wahoonc

I think this might have been covered earlier, it doesn't matter how many laws or what the BAC is, as long as people continue to drive drunk you will continue to have a problem. Until OUR society becomes one of law abiding citizens instead of one of "what can I get away with", or "I can get off if I get the right lawyer" you are going to have the problem. I do drink occasionally, if I have more than a single drink with dinner, I won't drive and make alternate arrangements. Americans as a whole seem to be some of the most distracted and poorest drivers I have ever seen. Not to say there isn't crazy traffic and drivers in other places. Here in NC we have some decent laws on the books, the police are making the arrests but there are deals being made n the backrooms of the courthouses and habitual offenders get a slap on the wrist and walk. The county next to mine has one of the higher arrests rates but it is the lowest in convictions, so how much good is that doing?

Aaron

forensicchemist

You READ correctly, but a beer does not contain 28 grams of ethanol. Depending on the brand, it has around 12-13 grams only. Ice beers have slightly more, lite beers have slightly less...but NO american beer has 28 grams of ethanol.

Mark

redfooj

assumming 1g/ml density, ive had tons of american beers above 28g alcohol per 12oz

tons of cheap "ice" beer with up to 9% abv... old english 800 ice/high grav, steel reserve high grav,

lots of craft american beers... dogfish head 90 min ipa, new belgium trippel, 1554 black, etc

many seasonals are up to 15, 18% abv. 50+ grams of ethanol

even the watered down mass beers are 4-5%. even beers in UTAH are 13+ grams.

forensicchemist

Sadly, this is not correct either.

The density of ethanol is only 0.789 g/ml.
The amount of alcohol allowed in a beverage and still retain the name "beer" is defined by federal statute. There is no beer that has 28 grams of ethanol per 12oz
Go read the label of an american beer, either light beer, or Ice beer...you will see its 4.2-4.8% alcohol by volume. Some States are even lower....

Now lets round it up to 5% for easy math. 12 ounces at 5% alcohol equates to 0.6 ounces of ethanol. 0.6 ounces x 28.35 grams/ounce = 17.01 grams x 0.789 (specific gravity of ethanol) = 13.4 grams of ethanol per 12 ounce beer.....and that's on the high side.

As alcohol is my career for some 13 years now, I assure you there is no beer with the alcohol concentration you stated above. Perhaps you are thinking of carbohydrates....?

redfooj

the first list (ice beers) are technically malt liquors

2nd and 3rd are ale beers. yes, beers.

had this thread been here 5 days ago i wouldve given you personal, digital photos.

these are all american beers from my 2 favorite brewers:
https://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Year...A/11/index.htm
9%

https://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Limi...A/15/index.htm
20%

https://www.bellsbeer.com/branddetail.asp?BrandID=12
10%

the last two are at 56g and 28g, respectively. i assure you, theyre highly alcoholic beers.
(sam adams also has a handful 10+.. up to 20+ abv)

perhaps you need to bring those into your lab. what statute in specific are you referring to? in my alcohol drinking career, the only statutes im aware of are state mandated, not federal (with utah and colorado on the short end)

manual_overide

in a lot of states they stop classifying as beer after a certain point and will then classify as barley wine

forensicchemist

the brands you cited are not really beers, but part of a closely related group of malted beverages that includes ales, stouts, and porters. The difference between these types and beers is in the brewing process, which does allow for higher alcohol contents. Now if you are not making any distinction between ales, porters, stouts, and are calling them all beers, (as I suspect you are) then you are correct, some would have much higher alcohol contents as compared to what is defined as beer.

As for testing some in the lab, would love too but I prefer a good cabernet or bourbon...

regards,

Rowan

I suppose you really have to look it at the way the general public does. A glass with a brownish-yellowy liquid in it that has a head and smells hoppy or yeasty or beery... will be seen as beer irrespective of how it is classified. Least concerned is a drunk person, for whom any drink will do.

It still doesn't get away from the issue -- that drinking alcohol will raise the blood-alcohol content of an individual. Full stop.

forensicchemist

agreed.....the best advice I offer to anyone and everyone on the subject is that if you've been drinking, just don't drive.....and if you must drive, just don't drink. The cost of DWI is outrageous.....between fines, court costs and lawyers fees can easily top 10K on the first offense......I'm sure eveyone has better uses for that 10K.

Regards and happy biking.....

mark

Bekologist

In Sweden - where they tie the fine to your income - some rich fella paid 175,000 dollars in fines for one drunk driving incident.

I believe american states could do a LOT more to make drunk driving less of a problem.

special colored liscenses that prevent the convicted drunk from buying booze or buying a car.

Seizing cars driven by drunk drivers and auction them off. no chance to save your car. you lose, and still have to pay the auto loan off.... Personal property is siezed in drug offenses all the time, this harsh penalty could also be applied to drunk drivers.

that 30 days automatic jail time used in Korea, even before conviction in a court of law, would do a lot to deter the crime of drunk driving. You drive drunk, you spend 30 days 'sobering up' while your crime is prepared for the court docket. people can be legally detained and held 72 hours, not including weekends or holidays, even before a crime is charged. this is totally legal in america.

Even under existing legal practices, people just under the suspicion of driving drunk could be held for 3 days, then released without ever being charged with a crime, and this would be totally legal. if someone blows a BAC that is illegal, change the laws to give them 10,20, 30 days hold prior to deciding if charges would be filed.

This would deter drunk driving.

Why NOT make it more unaceptable to drive drunk in the US by significantly increasing the penalties?

redfooj

beer is fermented grains (malt, barley). the two main divisions are ales and lager--one being top-fermented and the other bottom-fermented. stouts and porters are subsets of ales which are all beers. (bocks, pils, etc are lagers). any brewer will tell you this.

not that its relevant, but related to the thread.


as far as the thread pertains: 30 days? a little too much there. current punishment are serious enough to deter anyone thinking reasonably. problem is... when people are actually drunk, their sense of judgement goes out the window.

further, some people operate differently under the influence. there are just as much dangers out there (as pointed out): inattentiveness, drowsiness (done it a few times. really couldve driven better drunk.)

Rowan

One of the things that also clouds people's emotional views on things like this is the discretion that judges/magistrates have in sentencing. The penalties specified in most laws are "maximum"; it's only recently that in countries such as Australia, that there has been a move to mandatory fixed terms specified in the legislation, mainly because of child-molestation and child pornography cases.

While everyone wants the book thrown at an offender such as a drunk-driver who has killed someone, the system (the laws created by legislators -- the politicians) enable the judge/magistrate to hear mitigtating circumstances that led to the crime, plus character references, even psychiatric assessments. The judge/magistrate then has to weigh all those factors and decide on a punishment that actually does fit the crime -- and if the mitigating circumstances in his/her view are adequate, or the possibility of rehabilitation without jail is good, then a lesser sentence is likely to be imposed. I think the judges/magistrates also look at precedent in sentencing to determine the most appropriate for a set of circumstances.

It does, too often, come down to lies, manipulation and well-crafted (or crafty) submissions by the defence lawyers (although, to be fair to them, they also can only work with what they are told by an offender who may bend the truth to suit their circumstances).

In addition, in Australia, it is not permitted to reveal that a person has a previous criminal record during a hearing or trial, even if it is for serial offences, because that is seen to be an unfair influence on the decision of the judge/magistrate/jury. It may be different in the US and other jurisdictions.

The hurdles continue to mount after the OP's election to office.

There simply is a large degree of inbuilt flexibility in the system, starting with police... who must consider whether the standard of driving in a fatal crash was culpable because of the degree of impairment, or the driving and impairment was only one of a series of factors attributable to both parties that led to the crash. You are unlikely to see a driver charged with murder unless the driver engaged in an action that was deliberately calculated to kill a person.

To me, the system really starts to break down when the lawyers come into it, and the deals they try to do with public prosecutor and judge can result in serial offenders failing to get what they deserve.

It doesn't do the families and friends any good at all -- but the process of change can only happen from the community... who elect the politicians (and in the US, the police chiefs and the judiciary, it seems) who make the laws and set the boundaries in the first place.

We could, of course, just have a computerised conviction system -- feed in the facts of the case, forget that someone might have had one single (life-altering) error of judgment, and is so remorseful that they will never ever offend again -- then print out the ticket that says go straight to jail for the one and only prescribed penalty. Actually, that sort of does happen now with on-the-spot fines, but people often overlook the fact they can go to court and use the same processes of sentencing including mitigation to perhaps decrease the sentence imposed on them compared with the on-the-spot one.

Note: I am not a lawyer, but I have covered enough court cases as a journalist and studied on-going ones to have a reasonable understanding of the processes in Australia. I don't think the principles are too much different in North America. Country courtrooms used to be rife with drink-driving and public drunkeness cases.

MKahrl

If you read the NHTSA site carefully you will see that a motor vehicle crash is counted as alcohol related if anyone in the accident had alcohol in them, not just the driver who caused the crash. That includes drinking pedestrians who are mowed down while on the sidewalk. If you're the sober designated driver and are hauling your uncle home from the bar and some sober driver talking on their cell phone runs a stop sign, hits your car, it's counted as an alcohol related.

I use the cell phone as an example only because several studies have shown the likelihood of being in an accident while talking on a cell phone is the same as driving at .08. And that's why we punish drunk drivers, not because they did something dangerous with a car, but because they are so much more likely to be in a serious accident.

The TV show mythbusters has a funny experiment where they tested drunk drivers and cell phone talkers on an obstical course. They both did poorly but the cell phone talking did worse.

Cyclists may be more concerned about driving while distracted because we are more likely to be a victim. Most drunk driving takes place at night, especially after midnight, when cyclists usually are not out on the road.

genec

Toyota has a new design on the drawing board that senses alcohol in the sweat of the driver's hands and will shut down the car when alcohol is detected.

See A&S for a thread there on "Cars smarter than drivers."

N_C

Iowa does this, but only after more then one serious offense with DUI or OWI, etc. If they are not going to ban a person from legally owning or driving a car forever, even after the first offense then they at least need to impliment this after even the first offense.

N_C

What if they don't sweat? What if they have gloves on because it is winter time or they figure out that is the way to beat it? Good idea, but not fool proof. Keep in mind alcohol lowers your body temp., so sweating is probably not going to happen a lot of the time.

Rowan

There is always someone cleverer than the designer. See Computers and Viruses.


Again, it's a case of changing community attitudes is too difficult. People might also look to smoking as how community attitudes can change... but unfortunately, there are a LOT more people who drink alcohol than smoke (I think).

divergence

There probably are. But so what? People who drink alcohol aren't a problem, unless they drive while drunk. And attitudes about drunk driving have changed radically in the past few decades; it was once taken very casually, and carried no real social stigma at all (except in circles where drinking itself was frowned on.)

Keep the pressure on for tough drunk driving laws and keep hammering home the consequences of this behavior, and community attitudes will continue to shift away from tolerating drunk driving. At the same time, maybe we can ramp up some of the same social and legal pressure against driving while struggling to stay awake (which I've done, and I realize it was as dangerous and as criminally stupid as drunk driving), while chatting on cel phones, and other predictable and avoidable sources of lousy driving.

PSYCLONE

I tend to suffer from severe whiskey d#ck, so I've denounced all alchohol