I just got arrested for parking under the influence. That's right: parking.
There is a whole lot more you need to know about the new draconian drunk driving laws to protect yourself from false accusations and the nightmare of getting a DUI.
Specially older folks like me, don't realize the drunk driving levels are much lower than the .15 we grew up with, and the penalties are much harsher. Nationally the official level is now .08, but the de facto level is really .05. You don't even have to fail the BAC test to get a DUI, it's up to the cop.
The prosecution of drunk drivers is also now a big business scam.
I want to share the lessons I have learned the hard way.
First of all, if you don't drink or think you are drinking responsibility and can't get busted, think again.
Immediately go on line and purchase your own fuel cell based, high rated personal Breathalyzer.
You know the tables and calculators that tell you your BAC based on your gender, weight, numbers of drinks, and time period?
The BAC tables and calculators are worse than useless, my measured BAC was three times my calculated BAC, I know exactly how many and when I had my drink since I put them all on my credit card. Don't think that will matter to the jury, it's called the Carter defense, and it rarely works.
I had been dieting, the Atkins diet and had not eaten, as I often do not, in the last 24 hours.
That gets you two ways: One, your body produces ketones, and that increases you measured BAC.
Two: you absorb alcohol faster on an empty stomach. About 25% faster.
Do you have diabetes? That can increase your measured BAC many times.
If you use a breath spray, they have 30% alcohol in them. Ice cream has caused a false positive ready, really.
So don't think you know what your measured BAC will be. If you are stopped, and fail, there is almost nothing you can do to avoid prosecution.
So get your own Breathalyzer, test yourself at least 20 minutes after your last drink. Realize that you BAC will peak 1-2 hours AFTER depending on how much food you have in your stomach and weather it's beer of spirits. Remember that your personal Breathalyzer may be off by as much as ,01%. Remember that the cops treat .05% as the de facto DUI level. Remember, you don't have to be over the legal limit to get a DUI.
So now you should be able to avoid measuring above .05% BAC.
Now how do you avoid getting stopped in the first place? I was targeted based on being in costume, and dancing my way back to my car. An off duty cop claimed I had fallen several times, yet my clothes were unmarried, He claimed I came out of a bar, where's as I came out of a ballroom, and he claimed I hit a car behind me, yet the cop, and the car owner could find absolutely no evidence of contact whatsoever.
I thought I was fine, so I readily agreed to take the roadside sobriety test., Nope. I was wearing costume boots several sizes too large, fine to drive in, even walk, but not stand, and it was 1 am in the morning and I was tired from dancing.
Even if you are sober and ready, 50% of folks fail the roadside tests, in several studies. Not good odds.
Here's where I'm still not sure what your next play should be. Call your lawyer? It's probably the weekend and late at night, they won't be there.
Say as little as possible, speak and enunciate as clearly as your can, don't joke. At this point the cop is NOT YOUR FRIEND. Is not a peace officer, he is now trying to justify stopping you in the first place, and he is your adversary. Any misstep you make will be used against you. You should keep some comfortable shoes in your car for the possibility you may need to do a roadside test. We should probably all practice the test too. You will be in shock and stressed, it will be much harder than you think.
Now for the second piece of technology you should have: order a dash cam or two. Make suer you know how it works and record the entire event. I suggest one big obvious one in the front with a nice blinking red record light. Many place required it be obvious that you are recording, this will do that.
I would also suggest a second one in the rear window that is more discreet. These should be set to record audio, and react to movement and gee forces, and turn on automatically when you turn on the car, but also have a battery and a record button.
Check your local laws about recording, some states, incredibly will not let you record your arrest. We need, as a group, to petition for the absolute right to record what goes on around you. That some cops claim your arrest is a private matter is beyond police state. You may have to tell the cop you are recording as well.
Ask that your sobriety test be done in front of your car's camera in front of his.
If you are arrested, call a friend you know will be there, and get them to call whomever they can to help you.
Next you will be taken to the station and let sit for 20 minutes, ask for water, and wash your mouth out thoroughly, remove your dentures if you have them. Do not use breath spray since they contain alcohol. Breath deeply to the point of hyper ventilating, the cops will probably get angry with you for doing this. They will also yell at you to breath harder. Do not exhale all the way to the bottom of your lungs that is the most concentrated alcohol vapors, and NOT are good indication of blood BAC.
If you fail the Breathalyzer, ask for a blood test, you have nothing to lose. Wish I had done that.
Even if you pass the Breathalyzer or blood test, the cop is likely to still charge you with a DUI, they feel the need to justify all this action.
So now you are well and truly screwed. Welcome to the meat grinder
They keep you for about 6 hours, then dump you out the front door of the station. You have signed some docs, and just want to get home. Hopefully you remembered where you put your car, and have a phone with GPS and navigation so you can find it and drive home. Technically this may be against the law. But who would have read all the documentation at 6 am in the morning? Otherwise you can call a cab, or your friends, it's probably 5 am in the morning, and no one will answer. You may have to walk miles. The cops won't help you. You are bad, a drunk, dangerous and worthless and should be punished, and you will be for a long time.
So you get home, you are beat, you sleep 12 hours. Within a few days you have an arraignment, where you will be given a court date. You should get a lawyer before then. I spent $3000, but I think the 1500$ lawyers are probably just as good. There are several steps in this process that will happen to you in bad ways unless your lawyer preempts them, like the separate DMV loss of your license if you don't contest it. That's separate from your DUI.
At your arraignment you will plead not guilty, everyone does, and get your court date. Don't make a scene if the cop that arrested you happens to be there, it will only hurt your case. Your lawyer can appear for you.
Your DMV hearing will happen and no one will tell you. If you or your lawyer are not there and the cop is, you lose your license. Your lawyer should be able to save your license.
If it's your first DUI in 10-15 years, you will probably be offered “Diversion”. It sucks but unless you have a really good case, with you dash cams showing a good sobriety test, and you pass the Breathalyzer of blood test you can spend $10k, and still lose , and you lose you license and go to jail for months. With Diversion, you usually get to keep you license, you take a guilt trip course , and abstain from alcohol, and drugs, for 90 days to a year. You will be tested via urinalysis during the 90 day program. You can be randomly tested for the whole year, but usually aren't unless you draw attention to yourself somehow. They also test for pot and other drugs at the same time. Even if pot is legal in your state, you must not test positive for it if you want to pass diversion.
With Diversion, since about 2002, the police state takes away all your rights to trial and appeal. If you fail diversion, you cannot appeal, and you are automatically guilty. It's a terrible violation of our rights, but that why the USA imprisons more people than any country in the world.
You will now be required to install a criminal device in your car: the ignition interlock. It sounds so innocent, you will need to breath into a Breathalyzer attached to the ignition to start your car. If that's all it was, it would be fine. Why they couldn't stop there, they added the deadly “rolling retest” that increases you chances of an accident by 84%. 10 minutes after you start driving, you get beeped, that you probably won't hear it over the stereo, you then have 6 minutes to pass the Breathalyzer test. This test will be repeated every 10 minutes to 50 minutes randomly. Where you can ignore a phone call if you ignore this, the lights start flashing and your horn start blaring and your risk losing your licenses. It won't shut the car down, but it's enough of a distraction that accidents have happened. If you fail these test, the machines are flaky as hell, you must repeat it with 5 minutes or you fail, and you have 7 days till you are locked out of your car. You must take it to the same companies that makes the ignition interlocks, and they will report “your” failure and charge you 40-80$ to reset it. So their motivation is to make machines that fail a lot. Even in official testing the machines have a 10% failure rate, though the 5 corporations that wrote the interlock laws try to deny it. If your machines lock you out, you have to tow your car or get them to come out and fix it.
If you fail a lot, they extend the time you have to have the interlock on your car, so it can go on forever.
Since you have given up all your rights to appeal, there is probably no way to prove you were sober and it was the machines fault. I am going to try. Using the dash cam and my phone cam along with my personal Breathalyzer I can make a video that should be proof, but I have my doubts about anyone caring.
These interlocks have destroyed cars, caused many accidents and deaths, cost people thousands of dollars, and falsely said they were drunk.
Even the founder of MADD thinks they have gone too far.
To recap:
Don't drive with a high BAC, it's not enough to not drive intoxicated, the cops and jury only care about the BAC. The ONLY way to determine your BAC is with your own Breathalyzer used appropriately and calibrated or replaced every 6 months to a year.
Install a dash cam, so you can fight the road side sobriety test, and practice the test, even if you don't drink.
When you approach your car, look around, see who's looking at you.
Stop and consider how you feel. Ask someone if they think you might be intoxicated.
Do this before you get in your car, because once you do, it's too late.
Test yourself with your BAC Breathalyzer, do not get in the car if you fail it. .05% is the defacto limit.
This police state approach to DUIs is new only in the last few years, if you haven't studied it, you are in danger of falling into the prison industrial complex.
That's the end of the lesson for now....
· “The risk of a subsequent crash was higher for drivers installing an IID, compared to drivers not installing a device; drivers installing an IID had a risk of a subsequent crash that was 84% higher than drivers not installing an IID.” (p. 10) http://abionline.org/...
"The relationship between IIDs and crashes changes when crashes are examined for offenders who installed an interlock device. Surprisingly, the two analyses that examined this both showed that the risk of crashes was higher for offenders installing an interlock." http://duicanrevisited.blogspot.com/...
With the extremes of legislation subsequently fomented under the powerful lobbying efforts of MADD she quit in disgust claiming that she had never intended the movement to go so far. At this point in time she has disavowed any connection to this organization as it is today.)
False-positive breath-alcohol test after a ketogenic diet
http://www.proteinpower.com/...
Department of Forensic Chemistry, National Board of Forensic Medicine and University Hospital, Linko
Department of Obesity Research, Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
A 59-year-old man undergoing weight loss with very low calorie diets (VLCD) attempted to drive a car, which was fitted with an
alcohol ignition interlock device, but the vehicle failed to start. Because the man was a teetotaller, he was surprised and upset by
this result. VLCD treatment leads to ketonemia with high concentrations of acetone, acetoacetate and b-hydroxybutyrate in the
blood. The interlock device determines alcohol (ethanol) in breath by electrochemical oxidation, but acetone does not undergo
oxidation with this detector. However, under certain circumstances acetone is reduced in the body to isopropanol by hepatic
alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). The ignition interlock device responds to other alcohols (e.g. methanol, n-propanol and
isopropanol), which therefore explains the false-positive result. This ‘side effect’ of ketogenic diets needs further discussion by
authorities when people engaged in safety-sensitive work (e.g. bus drivers and airline pilots) submit to random breath-alcohol
tests.
International Journal of Obesity (2007) 31, 559–561. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0803444; p
American Prosecutors Research Institute
www.ndaa-apri.org
Alcohol Toxicology
for Prosecutors
Targeting
Hardcore
Impaired
1032249 toxicology monograph V5
Note the graph page 9. Chance of an accident is actually lowest at .02 BAC. At zero BAC. The probability of an accident is actually higher and about the same as at .05 %
“Studies have shown that the BBR(breath to blood ratio) of alcohol for apprehended drivers in UK,
Sweden and New Zealand varies from about 2,000:1 to 3,000:1 in any individual
case. The average is about 2,400:1, whereas the statutory limit in the UK was set
on the assumption of a BBR of 2,300:1. This means that many individuals
(,26%) with a true BBR of alcohol less than 2,300:1 are unfairly treated
.”
http://www2.potsdam.edu/...
Sources of error.
“They had zero alcohol in their blood. However, in the professional opinion of the officers, 46% of the completely sober individuals were too drunk to drive! Therefore, use of field sobriety tests led to judgments by law enforcement officers that were about as accurate as flipping a coin. "
http://www.techdirt.com/... ice cream DUI.
http://www2.potsdam.edu/...
fail with bread, from paint, etc....
Ignition Interlocks have a false positive rate of less than 10 percent (Marques et al., 2001)
www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/impaired_driving/pdf/811246.pdf