No. I am sorry. I know I am not good at admitting when I am wrong, but this is one of those times when I am sure I am not. It takes a hell of a lot to register a .008. Check the link to the BAC counter I posted if you doubt me on this point. Let me illustrate this: I weigh 160 lbs. Three drinks in one hour does not make me legally intoxicated. Neither does five drinks over four hours. Add 35 pounds to that (Steve's weight), and it gets even harder to register a .008. You do not register a legal level of intoxication just having a couple of beers. Given that undeniable truth, you only have one reason to refuse to take a breath test-- can we agree on that? You have ONE REASON to do so: you have had more than "a couple of drinks" or a nightcap or anything else. You have had enough to drink that you fear you've been doing so illegally. In which case, off to jail with you either way. I want something very clear understood here, and I cannot understand why anyone would argue with it: either you have not had anywhere near enough to register a .008, or you should not be driving. If you have had enough to register a .00749, you should not be driving. It is that simple. GO CHECK THE BAC CALCULATOR if you still want to argue: a .008 for a 190-lb male (roughly Steve's weight) DOES NOT OCCUR from having "a couple drinks" over ANY PERIOD OF TIME. Jesus Christ, I do not think I can be any more clear on this. If Steve refused the breath test, he's either an idiot, or he had near enough to drink (.0079, to quote you) that he DESERVES to lose his license.
Kagy, I bartended for over 9 years, and I had to renew my license every single year, and there are several types of drinks, if you have 2 Long Island Teas for instance, that is equal to around 5 drinks. Some Wines are more potent then others, did he eat anything? All of these are factors in the BAC at that time. You should NEVER ....and I mean NEVER EVERY blow, period !! Those tests are so inaccurate it is insane. It registers the amount of alcohol in your LUNGS as you expel your breath. The only TRULY accurate test is to draw blood. DaDakota
I would say any young man running red lights on Westheimer at 5am with the smell of alcohol on him and refusing brethalysers should expect to get taken to jail. There isn't anything unfair about that. Also, I don't know why some of you are taking the gospel on Clutch's source saying Steve passed two field tests. They haven't reported anyone was with Steve so I guess it was Steve and the cop. So unless Clutch's source is the cop, which I doubt, of course Steve is going to say he passed the field test. Is he really going to say he failed them? C'mon...
a couple of points: 1) anyone who says we should trade franchise over this would fail 2 field sobriety tests, a breathalyzer, etc. 2) in defensive driving, they said [and take this with a grain of salt] that most of the field sobriety tests [such as saying the alphabet backwards] are designed to get you to say "man, I couldn't even do that if I was sober!". boom. confession. I don't know if that's right or not, but that's what they say. 3) lastly, something someone else said about stevie having his own breathalyzer got me thinking. . . why hasn't some entrepeneur capitalized on this idea? why can't people buy their own breathalyzer? it would be a tremendously helpful tool to have. sure, there are some chuckleheads who will drive no matter how drunk they are, but I've got to believe there are a great majority of drinkers who could pace themselves when they drink socially and could have a reasonably certain idea of whether or not they're in shape to drive. as someone else posted, you usually don't "feel" where your blood-alcohol level is. but if you had your own personal breathalyzer, you wouldn't have to go by feel. is there some good reason why personal, commercial breathalyzers is not a workable idea?
What the hell are you talking about man? And what did I do to deserve getting all capital letters? That's pretty harsh man... Seriously I have no idea what you're talking about with the middle east thing. Those should be factored in! Obviously one can of beer will not affect you as having 12 oz of whiskey and obviously a Long Island Tea will affect you more than, say, a screwdriver. There is more alcohol in the stronger drink which will affect both the BAC (and hence the breathalyzer) and your ability to drive. I'm not sure why you think this shouldn't be a factor...
There are, or at least there were. I remember about a year and a half ago seeing some breathalyzer kits for sale at Krogers. Now I can't remember if they were one-shot or not (I think so but I'm not sure) but they were kinda complicated looking. The joke among my friends was that if you could figure out how to use it then you were sober enough to drive...
A. DaDakota has absolutely no clue what he's talking about: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~verdant/Marijuana_FAQ/X0024.html Visit that site for some facts about mar1juana use, rather than disinformation and paranoia. B. My Constitutional Law professor told us it's idiotic to ever take a breathalizer test: 1. Refusal to take the test isn't a reason to convict. 2. There's no legal requirement for you to take it. 3. The possibility of error can only hurt you. A false positive is probably going to result in the case going against you.
Wow, for the first (and likely last) time ever, I completely agree with every single word in glynch's post. I will cherish this moment... Kagy: Again, we don't know how much he had to drink, but that is really irrelevant: if you don'ty know whether you're over the legal limit (and the only way to be sure is to not drink), then you don't blow. He's going to jail either way, and if he blows over then he's going to be convicted, but if he refuses then he gets off. It is that simple. DaDakota is also correct in that the breathalyzers are notoriously unreliable; when a lawyer tries to argue a case where the defendant has blown over, he will make the breathalyzer's unreliability his main thrust. Sometimes it even works, because they are unreliable. I won't argue that he should be allowed to drive; after my DWIs I won't drive if I've had a drop. He's an idiot for drinking and driving, but he's a smart boy for refusing the breathalyzer. Chances are he'd have blown over, and then he would almost certainly be convicted. They're pretty harsh on DWIs now - he might even get jailtime. And he would lose his license for a year. So if his choices were to 1) go to jail for the night, lose his license for a year, and get a fine, VIP seminar, AA assignment, probation/jailtime, and 2) going to jail for the night and losing his license for 6 months, then he made the right choice. He made ther wrong choice by getting in the car in the first place, but he picked the lesser of two legal evils...
You know whats crazy? I left the club one night and I know I was pulled over because I was a black man in a nice car. Anyways, I had a couple of Congac, but I was a long ways from being drunk, but since I refused to take a breath test, i was taken in. I made bail , got my lawyer involved, and had the charges dropped. I'm not saying this is what happened to Francis, but some of those police look to make the spotlight.
I've programmed biomechanical devices (fingerprint readers) before and I'll chime in on a lot of them being closer to pseudo-science than 100%, trust your life on them real science. If there's a 50% margin for error in the test, and you've had two beers, you'd be an idiot or drunk to blow. Never gamble when the deck is stacked against you or you can't afford to lose. That being said - he shouldn't have been driving. I work for Schlumberger, and they have a no tolerance policy on DWI. If you are driving and get in an accident, they do your blood work at the hospital. Any trace of alcohol - even 0.01 - is grounds for instant termination. They put in this strict policy because even one drink seriously affects your ability to judge speed. They ran a test where people trained to judge the speed of cars passing by did the test before and after drinking. Before drinking, the people were able to judge the speed withing 5mph over 95% of the time. After one (1!) drink, they were wrong over 80% of the time. Please people...if you're going to drink - give someone else the keys before you even start.
Does the NBA still hold firm to the "three strikes and you're out" drug policy? Does the same standard apply to alcohol as drugs?
I think if someone has to buy their own personal breathalyzer to keep in their car they might just have a drinking problem. OS
You can drink till you can't walk in new orleans and most louisiana and their drunk driving and drunk driving related deaths are lower than ours. Someone explain this one to me.
Good He didn't hurt himself or anyone else Bad The public relations hit And that will probably be the extension of it. But everytime his name is mentioned, we're gonna hear conversation about it. You should hear some Bulls fans (not this one) rag on him...pretty ugly stuff.
Thank God you aren't our GM. Rip Hamilton for Steve would be a horrible trade. I got a dwi a year ago, and to this day, I regret it. Steve's only crime is that he was careless, and thankfully noone was hurt. Who knows, maybe he wasn't even drunk? I wouldn't call him a headcase by any means.
