Driving Under The Influence

Driving Under the Influence is the act of operating a motor vehicle while under the debilitating effects of alcohol. In the US alone, 17,419 people died in 2002 in drunk driving accidents, representing 41 percent of total traffic fatalities in that country. Over 500,000 people were injured in drunk driving accidents in the US in 2001. Drunk driving is illegal in most (all?) jurisdictions; laws prohibiting it refer, for instance, to driving while intoxicated (DWI), driving under the influence (of alcohol or other drugs - DUI), or drunk in charge (of a vehicle). Such laws tend to define a particular level of alcohol in the blood as the threshold of drunkenness. The most common blood alcohol content (BAC) limit in the United States is 0.08% for the legal definition of intoxication. Only three states still use the more lax, original standard of 0.10%. Many jurisdictions add extra penalties (more jail time and/or a longer DUI program) in cases where the driver's BAC is over 0.20%. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that an average person would have passed out from that much alcohol. To be able to drive at that level, a person has to have gotten drunk regularly for years, to increase his/her alcohol tolerance, and therefore is likely to have driven drunk repeatedly.

History of drunk driving laws
The first jurisdiction in the United States of America to adopt laws against drunk driving was New York in 1910, with California and others following. Early laws simply prohibited driving while intoxicated, with no specific definition of what level of inebriation qualified. (When were first DUI laws enacted in other jurisdictions / nations?) In the US, most of the laws and penalties were greatly enhanced starting in the early 1980s, and through the 1990s, largely due to pressure from groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Field sobriety test
If you are beleived to have been driving under the influence the officer will administer one or more Field sobriety tests (FSTs). Some common FSTs include having the driver:

* try to walk in a straight line, heel-to-toe.
* say the alphabet backwards
* tip his or her head back with eyes closed and try to touch the tip of the nose with the index finger
* stand on one foot

FSTs are better at determining the level of impairment than they are at estimating the driver's BAC.

Chemical test
If arrested, the driver is brought to the police station, and given one or more chemical tests: breath, urine, and/or blood. Breath test results are usually available immediately; urine and blood samples are sent to a lab to determine the BAC. Chemical tests are better at determining the driver's BAC than they are at estimating the level of impairment, but their accuracy is disputed by some; see blood alcohol test assumptions.

Next step
If it is determined that the person is not legally intoxicated (very unlikely by this point), they may be released without any charges. Most of the time, the driver will either be kept in a holding cell until they are deemed sober enough to be released, or sent to jail to wait for their first court hearing (or until they can get bailed out).

Philosophical Perspectives on Driving Under the Influence
A good overview of the philosophical approach to driving under the influence, especially with respect to ethical and pedagogical concerns, is James B. Gould's "A Sobering Topic: Discussing Drunk Driving in Introductory Ethics" in 'Teaching Philosophy' 21:4 (December 1998), 339-360. Gould's central point is that Drunk Driving offers an ethical case that, for most people, is clear-cut in the fundamentals, familiar from everyday life, and extraordinarily complicated in the details. In other word, it's ideal for philosophical analysis at the introductory level. (Or the idle-chit-chat level, right?) He cites the few articles by academic philosophers that he could find: Douglas N. Husak, "Is Drunk Driving a Serious Offense?" 'Philosophy and Public Affairs' 23 (1994). Bonnie Steinbock, "Drunk Driving." 'Philosophy and Public Affairs' 14 (1985). James D. Stuart, "Deterrence, Desert and Drunk Driving," 'Public Affairs Quarterly' 3 (1989). These articles would be available in any higher-ed library, because the journals are among the most popular in the field. The disciplines of criminal justice and sociology probably have philosophical things to say about drunk driving.