Florida Criminal Defense Blog

For anyone who wasn’t certain that MADD has become a neo-temperance organization, this should clarify things.

There is a serious effort by major college presidents and administrators supporting reducing the drinking age from 21 to 18. The reasons for this are credible enough, as an attempt to reduce the underground and binge drinking that is epidemic on college campuses nationwide.

It’s an arguable position that is gaining credibility because of the stature and direct experiences of these university presidents. These are people on the front lines of college age alcohol and drinking issues on a daily basis.

But what does this have to do with MADD and drunk driving? Beats us.

Advertised as a “first in the nation” partnership and pilot program, MADD will be performing “traffic observation” looking for drunk drivers in Florida over the labor day weekend. Volunteers will from MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) will be on the road from 10pm-2am looking for drunk drivers, and calling in suspects to local Florida Sherriff’s departments.

The volunteers will not have any special communication or access, and will be using their own cell phones. They will make no effort to stop drivers or otherwise interfere in the sheriff’s duties in any DUI stops that result.

However, they have all undergone “ride-along” training with officers, as well as classroom programs. Presumably they have been instructed as to what is and isn’t suspicious driving behavior that might lead one to believe that a driver is drunk or impaired.

The most interesting part of the article is where the Florida MADD director suggests that they will be keeping their own statistics as to “response times, percent of arrests, number of observations and interceptions, etc.” One wonders what expectations they have with regard to police responsiveness to their private patrolling.

And it is certainly a interesting question as to what effect, if any, these private patrols will have on police behaivor and drunk driving arrests in Florida.

Open questions remain as to whether these calls will recieve a higher priority response than other police duties. I hope Florida law enforcement does there own study, but also analyzes the cost of what the police are not doing if they are chasing many of these calls down. Are other areas of public safety at risk? For example, do domestic violence calls get slower response times while law enforcement is chasing these drivers around?

If the same resources are being used with different priorities, there is always a trade-off. Someone should be making sure that trade-off is worth it.

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If you are accused of drunk driving in Florida, please contact us for a free consultation.

I suppose articles like this one in the Orlando Sentinel are supposed to get people to think twice about drunk driving. And that’s certainly a fine goal, really. No one is supportive of driving under the influence or impaired.

But in everything there is a line that can’t be crossed (actual intoxication/impairment) and some gray area. Having a drink and driving is perfectly legal. Having two drinks and driving is, for most people perfectly legal, unless they are huge drinks, or for some other reason able to impair you.

That level of impairment has a legal definition. It is .08% BAC as measured on a legal, officially maintained and operated breath test machine. There are also a number of subjective measures that may indicate impairment, as mentioned in this article. They include:

• Erratic driving
• bloodshot/glassy eyes
• the smell of alcohol on your breath
• slurred speech
• various field sobriety tests
• and other indicators

It is objectively true that you can have any of the above indicators and absolutely not be impaired or guilty of drunk driving.

And again, we all agree that if it is a close call, you probably shouldn’t be driving. But the degrees are important. Plenty of people who are arrested, and even convicted of DUI in Florida were probably not really impaired. But that law makes it very likely that a person will plead guilty on close calls, because, 1) they will likely lose anyway, and 2) it is a very difficult and time consuming process to defend yourself in court for a trial that could take months to resolve, all the while you don’t have the ability to drive and earn a living. This happens everyday.

But they stigma attached is severely out of proportion.  In the article, and insurance industry rep is quoted:

“Your insurance company will usually find out about your conviction when they check your driving record come renewal time, said David Snyder, vice president and assistant general counsel for the American Insurance Association. Then your rates will increase sharply, or the company could drop you altogether.

“I can’t imagine anything other than killing somebody with a car that is viewed more negatively than a drunk-driving conviction,” Snyder said.”

I wonder if this is a factual statement, or just a strange opinion. Because I can imagine things that should be treated more seriously. How about driving through a playground full of preschoolers at 75mph?

The anti-drunk driving industry refuses to have any perspective on these issues. Most people who get convicted of a DUI aren’t hardened, dangerous criminals. Assuming a person is truly guilty - and not just forced to plead guilty because of how stacked the system is against defendants - then they made a mistake. A mistake in an area of the law where there is significant gray area, and prosecutions and convictions are way out of proportion with the actual crime.

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If you are facing a DUI/Drunk Driving charge in Florida courts, please contact us for a free legal consultation and case evaluation.