truck when I got back to it. Although this was a great find, it was certainly not near enough for me. So I stopped at the Demon Rum liquor store and stocked my truck up as full as I could load it, cracked another one open and on down the road I went.
I arrived at this magical looking town, with candy cane rainbows all along the streets. The sign at the city limits state ‘Welcome to HappyLand, where the innocent are always innocent, and the guilty are always guilty’. I strain to focus my blood shot eyes and I see all my friends there, Phil, Randy, the officer and the judge. I smile and wave as I tip a 40 up and take a long drink.
Suddenly I arrive at the other side of town and every thing goes black and white, the wind is whipping through the trees as if a storm is on the way. I drive through an intersection on this lonely road with a stoplight the brightest of green. The next thing I know my truck is rolling end over end and lands in a ditch. I look out of where my passenger window used to be and the driver that just plowed into me still clutching their cell phone.
Of course you will probably say that this story means that I condone drunk driving (assumption), that I still drink (assumption), that I still drive (assumption), that I failed all FSTs both times and was doing anything that even resembled drunk driving or being drunk either time (assumption), that it takes more than the breathalyzer and the odor of alcohol in the state of Arkansas to convict you (assumption). Now for the suppositions, that all LEOs and judges are honest and fair, and never do anything to further their careers that could be construed as shady(DWI arrests get promotions, awards, bonuses and overtime if they have to appear in court, DWI convictions get re-elections for judges and it is odd how convictions go up in an election year, argue with my lawyer on that one). That judges never come into a court room after having a fight with their wife and decide that every one is going to be guilty that day (you can argue with my lawyer on that one as well).
Oh and Phil, that really is a great policy, especially if MADD gets their way and lowers it to zero tolerance, not being sarcastic. But as it is now, it is not against the law to drink then drive. I am not even saying that the breathalyzer malfunctioned or the operator did anything wrong (although I do think it is possible, how is that for black and white?). There are too many factors, one such is blood/breath ratio(who’s being black and white now) which if you are one of those very unfortunate ones (not saying that I am) you may not be doing anything wrong and get everything screwed up for you. Another factor that can mess up a breathalyzer is GERD which I wish I knew at the time as I am pretty sure I do have (OK, want to call me stupid, do it because I don’t go to the doctor as often as I should, oh and that pain is why I don’t drink anymore). Which if they do pass the breath alcohol laws, I will think they are BS too.
My point is that the is no justice these laws and a crime that construes a person as guilty before proven innocent. If theft laws were structured the way that DWI laws are, police would be locking up poor people left and right. And yes yes Phil, drinking is a choice, I got you, never once said it wasn’t, but this analogy does stick because people do things all the time in their lives that make them poor.
This debate doesn’t really matter anyway, you have it in your mind that I was definitely drunk driving according to the law and nothing I say will ever convince you otherwise and every one ever convicted was just as guilty as I. Law enforcement and the judicial system never fail, falter or fictionalize. That I think a conspiracy is out to get me (don’t recall ever saying that). The simple fact of the matter is that the system is irrational and flawed. Do I think I am a victim, you bet your ass I do because when I did drink, it was hardly ever more than 5 or 6 beers and each one took me anywhere from almost a half an hour to an hour or more to finish for the most part and the few times with hard liquor, I wasn’t going anywhere after them. I always waited at very least an hour if not more before I drive. The day in question, my roommate swore I only had 4 beers as he had just changed our recycle bin, but I kept one as an ashtray. Not to mention I was no where in a state that my memory was challenged.
And of course this will add fuel to your fire… yet another reason I am sure that breathalyzers are not accurate all the time with everyone in the world, I was pulled over for having a tail light out several years ago after nursing 2 beers at a bar with my friends, size 12 oz, over the course of about 4 hours. Once again, I pass all the FSTs, the hand held lights up and machine wonderful at the station states 0.075. My point in telling you this, that on this occasion, the breathalyzer read higher BAC than I even came close to consuming. Oh and funny story(sarcastic, not ha ha) but while this officer had me pulled over because of this tail light, a very large truck passed by, speeding at least twice the speed limit and all over the road… tell me that it is always about safety and nothing to do with money/advancement with some of these guys.
I don’t know about you, but when I see a pattern (which you probably will, but I don’t care at this point) of a machine giving off the wall readings that just don’t fit the circumstances… kind of makes me go hmmm. You of course will probably say that you see something else because of your unshakable faith in the system and their tools. You seem to think that every law and method that the government comes up with is just great and couldn’t possibly be wrong if only because they have been doing it for years.
And just to get this out of the way… Do I want to be able to roll down the road after drinking a sixer in an hour, hell no. But when I still drank, I do remember it was nice to have a brewsky with my steak at a nice restaurant with no fear of losing so much (which some have, btw). I agree, just as any one on this site does, get the drunk drivers off of the road, (pardon me while I rip off Megadeth) and if there’s a new way, I’ll be the first in line, but it better work this time.
donleedon writes on Jan 4, 2009
(You know what Phil, you are right, goes something like this…
I woke up early one Sunday morning, and just like every day I could not function until after I chugged my first 30 pack of beer. Feeling quite alive at that point, I grabbed my second 30 pack and tossed it into the truck along with my 1/5 of SoCo.
I was the terror of the road for 30 minutes until Captain Wonderfulneverlies did his civic duty and pulled me over after plowing over my 15th mailbox, barely missing all the neighborhood children, but not their dogs.
I fell out of my truck and directly puked on the noble officers shoes, but being the upright bastion of honesty and integrity he did not get angry. He also held my beer for me when I needed to get my license and registration.
I could not even stand to perform any of the FSTs and his PBT burst into flames when I blew into it.
The officer transported me to the station in a safe and orderly fashion, never disobeying any traffic laws whatsoever.
Once at the station and after the observation period, the good old BAC DataMaster lit up like a pinball machine and paid off in silver dollars.
Does this sound more correct Phil? I will not bother fencing with you anymore and I hope you enjoy the true story of what happened that day. ASSumption seems to be what you do best, and you do have a few facts, which makes you truly MADD dangerous.)
I don’t assume anything donleedon, I am using the information you are providing me with and my knowledge of how the process takes place. Like many of the people who take your position on issues like this there is only black and white no grey. for a person to be guilty of the elements of this particular crime doesn’t mean they acted as you described in your story. Conversely if a person didn’t act as you described it doesn’t mean he is innocent. In this case I truly believe that that the truth is somewhere between your sarcastic story here and innocent. Drinking an alcoholic beverage is a choice made consciously. The decision to drive afterwards is a choice you made. There is no conspiracy against you because you got caught. I never find myself in your position because if I have 1 drink I don’t drive and if I need to drive I don’t drink. Ironic how that works for me. I only hope that after 2 DUIs you can get the help you need so that there isn’t a 3rd or a fatal crash. Let me guess now you’ll argue that there is no corelation between drunk driving and fatal crashes.
You know what Phil, you are right, goes something like this…
I woke up early one Sunday morning, and just like every day I could not function until after I chugged my first 30 pack of beer. Feeling quite alive at that point, I grabbed my second 30 pack and tossed it into the truck along with my 1/5 of SoCo.
I was the terror of the road for 30 minutes until Captain Wonderfulneverlies did his civic duty and pulled me over after plowing over my 15th mailbox, barely missing all the neighborhood children, but not their dogs.
I fell out of my truck and directly puked on the noble officers shoes, but being the upright bastion of honesty and integrity he did not get angry. He also held my beer for me when I needed to get my license and registration.
I could not even stand to perform any of the FSTs and his PBT burst into flames when I blew into it.
The officer transported me to the station in a safe and orderly fashion, never disobeying any traffic laws whatsoever.
Once at the station and after the observation period, the good old BAC DataMaster lit up like a pinball machine and paid off in silver dollars.
Does this sound more correct Phil? I will not bother fencing with you anymore and I hope you enjoy the true story of what happened that day. ASSumption seems to be what you do best, and you do have a few facts, which makes you truly MADD dangerous.
Donleedon writes(Phil, I will address your last 3 posts in one…
The breathalyzer used in my case was the BAC DataMaster. The process here must be much different than where you are as you don’t see a judge for arraignment for at least 30 days and no bail unless you have had many more DWIs. When you request an independent BAC test, you are taken immediately after the breathalyzer by the arresting officer to the hospital for your blood draw.)
I pointed out that I recognize you may not have been taken to a judge or posted bail. And since you stated you were the vitim of two station breathalyzers, which would be a felony in my state, and require that you be brought before the judge at least on the 2nd offense. The officer takes you to the hospital before completing any of the booking process when you request an independent Blood test? If the STATE mandates that the officer take you to the hospital in such a speedy manner I now question that the judge would not allow the results of that test.
Donleedon writes(DUIblog is a collection of articles from other sources with limited commentary from attorney Lawrence Thomas, unless you skip to the bottom where the member comments are. The so called bunk you are referring to is only a recent development where defenses are looking for the source code of the machine, not the results that are indeed like you state, a matter of record. There are many more articles than just these few you perused.)
The bunk I was referring to was where the author Lawrence Taylor compared Breathalyzers to slot machines. alot of what he said in that commentary was just plain untrue. I read some and saw the inaccuracies and therefore decided to not waste my time with it. I wrote it off as another site like this one that misquotes and quotes out of context to inflame the readers.
Donleedon writes(Since it had been over an hour since my last beer, I am not sure how your last post would fit in. I am very aware of pre/post absorptive states, which is another reason why I am against the breathalyzer, it does not give an accurate reading of what alcohol is in your blood as well as it assumes that everyone ever born has the exact same blood/breath ratio, meaning some innocent get convicted, and some guilty get away. For the amount of difference to occur as it did in my case I would have had to have chugged 3 beers in the back of the cop car on the way to the station…)
Are you saying that you were in the elimination phase? and that your BAC while driving was higher than both of the tested values?
The last post sumarized that Since the Breath test uses a source or arterial blood and the blood draw uses a venus source the blood draw would naturally be lowerand does not indicate breath test opertor error as you imply.
The document cited by the NMA by Dr. Dubowski is quoted out of context and you should read the entire article. The Breathalyzer model that was used in the tests performed for that article is no marketed in the USA. Then there is the issue of the 23%. It states “23%
of subjects will have their actual blood-alcohol concentration
overestimated.” which is all that the NMA read.It also states
“The average Standard Deviation was reported to be 0.0037g/210 L, and this includes contributions from both the
instrument and its calibration with a breath-alcohol simulator” and “The Model 1000 Breathalyzer is no longer marketed in
the U.S.” neither statement appears anywhere on the NMA site. The results of these tests prove that the particular model breathalyzer was not accurate, not that ALL breathalyzers are inaccurate. I would imagine that such inaccuracy is the reason it is no longer marketed here. If the Gov’t was as many of you suggest out to use bad science why would they eliminate a device that is inaccurate?
Do I believe that we currently should be searching for more accurate measures of BAC? Certainly! However, I don’t think that because we are now able to more precisely measure something that the previous results are negated to a point that proves innocence. As I pointed out in a previous post you are arrested and convicted on the officers observations and determinations that your ability to operate a motor vehicle are impaired. The test only quantifies it so the Jury can understand it. Currently I think that breath alcohol concentration legislation is being explored which would mean that if you blow over the statutory limit there is no conversion factor for the attorneys to call into question.
Phil, I will address your last 3 posts in one…
The breathalyzer used in my case was the BAC DataMaster. The process here must be much different than where you are as you don’t see a judge for arraignment for at least 30 days and no bail unless you have had many more DWIs. When you request an independent BAC test, you are taken immediately after the breathalyzer by the arresting officer to the hospital for your blood draw.
DUIblog is a collection of articles from other sources with limited commentary from attorney Lawrence Thomas, unless you skip to the bottom where the member comments are. The so called bunk you are referring to is only a recent development where defenses are looking for the source code of the machine, not the results that are indeed like you state, a matter of record. There are many more articles than just these few you perused.
Since it had been over an hour since my last beer, I am not sure how your last post would fit in. I am very aware of pre/post absorptive states, which is another reason why I am against the breathalyzer, it does not give an accurate reading of what alcohol is in your blood as well as it assumes that everyone ever born has the exact same blood/breath ratio, meaning some innocent get convicted, and some guilty get away. For the amount of difference to occur as it did in my case I would have had to have chugged 3 beers in the back of the cop car on the way to the station…
Donleedon,
A plot of the blood alcohol concentration after completion of a drinking experience will show an initial rapid rise in the BAC (the absorption phase), a peak or slight plateau, followed by the elimination phase (a continuous decline to the zero concentration). Because the breath alcohol results from the alcohol in the pulmonary arteries to the alveoli, the measurement is presumed to be representative of arterial blood. When blood is taken for the alcohol test it is venous blood that is obtained and measured. Large differences may occur between the arterial and venous BAC’s during the absorptive phase. Only when the alcohol has been completely absorbed and distributed throughout the body will the Blood Alcohol Concentration and Breath Alcohol Concentration be equivalent. The defendant who has the venous blood test taken soon after his last drink (before absorption and distribution is complete) will have a lower BAC than if he had taken a breath test.
So Donleedon for the next DUI request the officer to take you to the hospital, for the BAC test of record, to have the blood draw it is typically lower.
Donleedon,
As far as that DUIBLOG it is a bunch of bunk. I didn’t have to read far to see it is all about getting people up in arms about the breathalyzer. The breathalyzer is tested weekly at the staion level and semi-anually certified to be accurate. The records of both of these tests are public information so when that site says that there is no individual or gov’t access they are full of it. Your attorney can get copies of these tests prior to trial.
donleedon writes(And that depends on what you mean by what was my BAC, the “almighty” breathalyzer somehow read 0.095, whereas my BAC according to the blood test I demanded (you know, taken directly from my veins) was 0.035. The judge would not allow the independent blood test at the hospital to be admitted as evidence as at least in the state of Arkansas, the breathalyzer is king. And you wonder why I don’t believe that breathalyzers are as accurate as the government assures us. Or I guess that when you see a 0.06 difference in the results of two tests within 30 minutes of each other or when one of those tests states you at a higher BAC than physiologically possible based on the amount drank and the time frame consumed, it means you are drinking some kind of proverbial kool-aid.)
I find this whole story compelling but unbelievable. What make and model breathalyzer was used? I ask this because all the breathalyzers I have had the experience of examining recorded BAC as a 2 digit decimal not 3 digits. as far as the rest of the story it seems very hard to believe you were given the breathalyzer. Then you were processed for the offense, taken to see a judge for arraignment, posted bail, called for a ride waited for the ride to arrive and drive you to the hospital, then had your blood drawn all within a 30minute window. Even if you eliminate The judge and bail because you were issued an appearance ticket, it is still hard to believe you even left the police station within 30 minutes of your breathalyzer test.
Ummm, if you didn’t “hear” it, it was because your ability to listen/read has been compromised as I stated before. Doesn’t matter though, I have been convicted so I am obviously a liar. I guess the converse of that is if someone kills someone but the LEO’s can’t prove it, you are not guilty, fine as long as you get away with it…
Once again, you should read yourself. Ok, so BAC can drastically vary. I will roll with this. Then how in the hell can you use a BAC calculator to back up ANYTHING you state. As well as you are picking and choosing what you believe that your Kool-aid dealers are telling you, or you have more than one of these dealers. Either way, you yourself might as well make up your own info/stats regarding any matter as you pick and choose what they tell you.
If alcohol elimination varied between 0.008 every 3 hours to 0.06 in a half hour, ok, I can’t even go there as ridiculous as this ratio is, even beyond breath to blood ratio variances that breathalyzers are based upon. I never disagreed that alcohol elimination periods cannot vary, but with those figures you are entering the realm of the ridiculous. It reminds me of the Joker’s disappearing pencil trick. This alcohol hung around until just after my breathalyzer and TADA! its (mostly) gone. Please show me where to find this information that states such impossible body chemistry changes in so short a time. If this were truly the case, I should be able to enjoy driving drunk as long as I did something like kept a clove of garlic in my vehicle and scarfed it down before the officer asked me to roll my window down… and no, this is sarcasm, not something I would advocate before you go that route.
And you guys accuse me of being a comedy writer…
donleedon go do your research. BAC can fluctuate dramatically over time. BAC is not linear and charts are only a guide which most state that. Weight also is not an exact factor. Things like more fat etc decreases the ability to be able to take on more alcohol. Go do more research.
I also did not hear how you knew you had exactly 5 drinks. How do you know the time difference was exactly 30 minutes between samples? Was it exactly 3 hours that you were drinking and was it equal amounts during the entire time?
Which calculator are you using? If your calculator is correct, then there is no way that I could drop 0.06 in a half an hour. Your wonderful calculator is saying that a 150 lb man can only eliminate 0.008 of alcohol in 3 hours (notice the extra zero behind the decimal point, just in case you didn’t notice)?!? (and duiblog is an unreliable source of information… which is not my only source of info btw and yes, NMA is included) Each beer adds 0.02 to your BAC which would make a total of 0.10 BAC if there was zero amount of time (beer bong anyone?). Is this the same one you used to post your previous comment (6 beers vs 3 hours any more beers you are guilty)?!? And where did you get 150 lbs, pull it out of your ass? I recall quite lucidly that I stated my actual weight of 210 lbs, in fact, hold on while I scroll up… yep, I weigh 210 lbs (this was copied and pasted for your benefit not because I didn’t remember). One more time 210 lbs (ok ok, 212 lbs, you got me, I lied).
Lets go another route… say it were possible to drop 0.06 per half hour, how in the hell could anyone ever get drunk off of beer (which would be cool as I don’t drink beer to get drunk)? Once again, keg stands or beer bongs would be the only possible explanation. Another point to this, how in the hell could any one ever possibly not be guilty of DUI as judges/prosecutors have been allowed to count back from the time of the traffic stop (notice I didn’t say arrest). I can see it now “Gee, took an hour to get to the station, lets figure this out, breathalyzer stated 0.02, so that obviously means you were are 0.14 when you were stopped… GUILTY!
Does today’s lunch smell pretty good? Because the orientation of your head is such that you should smell it. This has gone beyond consuming Kool-aid…
This calculator shows a 150 lb male with 5 drinks in 3 hours would have a BAC of .092. One more thing, how can do you know you had exactly 5 drinks and why were you caught twice?
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/safety/motorist/drunkdriving/calculator.htm
omg, you are a word twisting SOB. I never once claimed that I only had one drink… I was simply stating that you seem to be the type of individual that thinks one beer equals drunk. And in case you are still missing the point (probably) that means you have an inability to read to comprehension or, like I stated before, are only here to be a nuisance. Mission accomplished a$$hole, hope you enjoy it.
Wow Randy, way to assume once again… and more than once! As well as fly in the face of the very “scientists” that proclaim that breathalyzers are infallible! Great job man!
I weigh 210 lbs, I had a full stomach that day, and I guess since I am still foolishly banging my head against the wall, I passed all the field sobriety tests with flying colors. Odor of supposed alcohol and the machine were the only points of evidence that the state had.
But let us go further, even the sites that proclaim that the breathalyzer is the wonder of wonders for the DUI world state that only TIME will affect the rate of alcohol. I remember the classes that I had to take quit vividly and these are stats from the same people that hold the breathalyzer in so high esteem. And what is this magical equation that the BAC calculators are based on, and you used as your data for more than 6 beers in 3 hours? I have done much research and only seen between 0.01 to 0.02 per HOUR that is possible for the human body to eliminate alcohol. So you are saying that 0.06 in a half hour is possible? Are you thinking before you type? Not to belabor the point, but these are figures from the same people that hold the breathalyzer as infallible… but that you disagree with them on just to have the chance to say that I was probably guilty. You probably would have welched on that million dollar bet, as I suspected.
donleedon one more thing, 5 beers it 5 times more than the one drink that I mentioned in my previous post. I guess you do not know the difference between one drink and 5 drinks.
donleedon 5 beers on an empty stomack or under other curcomstances can put you over the limit in 3 hours or less. If that is the case your BAC can also drop significantly in a half hour as you say. I remember once when I was outside playing sports on a very hot day and was dehydrated and had one beer. I would bet my blood alcohol rate came close to being over the limit with the one beer but it also dropped very quickly. Your BAC can change very quickly. Your BAC is affected by your size, metabolizem and food in stomack and many other things. 6 beers in 3 hours was for a person over 190 lbs and was at or above the limit. One drink every hour after that would put you over the limit. That is just a baseline. I heard that you should keep it under 1 drink every hour and you would be fine. When I would go out I would drink one an hour and not have any the last hour or more. Then you are not over the limit. Even if you testified or someone testified for you that you only had 5 drinks you still would have been guilty. The chances that you had a BAC of 0.035 with 5 drinks in less than 3 hours is probably not correct.
roflmao… I wish I had videotaped the 5 beers that I had in 3 hours that particular day as I would be a million dollars richer, unless 4 means “many”. I guess the term “many” is indeed arbitrary and would be a good way to welch out of that bet. Anyhow, don’t drink those 6 beers in 3 hours here (from your previous post, just in case you get confused and think my post isn’t remaining consistent) in AR, you just might be in the same boat as me.
And that depends on what you mean by what was my BAC, the “almighty” breathalyzer somehow read 0.095, whereas my BAC according to the blood test I demanded (you know, taken directly from my veins) was 0.035. The judge would not allow the independent blood test at the hospital to be admitted as evidence as at least in the state of Arkansas, the breathalyzer is king. And you wonder why I don’t believe that breathalyzers are as accurate as the government assures us. Or I guess that when you see a 0.06 difference in the results of two tests within 30 minutes of each other or when one of those tests states you at a higher BAC than physiologically possible based on the amount drank and the time frame consumed, it means you are drinking some kind of proverbial kool-aid.
Oh yeah, and even though my room mate was there when I drank those (5) beers, he wasn’t allowed to testify to that fact either. This is all beside the other things that I won’t bother going into. Guilty before proven innocent anyone?
Once again taken out of context… go figure. Of course, as I stated before, I am not really sure why I am bothering continuing this debate. It’s cool, because I am sure that I am “still a liar because I was convicted of a” (manufactured) “crime, and if I am not lying, I am the only person that this has ever happened to”. Sip sip guys.
donleedon the only thing that I can say about your last post is that I bet a million bucks you had more than one drink. Many more. What was your BAC? How many drinks did you have?
Exactly my point that there is no point in arguing with some people on this site, you get taken out of context or simply misunderstood by those that have already made their opinion or have drank the government Kool-aid spiked with everclear and stupid pills (that’s right, the gov has kool-aid, some call it flouride). Or (and this is classic) if you don’t take the time to run down your whole situation, they fill in the blanks with stuff that they have absolutely know clue about (the old adage about the word ASSUME comes to my mind). You sirs are indeed not here to learn or educate, but to antagonize. You sirs are as bad as the judges that through out a defendants evidence in order to convict a person. You sirs are so smart, that no one other than your opinion is correct, unless it is exactly like someone else’s. You also believe that every situation is “cookie cutter” in nature and seem to believe that a person who has had one drink is falling down drunk. (in a snooty/whiny voice) Your stats are good, our stats are bad, etc and so on. Once again, I could write a long reply explaining what happened, but it will be dismissed as the rantings of a criminal and it won’t be believed anyway, so what’s the point? Just like the judge that presided over both cases, you don’t really want the facts. I can only hope that some others realize this as well so that my inbox will stop filling up with this garbage from people that don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground (on either subject).
Keep your mind shut Randy and Phil and hope its later rather than sooner that they come to abuse your rights. I can just see it now, “Phil/Randy states ‘what rights are those that you think you have? To drive drunk, etc?’ No sirs, you have missed the boat entirely, but you can begin your childish tear down of my post now, I have better things to do than argue with a brick wall… and I am sure that you will pride yourself with being “right” since I have been done with this since before my last post. Go on believing every thing the government tells you and thank you for proving my point guys, seriously.
Randy writes(JOE I do not know what you mean by moderate speeds getting bagged but if in fact you are only going slightly over the limit which is my definition of moderate then you are capable of slowing down by a few miles per hour and be legal. If in fact the police in your area give tickets for 5 mph over then you better be driving the speed limit so you do not get bagged.)
Since the enforcement of speed limits does not happen at 1mph over but closer to 15mph over I would define a moderate speeder as 1 who falls into this unenforced area above the posted speed limit. I don’t see an officer giving a ticket for 5mph over the speed limit especially since the standard deviation of a speed ometer is +/- 5mph.
Phil says; (What motivation do the line officers have to write citations to those who are not guilty of anything? Speeders are breaking a law regardless of why there is a law it is a law and IF they had been paying attention they would have been aware of the speed limits it is posted over and over again along interstates. The officers job is to enforce the laws as written not to write them. If it is a law the officer is not “picking on” the speeder he is doing his job..)
Joe replies(I think we’ve already hashed over the motivation for writing speeding tickets. Nobody is saying that speeders are are not breaking the law. But cops have a great deal of latitude in their enforcement. I would assume that latitude is so cops can stop only the drivers that present a real safety concern, not just every speeder. But then what incentive has a cop got to not stop every speeder that comes along? If he’s got a quota or a performance standard to comply with why should he go to the trouble to sort out just the ones who appear to present a danger? He has no incentive to do that. That’s why quota’s and other methods of measuring a officers performance are problematic. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here, it’s just common sense that breaking the speed limit is the most common law broken in the entire country.)
You said there is financial motivation to write speeders tickets. Do the cops that write the most SPEEDING tickets get bonuses? or do the bonuses come on a sliding scale with respect to the ratio of speeding tickets to other violations? is the bonus higher if there is more speeding tickets and less other violations? The risk of crash is measured with respect to deviation from the mean speed. If there is 100% compliance with a speed limit what is the mean speed and how great are the deviations from the mean speed? Now compare that model to a model of traffic where there is 50% compliance to the speed limit which raises the mean speed and creates deviations from that even though 50% of the drivers have not changed thier behavior. Now those compliant drivers have become at greater risk of crash because of the non compliance of the other drivers. So in that respect every speeder is a safety concern. Since the speed limits are the most common laws broken in this country and an officer can virtually write as many tickets as he wants, to guilty drivers, what use would having a quota do? would it suddenly cause the officers to start ticketing innocent drivers for speeding even though they were doing the speed limit?
I started looking at effects of speed limits and other documents related to risk of crash. I have noticed that certain documents are not listed on the NMA site simply because they don’t support the NMA’s position. In fact the NMA goes as far as to list some documents and say they are part of the Government’s plot to extort our money.
Joe writes(So what do you propose? Lowering the limit to accommodate the lowest common denominator? And what’s reasonable? I have a feeling that your one of those guys that if aircraft didn’t need a fairly high rate of speed to keep them aloft you would have them traveling much slower also.
I really don’t see this debate going anywhere despite all the ink flowing. It’s pretty much how a typical debate goes when it comes to speed enforcement. People line up on one side or the other and there’s very little compromise. I guess this stalemate will continue and the fall out from it will continue.)
although I don’t propose that we lower speed limits to accomodate the lowest common denominator, I don’t feel raising the speed limits so far that the lower end of the spectrum is severely at risk either. The NMA says it is 6 times more likely that a person traveling in mean traffic of 70 at 60mph will crash than the person traveling at 70mph or even 80mph. Which in itself is untrue. In that scenario although it is likely that it is true that a person traveling 10mph under the mean speed is 6 times more likely to crash than someone traveling at the mean speed what they fail to tell you is that the person that ends up crashing into this person is the person traveling at 80mph.
Joe writes(Phil since you seem to be so overwhelming pro speed enforcement then surely you have a basis for this. Exactly at what percentage would you place speeding as a accident causation factor?
In the case of the running of the stop sign you still cling to the idea that this is speed related. How can you say that when if the driver had not run the stop, there would have been no accident? You sure you don’t work for NHTSA or one of the insurance company’s.
Also why do you tend to downgrade the significance of all the other bad driving habits drivers exhibit such as following to closely, excessive cell phone use e.g. And were to you claim to have gotten all you knowledge and experience on this subject.)
I don’t downgrade the significance of any bad driving habit including speeding. That you do downgrade the significance of speeding and want to blame all other bad behaviors is curious to me. Do you have an anti speed limit agenda? Oh yeah this is the NMA site so you must. When you give me a resume of your knowledge and experiences you may be entitled to ask that of me. I am pro traffic infraction enforcement not speed in particular I would like to see drivers that break any traffic laws recieve a citation for such. Consider this also. If the speeding car had been lawfully proceding there would not have been crash either since he would have never been in the same spot on the roadway.
Randy writes(donleedon I forgot to say that if you get your factual information from http://www.duiblog.com/ then you might as well make up something yourself than to quote anything from that site. It is a pretty bad site to get any factual information.)
I agree totally Randy.
Phil Mckrackin writes: {In such a scenario the person speeding is not blameless. If the person who was speeding sued the person who ran the stop sign, it would be argued that if the speeder was proceding lawfully the crash wouldn’t have happened and that because the speeder was engaged in the an act of breaking the law he is at fault.}
James Young replies(Are you seriously suggesting that drivers forfeit their established right-of-way because they are exceeding a posted limit?)
what I am saying is that if the driver of any vehicle that is involved in a crash was not lawfully proceding(breaking any of the existing traffic laws) he shares responsibility for the crash. In certain cases it would be deemed there was no established right of way because of the law he was violating and you can only establish a right of way by proceding lawfully. Get a copy of your states vehicle and traffic laws and I bet somewhere in the begining it says something to this effect.
Here is another scenario you tell me who is at fault. there is an approaching vehicle to an intersection. This vehicle(a) is proceding lawfully. Another vehicle(b) has a stop sign, he fails to stops and quickly pulls out in front of vehicle(a). Vehicle(b) has finnished the turn and travelled a small distance in the same direction as vehicle(a) but at a speed 1/2 as fast as vehicle(a). Vehicle (a) hits vehicle(b) squarely in the rear. If we follow your logic, since vehicle (b) had travelled a small distance in that lane the have established a Right of way and the crash is vehicle(a)’s fault regardless of the fact that vehicle(b) didn’t stop at the sign.
donleedonwrites(I have never operated a vehicle when I knew that I was not able to, drunk or sober.)
you were arrested twice for DUI so apparently your judgement was skewed. what were you pulled over for?
donleedon writes(Ok, I can no longer remain silent in all of this, even though it will make no difference to those (you know who you are) that have already made up their minds. I have looked into this article, and no, it is not talking exclusively about the hand held devices carried by law enforcement. Slap on the wrist to NMA for using a piss poor picture for this article. The reason I know this is because I have fallen victim twice to the in station “scientific” instrument known commonly as the breathalyzer.)
First off I will view any evidence that you want to share on this subject and if it turns out that breathalyzers are off 23% I would support thier removal from service. I wouldn’t consider the rants of Convicted criminals on a blog on the internet evidence.
I can only laugh at the part where you refer to yourself as a victim. Were you held down and force fed the alcohol? Are we to believe that you had had no alcoholic beverages and were then given a breathalyzer at the police station without ever being given any field sobriety tests or being arrested? Then we are to further believe you were falsely arrested after faulty readings on the breathalyzer? Are you a comedy writer by profession? Let me see if you can comprehend how it works rather than how you recall it happening while in your drunken stupor. In order for you to get pulled over the officer needs probable cause, swerving with your lane, swerving across pavement markings or any other traffic violation. Once pulled over the officer must suspect you under the influence of alcohol either by smelling it on your breath or some other action that might indicate you are under the influence. Then you’ll be asked to perform a series of field sobriety tests, that test you motor skills, hand eye coordination, balance, speech, and memory. You may also be asked to follow the pencil which is in and of itself a tell tale indicator of intoxication. After you have performed those tasks poorly you will be asked to submit to a breath alcohol screening device. If that is positive too you’ll be arrested for DUI and read your DUI warnings and Miranda rights. Then you get taken back to the station and a breathalyzer test is performed to assign a BAC level to your intoxication as a confirmation of the officers conclusion that you are intoxicated. The braethalyzer is like the RADAR/LIDAR unit with respect to you are not convicted soley on it’s readings and can in fact be convicted without it based on the observations of the arresting officer. If there were any truth to an actual breathalyzer giving test results that are higher than actual BAC 23% of tye time they’d have already been pulled from service simply based on the liability the police departments would have in slander and libel cases resulting from the use of a known faulty scientific instrument.
donleedon I forgot to say that if you get your factual information from http://www.duiblog.com/ then you might as well make up something yourself than to quote anything from that site. It is a pretty bad site to get any factual information.
JOE I do not know what you mean by moderate speeds getting bagged but if in fact you are only going slightly over the limit which is my definition of moderate then you are capable of slowing down by a few miles per hour and be legal. If in fact the police in your area give tickets for 5 mph over then you better be driving the speed limit so you do not get bagged.
So Randy why not bagg’em for their actual bad habit instead of looking for moderate speeders. I don’t have a problem with that.
donleedon from blood alcohol calculators online they show that I can have 6 drinks in a 3 hour period. I would say that anyone that has more than that should be found legally drunk because they should not be driving and it does not matter if they are able to turn the key like you say is the prerequisite. An old joke comes to mind. I had to drive because I was too drunk to walk.
Ok, I can no longer remain silent in all of this, even though it will make no difference to those (you know who you are) that have already made up their minds. I have looked into this article, and no, it is not talking exclusively about the hand held devices carried by law enforcement. Slap on the wrist to NMA for using a piss poor picture for this article. The reason I know this is because I have fallen victim twice to the in station “scientific” instrument known commonly as the breathalyzer. Actually, empirical data from another source is required, so I redirect to a site that has data that shows that the breathalyzer is even more flawed in form and function than even the NMA states. Check out http://www.duiblog.com/ . If I see a reply from a certain someone inside of a month (due to all the articles written about the fallacies of modern DUI conviction) then I know you have predismissed it as more junk science, and like I stated before, there is no use for debate with you. I won’t go through the morbid story of either of my BS convictions. I believe I can call them BS convictions as I know the science behind alcohol consumption/intoxication/detoxification process and the numbers don’t add up (and that is even given staying within legal limits, and not level of intoxication). Any machine that assumes that every individual is exactly the same is indeed flawed, and I would say by more than 23% when blood to breath ratios can vary from possibly under 1200:1 to over 3000:1 and this same “scientific” marvel assumes everyone’s ratio at 2100:1.
As a side note on top of all of this, this modern marvel of “science” has come under legitimate scrutiny beyond blood to breath ratios in many jurisdictions because the source code will not be made available, and when they are made available they are found to be less sophisticated than a VIC20 computer.
One other side note… Even if the error percentage was only 2.3%, in a murder case this would be construed as reasonable doubt to even use the machine in a conviction whatsoever. But DUI, you are guilty before you ever see a judge and you are forced to prove your innocence if you possibly can.
I will also add, just because I think these laws are screwed up in the first place, I have never been in a wreck whether my fault or not (some because I avoided the person on their cell phone not pay a damn bit of attention) and this is “drunk” (legally) or sober. Nor has any one or any ones property been harmed as a result of my actions. As well, I have never operated a vehicle when I knew that I was not able to, drunk or sober.
I don’t advocate getting behind the wheel while you are not able to operate said machinery. Neither did the founder of MADD, but she has turned away from their recent crusade against alcohol and that is one of the points she does not agree with, going after low BAC drivers, regardless of how flawed the machines are. If they wanted to make the machines truly (the american way) just, they would set them at the lowest ratios (blood to breath) and go from there.
JOE from my decades of driving experience I have noticed that bad driving habits like following too close and running red lights are done by people that speed more than anyone else.
Phil writes; (This is not what I am suggesting. I do not feel lower speed limits are safer just because they are lower. but then I don’t feel that we should allow unregulated speeds simply because we disagreed with the national 55mph limit either. Reasonable laws I will support, A reasonable law has to be reasonable for ALL those who share the roadway not just the people who need to get there faster.)
So what do you propose? Lowering the limit to accommodate the lowest common denominator? And what’s reasonable? I have a feeling that your one of those guys that if aircraft didn’t need a fairly high rate of speed to keep them aloft you would have them traveling much slower also.
I really don’t see this debate going anywhere despite all the ink flowing. It’s pretty much how a typical debate goes when it comes to speed enforcement. People line up on one side or the other and there’s very little compromise. I guess this stalemate will continue and the fall out from it will continue.
Phil since you seem to be so overwhelming pro speed enforcement then surely you have a basis for this. Exactly at what percentage would you place speeding as a accident causation factor?
In the case of the running of the stop sign you still cling to the idea that this is speed related. How can you say that when if the driver had not run the stop, there would have been no accident? You sure you don’t work for NHTSA or one of the insurance company’s.
Also why do you tend to downgrade the significance of all the other bad driving habits drivers exhibit such as following to closely, excessive cell phone use e.g. And were to you claim to have gotten all you knowledge and experience on this subject.
Phil Mckrackin writes: { Is that the same NMA that champions for the protection of constitutional rights by claiming an accused drunk driver who’s priveledge to drive is removed while waiting for his trial has been denied his Due process? What about Due Process for these people? Because someone is disinterested,inattentive or impaired by a disability they should lose thier priviledge to drive? How about those who’s reaction times have slowed or show inattentiveness because of age? You are the last person I would have expected a NAZI like approach to driver safety. Next thing you know you’ll be drawing the conclusion that drivers of certain races don’t drive as well and they should also lose thier priviledges.}
James Ying replies(First, the right to hold and use a driver’s license is not a mere privilege and certainly not a “priveledge,” whatever that is.)
If all you have to point out is that I am a poor typer then why waste my time?
James Ying writes(So says the Supreme Court of the United States, which denominated it an “entitlement,” an amalgam of privilege and right that, once competence is demonstrated and the license issued, cannot be revoked without due process.)
Yet you’d “remove” certain drivers from the roadways because they are an inconvenience to you and without due process?
James ying writes(I don’t know of the case to which you refer but to revoke a license without due process for an **accused drunk driver** is clearly a violation of that ruling because a better name than **accused** would be **citizen**.)
I read on the NMA site recently about the practice of judges taking an aledged drunk driver’s license away before he was convicted of DUI.
James Young writes(Just as one is required to demonstrate a required level of competence to obtain a license, if that level of competence degrades over time, the license can be revoked after due process is demonstrated and the holder can either demonstrate or fail to demonstrate his competence.)
And the persons willingness to demonstrate his comtempt for the priviledge by refusing to submit to a test to determine his BAC should play no role in this?
James Young writes(If you believe that is Nazi-like, so be it; I would just call it practical. Disability may be overcome and if a driver without legs can handle his vehicle in ordinary traffic, I will share the road with him.)
I find it Nazi like to suggest we “remove” drivers without due process solely on the basis that they are disinterested, unattentive or disabled.
James Young writes “You seem to have missed the critical part of the post: that LE ignores too many problems to go after the easier targets.”
Phil Mckrackin replies{I didn’t ignore I read it and simply don’t believe it to be true and that you are purposefully overstating that they ONLY enforce speed laws to bolster your case.}
James Young writes(What you believe is your choice. I’ve been working with this for 50 years and I have seen far too much ignorance and malfeasance covered up by the institutions that comprise the speed control industry. We are assaulted every day with another official scam or malfeasance of one kind or another – altering yellow light times, illegally-posted limits, ignoring laws to award lucrative contracts, setting up speed traps. How are we supposed to respect the law when the law fails to respect us?)
James Young writes(Let me restate my “case” since it seems to be misstated from time to time. I want the application of science and engineering to traffic flow and control. I want the politics out of it. If a law is proposed or even passed, it must continue to demonstrate that its existence actually improves the crash rate. If there is no such proof, the law becomes null. We should pursue those policies that actually have an effect on the crash rate rather than concentrating on speed control and hoping for the best . . . oh, and transferring $100 billion a year to the speed control industry.)
I am all for Science and engineering for traffic flow and control. I am all for keeping politics out of it as well. I disagree that a law that is passed using these criteria should have to continually demonstrate that it is imroving the crash rate.I do think that the laws should be reviewed time to time and updated where necessary. I think we need policies that have not only an effect on the crash rate but an effect on the Injury and fatality rates as well. To only deal with the incidence of crash and not rates at which people are injured or killed would be irresponsible. I also feel that even though limits are properly set enforcement of those limits is still a necessary part of the policy.
However, James I still am not going to blindly follow you without seeing some studies and facts about the subject. I also feel we need NEW traffic studies The Parker report is out dated just a bit.
Phil writes{That would be because James quite conveniently discounts the number of crashes reported as speed related by saying that number is inflated.}
James replies(That is because NHTSA counts virtually every crash as “speed-involved.” According to their definition, speed-involved includes too fast for conditions, too slow for conditions, any speed above the posted limit, and unsafe lane changes. If car A violates a stop sign and hits car B who is running 31 mph in 30 mph zone, it gets recorded as “speed-involved.” When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. We have just recently gotten a NHTSA study that focused on the causes of crashes, not the mumbo-jumbo-“related” that they have hid behind for years. Speeding does not even rank. Also note that when the investigating cop checks the “speed” box, he is taking a very politically safe position since speed is always involved in one way or another but his rarely the critical pre-crash event.)
I doubt that a vehicle traveling 31 in a 30 would ever be termed as speed related. However if car B is driving at 50mph in a 30 and car A runs a stop sign then I would agree with NHTSA that it is a speed related crash. I rather doubt your assertion that a Police officer would check the speed box on a report that he is affirming if speed was not a contributing factor, especially for political reasons.
Define critical Pre-Crash event. AS I see it if a car is traveling at 50mph in a 30mph zone and another car runs a stop sign in front of him and they crash then the 50mph in a 30mph zone is a critical pre-crash event.
Phil Mckrackin writes: { Is that the same NMA that champions for the protection of constitutional rights by claiming an accused drunk driver who’s priveledge to drive is removed while waiting for his trial has been denied his Due process? What about Due Process for these people? Because someone is disinterested,inattentive or impaired by a disability they should lose thier priviledge to drive? How about those who’s reaction times have slowed or show inattentiveness because of age? You are the last person I would have expected a NAZI like approach to driver safety. Next thing you know you’ll be drawing the conclusion that drivers of certain races don’t drive as well and they should also lose thier priviledges.}
First, the right to hold and use a driver’s license is not a mere privilege and certainly not a “priveledge,” whatever that is. So says the Supreme Court of the United States, which denominated it an “entitlement,” an amalgam of privilege and right that, once competence is demonstrated and the license issued, cannot be revoked without due process. I don’t know of the case to which you refer but to revoke a license without due process for an **accused drunk driver** is clearly a violation of that ruling because a better name than **accused** would be **citizen**.
Just as one is required to demonstrate a required level of competence to obtain a license, if that level of competence degrades over time, the license can be revoked after due process is demonstrated and the holder can either demonstrate or fail to demonstrate his competence. If you believe that is Nazi-like, so be it; I would just call it practical. Disability may be overcome and if a driver without legs can handle his vehicle in ordinary traffic, I will share the road with him.
James Young writes “You seem to have missed the critical part of the post: that LE ignores too many problems to go after the easier targets.”
{I didn’t ignore I read it and simply don’t believe it to be true and that you are purposefully overstating that they ONLY enforce speed laws to bolster your case.}
What you believe is your choice. I’ve been working with this for 50 years and I have seen far too much ignorance and malfeasance covered up by the institutions that comprise the speed control industry. We are assaulted every day with another official scam or malfeasance of one kind or another – altering yellow light times, illegally-posted limits, ignoring laws to award lucrative contracts, setting up speed traps. How are we supposed to respect the law when the law fails to respect us?
Let me restate my “case” since it seems to be misstated from time to time. I want the application of science and engineering to traffic flow and control. I want the politics out of it. If a law is proposed or even passed, it must continue to demonstrate that its existence actually improves the crash rate. If there is no such proof, the law becomes null. We should pursue those policies that actually have an effect on the crash rate rather than concentrating on speed control and hoping for the best . . . oh, and transferring $100 billion a year to the speed control industry.
Phil Mckrackin writes: {They are set scientifically there is nothing arbitrary about the setting of speed limits.}
James Young writes(This is so wrong it borders on bizarre. Are you truly unaware of how traffic engineers determine the 85th percentile, round up to the next 5 mph increment, and recommend that to the legislature? Are you aware of the latest investigations that tend to show that the 95th percentile is where the crash incidence curve minimizes on rural and Interstate-grade roadways? And then how the legislature ignores that recommendation to adopt a statewide standard that this 10-15 mph under the recommendation? Speed limits are completely arbitrary because they are set by politicians for political purposes – protecting the re-electability of the legislator – and have nothing to do with scientific standards.)
I think that possibly somewhere between using only the 85th percentile and being set arbitrarily is how they are set. I think the 85th percentile speeds play a big role but so to do other factors like number of cars slowing to turn, how many businesses are along the roadway, There are many factors that need to be considered beyond what speed 85% of the drivers will choose to drive on that section of roadway. On interstates if there is an area of high incidents of animals on the roadway should we ignore that simply so that the speed limit can be set higher?
Joe writes(Phil, around here “running a stop” means you didn’t bother to stop. If you make a complete stop and then go your legal. If you get hit after you made a complete stop then that’s a different story. In either case it’s a matter of timing, not speed.)
I was trying to get you to clarify if you meant actually just driving right through or just slowed down. either way it is running the stop sign. If you stop and pull out only to get hit then it could be failure to yield the ROW.
Joe writes(Speed will determine the timing but cannot determine if a accident is caused.)
You are kidding right?
Joe writes(The timing when the driver pulled out in front of the vehicle on the main road will determine that. Bottom line is that in my scenario the accident could not have happened if the driver from the side street had not run the stop.)
again you’re kidding right?
If the speeder hadn’t been speeding he wouldn’t have been in that place at that time and no crash would have happened. A scenario that comes to mind is a blind hill as the speeder approaches the side road and the stop sign vehicle can’t see him coming? Could be why the speed limit was imposed in the 1st place but because this person is ONLY speeding he should be held blameless? That isn’t how it works.
Joe writes(But so that law enforcement can justify more speeding citations I can see how they will try every angle to fit speeding into the pix.)
This is just an outright misstatement. If either car is speeding then the accident is speed related.
James Young writes(Evidence of that is harder to come by than you can imagine because so many agencies are so opaque to public view. We occasionally get some that they don’t want to have. For example, the Texas DPS has long contended that much of the information that they gather is “proprietary” (their word) and not available to the public even though it is gathered as public expense, by public employees with public resources. However, they had to disclose to a federal court in a racial profiling case that they issued more than twice as many citations for speeding than ALL other combined, including commercial citations. So, they speed at least 67% of their effort and presumably their time) on a behavior that accounts at most for 5% of the crashes. What is wrong with this picture?)
well since you won’t give me the data that backs up this I can only doubt it. Since the data is open to interpretation I am sure that you must not be interpreting it correctly because I am sure you wouldn’t only use some data and not other data because in doing so it proves your predetermined conclusion.
You are not willing to give me the benefit of reading the material upon which you have formed your cocnclusion so I guess we have to agree to disagree.
Phil Mckrackin writes: {Outline your mindset for the enforcement and describe the REAL trigger factors and show me all the ficticious ones.}
James Young replies(For me personally, the real critical pre-crash events – verbiage straight from NHTSA – are those that most often lead to crashes. In the recent NHTSA study, speed too fast for conditions accounted for 5% while running off the edge of the road was 22%. “Speeding” in the sense of exceeding an arbitrary limit was not even listed. Another event that creates frustration is impeding, a behavior so rarely cited as to be noteworthy when it is. The approach we should take is simple: do those things that affect or are most likely to affect the fatality-, injury- and crash rates. If a behavior does not affect those rates or affects them only marginally, do not enforce any prohibition against it.
so speed unreasonable for conditions should not be enforced? what do you think attributed to the 22% of vehicles running off the roadway?
{ Define MODERATE SPEEDING 10%, 15%, 25% above the posted limit?}
I view this two ways: (1) any speed without an accompanying dangerous act is moderate and (2) on a more practical basis, any speed from the 98th percentile down is OK by me.
That is an avoiding way to answer that question. Any speed that only 2% of the traffic is exceeding is moderate speeding no matter how fast it is?
Phil Mckrackin writes{That the NMA is stirring a debate, interest and action are why I am here. However, no one wants to hear my opinion or what I think is essential to traffic safety people like Surftrunks that only want to insult anyone that doesn’t share his opinion.}
James Young writes(Surftrunks does not speak for NMA, for me or for most of the NMA membership.)
then you should reel him in on his insulting mannerisms.
James Young writes(If you want to debate, we welcome the challenge but be warned that the usual propagandistic screed offered by LE, insurance and politicians is met with derision. The folks around here want science and engineering.)
so do I and I don’t think you are prepared to meet my level of demand for information needed to change my opinion from what I have seen.
Phil Mckrackin writes { What good is the framework and forum for these issues if you are going to in you pages misinform them and feed them propaganda?}
James Young writes(As I have noted elsewhere, much of traffic safety is counterintuitive. The harsher truth is that so much that we have been told for so long by the powers that be are simply wrong and we are learning that too often what they have been telling us is driven by economics rather than system improvement. You have asserted several times that NMA is deliberately providing false information. I disagree.)
The subject intended for this thread is alot of misinformation. suggesting people are being arrested and convicted on bad science when that is not the case. The devices, as I have pointed out several times, that the NMA is calling Breathalyzers are Blood alcohol screening devices. which ARE not soley reason for arrest and NEVER a reason for conviction.
James Young writes(Certainly, there will be things that reasonable people will disagree about but NMA hardly calls for radical things. What they most often call for is the application of science, engineering and reason to law. That is asking very little and hardly radical.)
I have to disagree with this. From what I have witnessed The NMA posts articles with titles like:
*Breath-Alcohol Analysis: How Reliable Is It?
*Motorists Forced To Let Officers Draw Blood Samples At DUI Stops
*Vengeance, Bad Data Make For Terrible DUI/DWI Policy
All designed to inflame the reader into further distrust of the police. When reading them they contain misinformation. One can only reach two conclusions about that.
1) they have no clue about the subject matter
2) they purposefully mislead to gain political lobby.
Phil Mckrackin writes: {They are set scientifically there is nothing arbitrary about the setting of speed limits.}
This is so wrong it borders on bizarre. Are you truly unaware of how traffic engineers determine the 85th percentile, round up to the next 5 mph increment, and recommend that to the legislature? Are you aware of the latest investigations that tend to show that the 95th percentile is where the crash incidence curve minimizes on rural and Interstate-grade roadways? And then how the legislature ignores that recommendation to adopt a statewide standard that this 10-15 mph under the recommendation? Speed limits are completely arbitrary because they are set by politicians for political purposes – protecting the re-electability of the legislator – and have nothing to do with scientific standards.
Joe writes(As James quite readily explained, there’s a large discrepancy between percentage of speeding citations written and the actual percentage of accidents caused by speeding.)
{That would be because James quite conveniently discounts the number of crashes reported as speed related by saying that number is inflated.}
That is because NHTSA counts virtually every crash as “speed-involved.” According to their definition, speed-involved includes too fast for conditions, too slow for conditions, any speed above the posted limit, and unsafe lane changes. If car A violates a stop sign and hits car B who is running 31 mph in 30 mph zone, it gets recorded as “speed-involved.” When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. We have just recently gotten a NHTSA study that focused on the causes of crashes, not the mumbo-jumbo-“related” that they have hid behind for years. Speeding does not even rank. Also note that when the investigating cop checks the “speed” box, he is taking a very politically safe position since speed is always involved in one way or another but his rarely the critical pre-crash event.
Joe writes(That’s why some of us call this picking the low hanging fruit because it is.)
{well it is hard to pick oranges in an apple orchard. speeding is the most prevalent traffic infraction committed. Therefore more citations will be written for that.}
No, it’s because it is easy to spot and easy to measure. And it still has no effect on the crash rate.
{I find that an officer would lose his job because he didn’t write a quota of tickets hard to believe. As an officer he is a member of the PBA, a union. As a member of a union he is protected by that union against losing his job for not writing a certain # of tickets.}
The yahoos Joe is writing about – Stringtown, Kiowa, Big Cabin, Hulbert, Roland, Luther, Tushka, Caney, et al – include high school dropouts but I don’t believe they have any union members. Few of them, if any, are CLEET-certified. Tulsa PD may have a union but a union doesn’t make you a better officer, just harder to fire.
{I am not hung up on speeding, but then I don’t expect it to be not enforced because after all it is a law. If you don’t agree with it get the laws changed. I expect the police to enforce every law. I am sure that Police also enforce things like unsafe lane changes, unsafe breaking, failure to yield the right of way ect.}
Actually, they don’t appear to do a lot of that. We don’t know because they keep their records secret. The one major enforcement agency that was forced to disclose its data was the Texas DPS and, as I have said, speeding outranked all others combined by more than two to one.
Phil Mckrackin writes: {Comments like this compell me to stand fast on my current views. We should be sharing the roadway not competing for it. so how do we do that? do we remove disinterested, the inattentive, the inept, the incapacitated, the impaired and the suicidal that have the same right to utilize that roadway as the rational, fast drivers?}
James Young Replies(Yes, we remove them because they don’t have the same rights because they have not demonstrated the capacity for performance that each state requires for a license. Just as an untrained and unlicensed “driver” has not right to the road, neither do any of those listed.)
wow member of the NMA. Is that the same NMA that champions for the protection of constitutional rights by claiming an accused drunk driver who’s priveledge to drive is removed while waiting for his trial has been denied his Due process? What about Due Process for these people? Because someone is disinterested,inattentive or impaired by a disability they should lose thier priviledge to drive? How about those who’s reaction times have slowed or show inattentiveness because of age? You are the last person I would have expected a NAZI like approach to driver safety. Next thing you know you’ll be drawing the conclusion that drivers of certain races don’t drive as well and they should also lose thier priviledges.
James Young writes(You seem to have missed the critical part of the post: that LE ignores too many problems to go after the easier targets.) I didn’t ignore I read it and simply don’t believe it to be true and that you are purposefully overstating that they ONLY enforce speed laws to bolster your case. I know for a fact that police officers enforce many other traffic infractions. Speed is the most common infraction and therefore yields more citations because there are more infractions not because the enforcement is somehow greater.
Joe writes(Geesh Phil, I don’t ever remember saying that I support no speed limits at all, never.)
You also haven’t told us what you do want to see in the setting of speed limit laws. I’d love to read about it if you’d like to write it.
Joe writes(I’m simply asking the limits to be scientifically set and some common sense and flexibility in their enforcement.)
They are set scientifically there is nothing arbitrary about the setting of speed limits.what type of flexibility? say not enforcing the limit until it is exceeded by 12-15mph?
Joe writes(As James quite readily explained, there’s a large discrepancy between percentage of speeding citations written and the actual percentage of accidents caused by speeding.)
That would be because James quite conveniently discounts the number of crashes reported as speed related by saying that number is inflated.
Joe writes(That’s why some of us call this picking the low hanging fruit because it is.)
well it is hard to pick oranges in an apple orchard. speeding is the most prevalent traffic infraction committed. Therefore more citations will be written for that.
Joe writes(Around here for a officer to keep his job he must fill a quota or maintain a so-called performance standard, both have the same effect.)
I find that an officer would lose his job because he didn’t write a quota of tickets hard to believe. As an officer he is a member of the PBA, a union. As a member of a union he is protected by that union against losing his job for not writing a certain # of tickets.
Joe writes(Since it so easy because of devices such as radar to catch this type of violation naturally that’s the one they are going to enforce the most. Every cop around here has radar, why? Because it is their primary enforcement tool. Bad drivers come in all stripes and speeds. Radar does not catch bad drivers. Here again Phil, just as with the cops, you are hung up on speeding. It baffles me. Out of all the causes of accidents you pick this one to stress. You sure you don’t wear a badge?)
I am not hung up on speeding, but then I don’t expect it to be not enforced because after all it is a law. If you don’t agree with it get the laws changed. I expect the police to enforce every law. I am sure that Police also enforce things like unsafe lane changes, unsafe breaking, failure to yield the right of way ect ect
Phil Mckrackin writes: {It can only happen through misuse of the equipment and operator error and NEVER to the degree that you sugested that you wish to take a misuse of equipment issue that may yield a 1-2mph error and assign an error rate of 7mph to it is simply more of the NMA misinforming the public.}
That’s not NMA; that’s me. I believe you are either hopelessly naïve or deliberately misleading to think that a patrol cosine error can occur only due to misuse or operator error and that it is limited to 1-2 mph. We have guys who are high school dropouts running radar and handing out tickets. We have other guys who get on a power trip for their own reasons. But that is all irrelevant. The problem is that the average cop on speed patrol is horribly ignorant of radar, its limitations, and its abuses. All that most of them know is that they press a button and get a number and that somehow this is supposed to make us all safer. I have seen cop after cop lie on the stand without compunction and you believe that they worry about not making a cosine error?
{then how do you explain the loss of that post content?}
I don’t; consult with NMA.
{I’d like to view the data on the lack of effect of enforcement. Are you saying enforcement of any traffic infraction has no effect on taffic safety? Even those traffic infractions that constitute a crime, such as DUI?}
First, you’re talking about a lifetime of data encompassing an entire academic field. It is not reducible to a website. Next, traffic enforcement as it is currently practiced, that is with a psychotic obsession with speed control, is doomed to failure as an effective public policy because speed is so rarely the cause of a crash and never by itself.
We know from empirical evidence that drivers most often involved in fatal alcohol-related crashes have a history of alcohol abuse and are generally well over the 0.08 BAC allowable. By lowering the BAC to 0.08 from 0.10 or even 0.12 we are broadening the net instead of narrowing the weave and are wasting resources on people who are not problems.
I will repeat myself. We must design traffic laws and enforcement thereof around practices that actually affect the fatality rate, injury rate and crash rate. We should measure the worth of our laws by two parameters: (1) how well does it help traffic flow and (2) does it improve the crash rate? Period.
Phil says; (What motivation do the line officers have to write citations to those who are not guilty of anything? Speeders are breaking a law regardless of why there is a law it is a law and IF they had been paying attention they would have been aware of the speed limits it is posted over and over again along interstates. The officers job is to enforce the laws as written not to write them. If it is a law the officer is not “picking on” the speeder he is doing his job..)
I think we’ve already hashed over the motivation for writing speeding tickets. Nobody is saying that speeders are are not breaking the law. But cops have a great deal of latitude in their enforcement. I would assume that latitude is so cops can stop only the drivers that present a real safety concern, not just every speeder. But then what incentive has a cop got to not stop every speeder that comes along? If he’s got a quota or a performance standard to comply with why should he go to the trouble to sort out just the ones who appear to present a danger? He has no incentive to do that. That’s why quota’s and other methods of measuring a officers performance are problematic. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here, it’s just common sense that breaking the speed limit is the most common law broken in the entire country.
Phil Mckrackin writes: { Reasonable laws I will support, A reasonable law has to be reasonable for ALL those who share the roadway not just the people who need to get there faster.}
Do you support setting limits in compliance with standards set by MUTCD?
Phil Mckrackin writes: {In such a scenario the person speeding is not blameless. If the person who was speeding sued the person who ran the stop sign, it would be argued that if the speeder was proceding lawfully the crash wouldn’t have happened and that because the speeder was engaged in the an act of breaking the law he is at fault.}
Are you seriously suggesting that drivers forfeit their established right-of-way because they are exceeding a posted limit?
{What motivation do the line officers have to write citations to those who are not guilty of anything?}
Money, political power and personal power.
{ Speeders are breaking a law regardless of why there is a law it is a law and IF they had been paying attention they would have been aware of the speed limits it is posted over and over again along interstates. The officers job is to enforce the laws as written not to write them. If it is a law the officer is not “picking on” the speeder he is doing his job.}
The issue is how do we get better, i.e., more reasonable, rational laws based on science and engineering rather than politics and economics?
{I do not believe speed limits are absolutes. But then I strongly disagree that there should be NO speed limits on any street. If we agree that deviation from mean speed creates risk of crash then why is it such a stretch that speed limits are set to minimize those deviations from the mean speed.}
First, deviation from the mean is meaningless for traffic flow. What you need to examine is the 85th percentile and the ten-mph pace. If most traffic is in that range, the highway will be safer. Next, nobody is arguing for all roadways to be unlimited but we could easily convert rural highways and Interstates to unlimited.
{ setting a speed limit of 80mph on a highway in Florida near an elderly community where there is a likelyhood many elderly people will utilize this highway at speeds of 50&60 mph is just illogical. To set it at 80mph so that a small number of the motorists that use it can travel faster is ludicris. Unfortunately, that many members of the NMA argue that there should be no speed limits period and I could never be agreeable with a system like that.}
Typical obfuscation of the anti-destination league. What about the school zones, the old people, the chipmunks, etc? The fact is that the slowest 85% of the traffic determine the limit and the safest point on the crash incidence curve. It is up to the others – the 99th percentile driver and the moron doing 50 mph under the normal speed – to adjust to the majority.
Phil says; (often times enviromental conditions exist where there is a need for slower traffic and unfamiliar traffic won’t be aware of these conditions and they see a road they can do 80mph on when the travel speeds should be much closer to 50mph for safety reasons. without a speed limit the safe speeds may not be capable of being achieved.)
Phil that’s the whole idea behind “driving according to conditions”. When I’m driving in unfamiliar territory I tend to drive slower to compensate for my lack of familiarity. On multiple lane roads I try to stay in a lane that suits my slower speed, not the fast, left lane. No one I know is suggesting that you must travel the full extent of the speed limit. You adjust your speed according to your instantaneous driving environment and all the other factors that formulate into your speed preference.
Most of my driving are on roads that I’ve driven for years. Around here on our 4, 6 or 8 lane roads, lane discipline is so poor that it looks more like a Chinese fire drill.
Phil says; (The law is not as black and white as is suggested by the NMA.)
I’m glad you feel that way. When you enforce speed limits as absolutes or near absolutes your treating speed as a black and white issue, which it is not. I believe there should be aggravating circumstances when someone is stopped for speeding. I believe that law makers who set up speed laws never intended them to be enforced as absolutes. I believe the “spirit of the law” comes into play here. I doubt that we will ever get Humans/drivers to see speed limits as absolutes. Humans are analog creatures, not digital. We see things in shades and colors, not as black and white. A speed limit is never going to be seen as digital unless we start letting computers do our driving….which might happen some day. That’s why “fuzzy logic” was invented. Fuzzy logic tries to mimic human behavior and mentality as opposed to something being full on or full off, it’s somewhere in between. Most things in life are analog and that’s why we must use analog to digital converters to allow computers to operate in the real world. Speed limits are no exception. A speed limit is not a threshold like breaking the sound barrier.
Phil, around here “running a stop” means you didn’t bother to stop. If you make a complete stop and then go your legal. If you get hit after you made a complete stop then that’s a different story. In either case it’s a matter of timing, not speed. Speed will determine the timing but cannot determine if a accident is caused. The timing when the driver pulled out in front of the vehicle on the main road will determine that. Bottom line is that in my scenario the accident could not have happened if the driver from the side street had not run the stop. But so that law enforcement can justify more speeding citations I can see how they will try every angle to fit speeding into the pix.
Geesh Phil, I don’t ever remember saying that I support no speed limits at all, never. I’m simply asking the limits to be scientifically set and some common sense and flexibility in their enforcement. As James quite readily explained, there’s a large discrepancy between percentage of speeding citations written and the actual percentage of accidents caused by speeding. That’s why some of us call this picking the low hanging fruit because it is. Around here for a officer to keep his job he must fill a quota or maintain a so-called performance standard, both have the same effect. Since it so easy because of devices such as radar to catch this type of violation naturally that’s the one they are going to enforce the most. Every cop around here has radar, why? Because it is their primary enforcement tool. Bad drivers come in all stripes and speeds. Radar does not catch bad drivers. Here again Phil, just as with the cops, you are hung up on speeding. It baffles me. Out of all the causes of accidents you pick this one to stress. You sure you don’t wear a badge?