I’d like to know whom the groups are in D.C. that would sue the state over 0.05

[PorterRockwell]

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=43580434&nid=148&title=utah-restaurant-associations-ask-governor-to-veto-05-dui-law

I don’t condone drinking and driving.  I jsut don’t see how this is going to address the issue of people that don’t care about DUI laws.  This isn’t going to stop the repeat offender, the binge drinker or the non experienced drinker from driving.

I don’t get the mentality here that this kind of law fixes things.

 

[Tony (admin)]

You’re assuming the law is meant to fix things. 

[PorterRockwell]

No I’m not, I know it’s to punish imbibers for not giving in to the local culture

[Tony (admin)]

Correct. Carry on.

[zeous]

I think it’s just another profitable revenue stream.  Like it or not, government is a business model.  Always has been, always will be.  Bullies gonna steal lunch money from those who the majority won’t squawk about and who can’t or won’t defend themselves.

[ironman1315]

You wouldn’t win.

[PorterRockwell]

I don’t recall saying I was suing  to said I wanted to know who was, on what grounds and whom in DC would treat Utah harshly and no Obama is no longer a valid answer 

[ironman1315]

Here is some 1L con law for you.

There are three standards that the courts analyze any case like this in front of them that is a prima facie challenge to a law. It has to be based on some constitutional principle. Now, the highest standard of review is strict scrutiny. This requires having a compelling governmental interest and the least restrictive means. This is meant for rights clearly defined in the constitution and meant to protect discrete and insular minorities.

The second standard is intermediate scrutiny. This is not used a whole lot because the analysis is messy. This is for limited circumstances, none of which would apply.

The lowest standard of scrutiny is “rational basis” scrutiny. The standard is essentially the court telling the legislative branch that they can to whatever they want to. Now, the standard is that the legislative branch needs to have a “rational basis” under any set of facts that are real or even a set of facts that are imagined, so long as the imagined facts are not utter fantasy. This has been the case since the 1940s with Wickard v. Filburn. So, you tell me is this Obama or a long line of SCOTUS cases?

That’s why this case is a loser and who is doing this doesn’t matter. But, good on them for wasting tax-payer time and money with a frivolous lawsuit. And frankly, I hope they get nailed with a Rule 11 sanction for doing it.

[UteThunder]

You say you don’t condone drinking and driving, and yet, you are clearly against this law. That doesn’t add up.

If you don’t condone drinking and driving, then you should have ZERO problems with this law.

I haven’t read the law, but I would assume that by lowering the limit, the penalties for having higher BAC relative to the new limit would be greater than they are currently. 

 

[PorterRockwell]

I am against this law  Utah had 33, way too many fatalities, related to inroxicztes drivers. 99% of those were between 0.10-0.15. Well over the the current legal limit of 0.08. Lowering it to 0.05 is Not going to address representative Thurston’s stated goal of discouraging drunk driving. 

 

You ou want to toughen up drunk driving laws start with mandatory incarceration with an enhancement penalty for each subsequent offense   As it is now people convicted pay an average of 10,000 in fines, costs etc  and they can make payment arrangements etc  

most people value their freedom more than money  

i cannot tell you how many times I have sat in court and watched multiple repeat offenders walk out with nothing more then fines 

 

 

 

[PorterRockwell]

@utethunder You shouldn’t assume. This law is nothing more than trying to punish Drinkers and enforce certain cultural “norms” on people thst don’t toe the line in Utsh.

Other than casting the final vote Utsh has a long history of trying to shame and punish people whom want nothing more than be adults

Show me some empirical evidence that refutes the latest stats from the state regarding DUI’s and fatalities and then we can talk.

IF you really believe this about public safety and keeping drunks off the road then you aren’t as smart as I thought you were

[UteThunder]

Why are you only worried about fatalities? If you got hit and injured by someone who was .05, would you not want them charged with DUI?

I have no doubt that this law is driven by the local religion, but I don’t see how someone getting behind the wheel with a BAC of .05 – .07 is them doing “nothing more than being an adult.” If anything, they are being an irresponsible, selfish child who is putting the safety of themselves, their passengers, and anyone else on the road at risk. 

[PorterRockwell]

Our own university has studied this and drivers texting are just S impaired as somebody driving at 0.08. Yet I see people here texting and driving at 80 mph on a regular basis.

Show us the numbers on collisions and injuries related to the levels you cited.

0.05 is nothing more than feel good legislation that was passed due to the pressure to do away with the Zion curtain

[UteThunder]

Are you arguing against this DUI law or in favor of a no texting law? Because those are two separate issues and not having the texting and driving laws the way you want them is not a defense for arguing against the DUI law you oppose.

As someone who claims to be against drinking and driving, you shouldn’t need statistics for .05 BAC.  

[Utah]

I don’t like this argument. Not at all. 

Then why not just outlaw alcohol? 

Show me a stat that shows that lowering it from 0.08 will change anything. 

Porter’s point was this: 

Why go after this? There are MUCH more dangerous things happening on Utah’s roads than someone with an 0.06 BAC. Texting, driving, etc. 

You guys don’t know how to freaking drive. It’s shocking how poor Utah drivers are. Utah drivers constantly speed. They constantly run red lights. I’ve been SHOCKED how many drivers I see ASLEEP on the roads here. I saw a driver on the sidewalk yesterday here in Ogden. Then, on the way home, I saw another driver pass three cars on the shoulder.

Lowering the BAC limit was about thing #10 on the to do list. 

Just another example of how pathetic this state is. 

You SCREAM you are conservative/libertarian/small government…lol. 

Raising the income tax this fall, raising the food tax, raising the gas tax…you all are nothing but tax and spend democrats, and chase away business to line the pockets of your donors. lol. You are the worst parts of the left AND all the worst parts of the right, and you wrap it up in a cute little bow of religion and City Creek. 

But it’s ok, Jesus is okay with lowring the BAC, but not ok with protecting the environment…

Except the scriptures say EXACTLY that. 

[ironman1315]

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Publications/ABSTRACT_Effectiveness%20of%2008%20and%2005%20BAC%20Limits.pdf

We estimate that doing so would save 1,790 lives each year if all states adopted a .05 BAC limit.

This is a nationwide study however and there are other variables to deal with when it comes to Utah but if the proportion follows it’ll be 3 fewer deaths per year, more or less.

[PorterRockwell]

Someone that gets it. Well stated

[ironman1315]

You are correct, there are lots of things that legislators can do to fix the road safety issues. But just because they do one thing doesn’t mean they are excluded from doing other things. So lowering the BAC is # 10. Maybe next year they can deal with #9 and the next #8 and so on and so forth.

[Utah]

Three lives a year, correct? Three lives a year will be saved. Great. Fantastic. 

Why are we starting with #10? There were over 300 deaths on Utah roads last year, correct? Yet, we start with #10? 

That’s the issue. 

And, fortunately for Jesus, #10 fits right in with his dogma (except it doesn’t, scripture, Mormon scripture, says otherwise). 

The problem is that this legislation is religion being forced on the masses, and it’s being dressed up as something it isn’t. 

[ironman1315]

Do you think we should start somewhere? So why not start at 10. It’s easy. But of course railing against religion is so much easier than find facts to say that lowering the BAC won’t make Utah roads at least a little safer and to concede that this law is not utterly unreasonable.

[Tony (admin)]

The roads will be safer because less people will be driving on them out of fear of getting pulled over, despite their not being impaired. They’ll just drink at home. The roads will be safer because there will be less restaurants and bars in business LOL.

[Utah]

I don’t have a problem with your line of thinking. In fact, I agree. BUT, I don’t think that is the motivation behind this law and that is what bothers me. 

[ironman1315]

And Utah has some of the most stringent texting and driving laws in the nation. Also, according to the CDC in 2014 some 3,000 deaths occurred due to texting and driving and 9,000 deaths caused by drunk driving (I didn’t look for a BAC breakdown). But texters tend to cause more accidents than drunk drivers.

[PorterRockwell]

The problem is lack of enforcement I’ve passed legislators that were texting and driving AFTER the law was passed. You’d think with their special license plates they’d be smarter than that

[ironman1315]

Let’s think about how difficult it is to enforce this law. Most people are driving at the same time. Cops could try to keep their heads on a swivel and try to catch texters, but that would be difficult. Further, it would require them watching them the whole time since a person can look at their GPS, a mere glance down is not enough to create a reasonable suspicion. It is a matter of luck to catch a texter. However, I think we should increase the penalties for texting and driving.

Now, compare that to drunk driving enforcement. There are relatively few drivers at the time the drunk driving occurs and cops can make DUI checkpoints, which they cannot do with texting for a number of reasons both constitutional and practical.

As for legislators, I am sure that legislators break laws all the time, just like everyone else. They should be smarter, but they aren’t. They should be examples, but they are flawed like you and me. Them getting or not getting caught is somewhat irrelevant to the broader problem that texting and driving enforcement is significantly harder for various reasons.

[PorterRockwell]

Very valid points enforcement is a logistical nightmare for the law. Really about the only thing it seems to be good for is IF you are in a collision and can subpoena the phone records to prove a driver was texting and driving at the exact moment the collision occurred

[ironman1315]

I agree there. And I am glad that if it causes injury or death there is a $10k fine and 15 year prison sentence. And maybe additional charges for manslaughter and even murder if the actions were reckless enough.

[PorterRockwell]

And those are the kind of penalties we need and should have for drunk drivers. I’ve seen so many repeat offenders whom get s slap on the wrist. If they are willing to chance driving when they’ve had ten beers are they going to change their behavior and choices because the BAC was lowered? Statistics tells us no they aren’t

[UteThunder]

You are against a law that further limits the amount of alcohol one can have before getting behind the wheel, but you claim to not condone drinking and driving? Being okay with anything up until the limit of .08 or above is the very definition of condoning drinking and driving.

I agree with pretty much everything else you said, but why can’t we have this law and then seek harsher penalties too?   

[PorterRockwell]

Show us the data that supports lowering it to 0.05 will reduce deaths correlated with Intoxicated drivers. Comparing Utah to European nations that have dropped the limit isn’t a accurate comparison. Europeans teach their children at a young age about appropriate use of alcohol in Utah it’s demonized the European nations also mandatory minimum forfeiture of you license and minimum mandatory jail time.

candidly Utah’s drunk driving laws aren’t a deterrent. Offenders know they will get a slap on the wrist. No jail time.

Put it in perspective article in the Trib cites 2500 or so drunks were stopped from driving due to interlock devices. The devices work well assuming a person only had access to ONE car. They don’t travel from car to car

Utah’s low drunk driving rates are because roughly have the population here eschews alcohol. Show me any place where that’s the case?

[UteThunder]

Why does .05 have to reduce deaths for it to be okay as the limit? Is it not enough to have it reduce the number of injuries and the amount of property damage?

Or is death the only thing we want to prevent here? People can drink as much as they want as long as nobody gets killed?

[PorterRockwell]

D wth reduction and the other losses you mention are one of Thurston’s stated goals there’s scent empirical evidence to support his theory Again IF the proposed limit would reduce fatalities injuries etc that would be one thing. In this state a law like this only has one intent. To demonize and vilify those that choose to drink responsibly

Under this standard a person who weighs 120 lbs would be legally “drunk” even though they show minimal or no evidence of impairment

[ironman1315]

We estimate that doing so would save 1,790 lives each year if all states adopted a .05 BAC limit.

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Publications/ABSTRACT_Effectiveness%20of%2008%20and%2005%20BAC%20Limits.pdf

[PorterRockwell]

A laudable goal but is an estimation I would like to know what they modeled it on etc

And for the record I am against drinking and driving I don’t support the law here in Utah because it appears it was done to punish those thst imbibe responsibly for their vocal and constant opposition to the Zion Curtsin. They raised the markup to 88% for education and enforcement I’m fine with that what I’m not fine with is criminalizing s person because they had ONE drink with dinner on their way home from work

Wondering if part of this is also because Brewvies didn’t bow down and roll over in the Deadpool case

The legislature here just seems hellbent on punishing and shaking responsible adults they have s c**ktail with a meal

[ironman1315]

Our first objective was to estimate the potential effectiveness of reducing the illegal BAC limit for driving from .08 to .05 in the United States. We accomplished this aim by 1) conducting a meta-analysis on qualifying international studies to estimate the range and distribution of the most likely effect size from a reduction to a .05 BAC limit, 2) assessing what factors varied among the selected studies that moderated the effect size, 3) translating this synthesis toward estimating the potential benefits in the United States of reducing the current .08 limit to .05 BAC, and 4) analyzing the life-saving benefits achieved by the .02 reduction (from .10 to .08 BAC) in the limit in the United States and using those savings to estimate the benefits of the proposed .03 reduction in the legal limit from .08 to .05 BAC.

That’s from the methodology section.

[PorterRockwell]

Thanks. Would have taken forever to find and read on my phone screen so maybe the answer is to make it national and try these cases as enhances felonies?
A deterrent is only as effective as the likely penalty

[ironman1315]

To do that you would need Congress to do something (lol) like use their spending power like they did in the 90s or utilize their commerce powers to require it, but that runs into federalism concerns. The easiest path would be the spending power to incentivize the change.

[PorterRockwell]

Yeah. What was. Thinking expecting elected officials to represent the people Stupid me. Oh well

[UteThunder]

@PorterRockwell I don’t think you understand how BAC levels work.

.05 is .05, the size of the individual doesn’t change the level of inebriation.

Oh, and another thing. Maybe you should stop saying you are against drinking and driving because you clearly are NOT against it. If you really were against it, you wouldn’t say things like “What I’m not fine with is criminalizing a person because they had ONE drink with dinner on their way home from work”.

[ironman1315]

That’s not how BAC works. Size has something to do with it: https://alcohol.stanford.edu/alcohol-drug-info/buzz-buzz/factors-affect-how-alcohol-absorbed

[UteThunder]

From your link:

“In general, a person who weighs 180lbs will have a lower blood alcohol concentration than a 140lb person who drank the same amount.”

So the 180 lb person will likely have to drink more than the 140 lb person to get to .05, but once they are there, they will both have a .05 BAC.

PorterRockwell’s comment implies that at .05 a 120 lb person would show no impairment due to their small stature. In reality, their size has no relevance to the impairment they show at a certain BAC. Body size only matters in terms of how much alcohol it will take to get to a certain BAC level.

[ironman1315]

Oh, I see what you are saying. I thought you were saying that a 120 person would have to drink the same amount as a 150 pound person to get to .05.

[PorterRockwell]

I understand perfectly well how BAC works. By your own admission you hadn’t read the law so maybe just maybe YOU ought the bread it prior to spouting off. Btw you did a magnificent job of hijacking the thread.

[UteThunder]

@PorterRockwell

Spouting off? Hijacking?

Ooookaay . . . 

Not once did I stray off topic, (you know, the new .05 law?) and I haven’t spouted off once in this thread. 

YOU, on the otherhand, contradict yourself repeatedly – “I’m against drinking and driving, except when I’m okay with drinking and driving.”

YOU try to change the argument by bringing in texting and driving as if that is somehow relevant to the new DUI limit.

And then YOU make the asinine claim regarding a 120 lb person and their level of impairment in regards to .05 BAC. Talk about magnificent. You haven’t got the slightest clue about BAC, and it is laughable that you would claim otherswise after that comment you made.

If anyone here is guilty of “spouting off” or “hijacking” it is YOU. 

You may have changed your username, but you are still the same old flyfishingute from Utefans.net.

[PorterRockwell]

actually the topic wasn’t the law per se it was the threats of lawsuits and some in Washington D.C. treating Utah harshly. Go read the original post. I said I wanted to know who would sue and whom would treat the state harshly.

I am against drinking and driving. I’m also against criminalizing having a beer or a c**ktail with dinner.
Your arguing that 0.05 will make us safer. Ironman presented some compelling reading that it may based on models and what european and some other countries have done. It may very well do so.

The ONLY reason I’m opposed this law is because of what I percieve as the true intent behind the law.

You admitted you hadn’t read the law yet were somehow informed enough to make an opinion? Please. You ASSUMED dropping the BAC would come with harsher/stiffer penalties it doesn’t. This is nothing more than the mormon religion retaliating due to the push back about the Zion Curtain.

Utah gave you a great commentary on it as have others and you ignore them.

News story today shows in excess of 1500 calls and emails to the governor’s office asking him to veto this bill. A little over 150 calling in asking him to sign it as of this morning.

I brought up the texting because it IS as dangerous as driving at 0.08. Utah has laws against it but as ironman pointed out it’s damn near impossible to enforce.

Your assertion that I support drinking and driving is outlandish. there’s a significant difference between having a beer or c**ktail or a glass of wine after work on your way home and going out binge drinking and getting mollered up. Data indicates that a person whom has one c**ktail is no more impaired after the thirty or so minutes it takes to metabolize than they were before the c**ktail. In my mind the drunk drivers are the ones that meet or exceed 0.08 we know at that point they are significantly impaired.

is them doing “nothing more than being an adult.” If anything, they are being an irresponsible, selfish child who is putting the safety of themselves, their passengers, and anyone else on the road at risk

that makes it sound as if you think the person that has a c**ktail is after work on the way home is a selfish child et al, is that really what you are saying?

[UteThunder]

You’re just being ridiculous now. 

Yes, the subject of your OP was the lawsuits, however the entire body of your message was a critique of the law itself. So yeah, I was on topic.

Maybe it is just semantics, but you are clearly not against drinking and driving. You have repeatedly stated your position that it is okay for someone to have a drink(s) and then drive, including in your most recent message here! If someone has a drink and then drives, they are DRINKING AND DRIVING. And now you seem to be saying that anything up until .08 is safe, or at least isn’t too drunk to drive.

Have you ever been around someone who you knew was at .07? How about .06? Or .05? Well guess what, I have, as an observer of an exercise on how many drinks it takes to reach .08 and how well people perform field sobriety tests at those BAC levels. And let me tell you, .05 doesn’t qualify as blotto, but there is definite impairment and I certainly wouldn’t want someone at that level driving around me after what I saw.

I don’t need to read the law to have an opinion on it. The news has given me the jist of it and I have an opinion on what I know of it. Yes, I made some assumptions that turned out to be wrong. Oh well, chalk it up as wishful thinking.

And in whose opinion did Utah and others give me great commentary? If I didn’t reply to them, it is either because I agreed with what they said or I didn’t disagree with them strongly enough to warrant a response.

Of course texting and driving is dangerous. It still doesn’t have anything to do with this discussion.

And finally, go back and read what I said. I SPECIFICALLY SAID “someone getting behind the wheel with a BAC of .05 – .07 . . . “ is irresponsible, childish, and selfish. And I stand by that statement. Getting to a BAC of .05 – .07 requires drinking A LOT MORE than a beer or a c**ktail or a glass of wine. But thanks for disregarding what I actually said and putting words in my mouth to try and make me look like a jerk.

[Daedalus]

Whereever you stand on having a beer and then driving home (and yes size has to do with it, I can metabolize that in like 20 minutes especially at 3.2%), we’re talking about the carte blanche our lawmakers take with their jobs. 

Restaurants don’t want this.  Popular tourist attractions don’t want this.  Most Utah residents didn’t ask for this.  But our fearless “representatives” don’t care, they have the (R) next to their names and are by default reelected no matter what they do.

The bill started out by trying to eliminate a ridiculed law mandating the “Zion Curtain” that peaked last fall with the Eccles theater that happened to, oh my gosh, show people mixing drinks if you looked over the balcony.  Then it turned into a complete rewrite of the law that not only broke convention with the rest of the country with the BAC limit, but also made a whole bunch of other restrictions on liquor spaces in restaurants that are simply not possible for some restaurants to accommodate.  All for a “compromise” that will not likely change anything in DUI enforcement.

So we don’t like commerce in this state.  Anyone who supports sending our state income to Colorado is really not looking at the big picture.  Looking at the Governor directly when I say this.

Those three lives lost due to .05-.08 BAC?  I’m willing to bet that’s coincidence.  I can have a bad night’s sleep and be just as bad a driver as a one-beer-drinker (there are studies to support this concept of drowsy driving vs intoxicated driving).  But I wouldn’t be thrown in jail for that.

[ironman1315]

Wait, wait, wait are you seriously alleging that the three lives saved would be coincidental because someone(s) might be asleep and take those lives or take other lives in the process? That claim is utterly out of left field. The lives taken are because of drunk driving, not drowsy driving, that is a clear causative fact.

As for the rest of the post, I keep hearing tourism will decrease, and I am sure we heard the same in 1983 when we dropped the BAC to .08, but I have yet to see any study that asserts that claim. I hear anecdotal evidence and conjecture but nothing solid. Where are the stats?

(Note: I oppose the drop but for reasons of burden on an individual not for this tourism argument).

[Daedalus]

Anecdotally the worst accident I ever was in I had been up all night (sober).  I did not see the person running the red light and she t-boned me hard at full speed.  I learned that a) I was not alert enough to drive after an all-nighter, and b) while it was not my fault, I could have avoided it (the person next to me probably saw her and didn’t go on the green light).  I was 23 and still learning from my mistakes.

Accidents happen.  I’m alleging that it’s possible the “3 lives” could easily be because of bad driving, and not because of intoxication.  “Correlation does not imply causation“.  Maybe it was, I don’t know, but we have to be a bit more open-minded.

As we stand today, there are plenty of restaurant franchises that won’t build in Utah just because there’s simply no motivation to dance around silly laws.  I don’t know about you but I can have too much Cheesecake Factory in my diet.  I want some variety. 

On the tourism card, Idaho and Colorado have similar ski resort facilities.  Purely conjecture, yes, but who’s to say people wont declare “crap, I could brush my teeth and get arrested in Utah, let’s just go to Aspen.”

[edit: hastened grammar mistake]

[Tony (admin)]

I’m very good friends with two former SLC restaurant owners. The profit centers for restaurants are drinks and desserts. One owner (owns several locations) had to close a location due to losing her license for drinks. Two plants came in to observe. A waitress (who was fined $900) served person A a drink. Person B took a sip of the drink. Boom. Nailed. Fined. That location was put out of business because they lost their license.

My friend’s former restaurant was closed after decades, due to zoning not allowing a new location to serve booze. That’s the new owner’s mistake in not doing the research, but it shows that without those sales the thin profit margin vanished.

The point is that it may seem trivial to some to make a change like this, but the impact on businesses is huge.

[Daedalus]

That’s a bizarre (and cruel) way to test the liquor laws compliance. Hell, I’ve given a legal-age adult at my table a sip or two, though she had forgotten her license. The wait staff has no control over that kind of thing.

[PorterRockwell]

cough deadpool cough brewvies cough

[Author]

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