Texas may put the brakes on stricter drunken-driving laws
AUSTIN — Efforts to enact tougher drunken driving laws face roadblocks in a state that has historically been reluctant to mess with its drivers.
Texas is consistently among the states with the highest rates of drunken driving-related fatalities and lacks laws that most other states have, such as allowing for sobriety checkpoints. Lawmakers and advocates agree that something needs to be done to reduce the fatality rates, but constitutional and ideological issues may bring such proposals to a halt in the Legislature this year.
Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for Governors Highway Safety Association, said passing stricter driving laws has always been difficult in Texas because of the state’s “live free or die” attitude.
“We have made a lot of progress nationally, but Texas has a pretty big problem,” Adkins said. “Some states just say, ‘I will do what I want behind the wheel. We don’t need government intrusion.’”
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Texas may put the brakes on stricter drunken-driving laws
There are a lot of things I dearly love about Texas, and would never dream of changing. DUI laws that are not strict enough, well, that one thing I would like to see changed immediately.
Maybe some of our state law-makers need to ride with the local police and Sheriffs, or Texas DPS for a few weekend shifts and see, 1st hand, the effects of DUI or DWI.
ZERO Tolerance! ZERO! As in NONE, NADA, no tolerance!
If you drink and drive, and get caught, you GO TO JAIL! How simple can it be?
If you are an officer or fire fighter that has worked DUI/DWI fatality wrecks, if you have lost loved ones or friends in DUI/DWI wrecks, please share your story, in the comments section of this blog.
I agree with you entirely. No tolerance. If Texas does this I can assure you that there will be an upsurge of accidents involving drunken drivers.
When I was a cop that is the one thing I never gave anyone a break…well that and speeding in a school zone. I stopped one guy on Airport Frwy going about 20mph. Once I got him out of the car I could see how totally messed up he was. I told him he was under arrest for DWI. At that time he bowed up and asked if I knew who he was. I said yes…” A Drunk Driver “….he then stated I was messing with the wrong guy because he was the County Commissioner for Precinct 3 in Tarrant County. I told him that was good…maybe he can get someone to bail him out after 6 hours in the jail.
I too have worked some accidents…one which involved the death of a child hit by a drunk driver. It took all I had to not take him out into the countryside and beat the Holy Sh*t out of him. He barely had a scratch on him…so I figured he needed a few bumps and bruises after being in such a bad wreck.
Drunk Drivers need to pay the price…not the families of those hit by them.
Drunks in cars kill more people than guns. We don’t ban cars. We don’t ban drinking We concentrate on GUNS… Idiots…
Okay got that off my chest.. Here’s something to think about:
We hear the Death Penalty does not deter murder. We hear it all the time, and the fact is if that’s the truth, then stiffer penalties for drunk drivers will not deter drunks from driving.
I subscribe to the philosophy of “The Consequences for bad choices must be equally as bad as the choice made”. If you choose to put MY life in danger, the CONSEQUENCE of that action should put your life in danger.
Driving drunk is just that, it’s premeditated murder at the most, and reckless endangerment of the public at the least.
And allow me to add this little tidbit as well. Being in Fornicalia, the highest rate of DUIs in a population are Mexican, and the bulk of them are illegal. I can’t speak for other states, but if you stop what we in Fornicalia call a “deuce” it’ll like be, in many larger population areas, a Mexican. And so what have I said for many years? Demography is prophecy? It works here as well. And though we do many things in Fornicalia WRONG, our limit is .08 — and we have checkpoints which are posted CLEARLY — but, quite not so clearly if you’re DRUNK.
When I drink I drink at home; I do NOT drink publicly any more and haven’t done so for years.
People feel sorry for drunks because they “don’t remember.” But the families of the survivors? Oh yeah; THEY’LL do all the remembering for you.
Any cop, any EMT, any Coroner, can tell you literally thousands of horror stories. Their tales would, are and will be endless. And Fornicalia wanted to add marijuana and perhaps other drugs into the mix? Insanity. Sheerest insanity.
BZ
Texas, you’re mostly a great state. Get your shit together.
BZ
BZ — Get it together indeed… I had a couple of what I have to assume were Libertarian ASSHOLES tell me that DUI/DWI checkpoints were a violation of their rights. They are, of course, full of shit…
One went into a tirade about probable cause and it being needed for a stop to be made, not realizing that a checkpoint is NOT a traffic stop, or, apparently, that any cop 2 hours out of the academy can come up with some *probable cause* to initiate a traffic stop..
I have serious issues with Libertarian ASSHOLES that think it’s their RIGHT to do anything they like and then it’s a violation OF those rights when the LEOs pull em down for .08 or better…
The more I learn about Libertarians, REAL, big *L* Libertarians, the more I detest the bastards…
Zero tolerance for drunken drivers, Democrats, & deadbeat dads.
Drunks on the roads… We used to call them “Job Security” as a sort of gallows humor. I agree with everything that has been said so far. Other than the Libertarian comments. Real Libertarians know that their rights stop as soon as those rights infringe on those of others, and driving drunk will sure as hell do that.
I quit counting the numbers of dead and injured as a result of drunk driving my second year out of EMT school…
45 years ago, while in college, I volunteered as an ER orderly at a local county hospital… I saw enough then to sicken me for the rest of my life. Those wanting to DECREASE the vigilance against drunks on the road are fools at best, and unthinking morons more likely.
I know that the liberal and Libertarian *experts* on ALL things legal (Bob and Dennis) won’t agree with this but, the facts speak for themselves, and MORONS, (Dennis and Bob) are just that, MORONS…
Personally, I don’t give a DAMN what people like Dennis and Bob say.
Dennis always was an arrogant, egotistical, know-it-all, I’m the smartest person here prick as a kid, and has grown into much worse.
Bob? I have no idea, but he was a Facebook request, and BOTH feel that sobriety checkpoints are a violation of rights..
Both are STOOPID…
Sobriety checkpoints SAVE LIVES… Hopefully, mine, my wife, those of my family and friends…
Fred..You are correct that in Texas a DUI checkpoint is not considered a traffic stop.
But, it does border the 4th amendment fence. Below is comments on SCOTUS regarding 4th and checkpoints.
http://duicheckpoints.org/legalitysobrietycheckpoints.html
The Supreme Court acknowledges that DUI roadblocks violate a fundamental constitutional right. However, Chief Justice Rehnquist argued in a majority opinion that sobriety checkpoints are justified because the state’s interest in reducing drunk driving outweighs the minor infringement on an individual’s rights.
The dissenting judges argued that the Constitution does not provide exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. Judge Brennan argued, “That stopping every car might make it easier to prevent drunken driving…is an insufficient justification for abandoning the requirement of individualized suspicion.”
At any time I could conjer up some probal cause and search/conduct a field sobriety test. Checkpoints are abused and used as a revenue generator in poor counties/towns.
Even though I do not agree with them, I will stop for the LEO, answer basic questions (TDL), but that is all the cooperation I will give.
Fred, I am sorry you support them. Nothing infringes the Constitution.
Don’t be sorry Rich, this just brings out the folks that are trained in law enforcement and those that think they are Constitutional scholars… It’s always good to know the lay of the land…
In over 40 years of work in the Texas criminal justice system I found that enforcement of DWI laws went pretty much along the same lines as enforcement of most other laws. It all depends upon who your kinfolks are and how much influence you have in the community as to how the law applies to you.
One of the primary reasons I retired from being a peace officer was; I could predict at the very moment I arrested a violator whether he would be prosecuted for the offense or if the only jail time he would see would be the time he spent at the jail (if any at all) before somebody went his bond. There were some people in the community who the Sheriff and his staff, at the direction of the county judge, would refuse to place into a cell. Those people I had to take home and “tuck into bed”.
The only time Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) ever visited our community was after a 14 year old pedestrian was hit and killed by an intoxicated County Commissioner, and he received six months and probation.
The day local good ol’ boys start being treated like the “out-of-town-yahoos” and the not so privileged class of folks that’ll be the day I start supporting tough laws. Otherwise, don’t bother.
[W3]
Woody — HOME RUN! You nailed it better than I could have dreamed of…