NHTSA assaults 4th ammendment rights on MS highways

[rustyroger]

You are born with rights and obtain privileges as you go through life. If it is your right to drive then I guess you're good to go with unsafe car while smoking a joint after you drank a case of beer

Ah, yes, but with rights come responsibilities, the other side of the coin we usually don't want to look at.... and with that I will be moving this into Off-topic btw.

How obvious is it that we have responsibilities to protect our rights in anything like a civilised society?.
I find it hard to believe that anyone using this forum can seriously suggest that we have a right to travel unchecked wherever we please in the modern world.
In the days of animal drawn traffic it didn't matter if the people travelling were insensible with drink or whatever. However even in frontier towns (once they had got some semblance of order) the citizens and especially marshals would check out who might be travelling to their town, and could well refuse entry to those they regarded as undesirables. More realistically they would give them time to rest their horses and get something to eat, with the instruction to gone as soon as possible. John Wayne telling the bad guy to "Be outta town by sundown" is a bit of a cliché but has a background of truth.
This applies to Europe as well as North America, no doubt to civilisations in other parts of the world in history too, such as the Indian (Asian) empire, the ancient Greeks and Romans and China.
Now we have people propelling two ton masses of metal at speed down our highways. They are our highways, paid for with our taxes, they do not belong to governments, the police, highway authorities or anyone else. Ok technically British roads belong to the reigning monarch but Her Majesty has quite enough sense not to press this point.
Because we all share the roads, and they are busy with traffic we have laws regarding how we may use it. We are required to drive in a safe manner in a roadworthy vehicle, with valid insurance against causing injury to others. We are also required to be fit to drive, both medically and not impaired through alcohol or other drugs.
Over here refusal to submit to an impairment test results in the same penalties as failing one, quite rightly in my view. Why anyone should think that the authorities are being oppressive by requesting a sobriety test beats me, perhaps it's a bit much saying we must stop at a red light or have efficient brakes too.

We are not allowed to walk around in public naked, cause a disturbance in public places, or behave in a number of other ways that are considered antisocial. We have a RESPONSIBILITY to behave in acceptable manner, in order that we may enjoy our RIGHT to be citizens of the free world.
We have a RESONSIBILITY to use the highways in a safe manner in order to enjoy our RIGHT to travel where we want to.

Roger.

 

[pontiacgp]

Roger, I don't think anyone can disagree with your post. We'd have the privilege of more rights is there were not so many idiots out there. But then again the gov is happy to have an excuse to implement a revenue source.

 

[pencero]

I just can't get over it. I can easily imagine a person who was just about to pull over and start looking for a hotel being mistaken as DUI when in fact they're just exhausted and this is clearly over the top. What are the officials involved in this type of behavior going to say to a person who passes the test, 'oh we're sorry we were mistaken have a nice day.' after all this nonsense? The fact they didn't just request a standard urine drug test shows it's a push to infringe on people's rights. If you lock a drunk in the drunk tank and put a piss test in there / shut off the toilet all night and he fails to take the drug test that's incriminating enough; it is what they do in a neighboring county for DUI's and is very effective as-is. There's no need to hold a drunk person down and take them on with a needle here its off the chain ridiculous. What if the person is not even drunk and they're actually a schizophrenic / autistic or some person that's presenting like a DUI then this would be so inappropriate. Those type of mentally challenged people are on the road too! There's already perfectly fine video evidence and regular sobriety tests first of all and obviously if a person refuses the test in many states it's the same penalty as DUI so why spend all that money and time on this non-existent issue. I suspect we could safely assume more than 90% of people involved in this experiment could have been convicted without being held down and forced to have blood drawn against their will. I do agree that from the hours of midnight to 5am its a different ballgame than during the day entirely. I would assume these tests were done at night; we probably would be seeing people reacting more aggressively against this type of enforcement if it were happening in broad daylight. These type of huge delays taking people to the hospital would cause major disruptions at an earlier time in the afternoon.

 

[pontiacgp]

"just exhausted" is just as dangerous as being impaired and here's what happened in the middle of a Thursday afternoon when a drunk truck driver lifted the bucket while driving over a very busy bridge. So the right, as you claim it to be, of the truck driver to travel the roads has cause major difficulties for many others to travel where they need to go. Who would have thought a dump truck driver at 3:40 in the afternoon would be drunk

Located at the western end of Lake Ontario, the bridge is a crucial link between the Greater Toronto Area and the Niagara Peninsula, which borders upstate New York. It carries about 80,000 vehicles a day.

 

[pencero]

Well that's a whole different ballgame entirely too. You've got truck drivers but they're being paid to drive and also they have to stop at weigh scales already so they can be confronted there as-is. If anything a person ought to have the right to drive a compact to mid sized car and not be bothered with unnecessary delays in unexpected locations at random ambiguous times as nazis stand outside shining flashlights into their eyes asking to see their paperwork... No I don't think that because a few people are determined to drive around getting drunk that we should stop everyone else - hundreds of cars in a row at random times without probable cause who are not violating the laws of traffic; that seems ridiculous to me. And since truck driver's get paid it wouldn't be hard to institute policies in the future requiring them to pass random tests b/c that's a whole different ballgame. And the 'reason' for these checkpoints is stupid. We don't detain 25 cars of suspects in a row and sort through them later just because 1 of those people may have just robbed the nearby bank, do we? How is this any less wrong just because its ostensibly for the purpose of catching drunks?

It also wouldn't be hard to switch to a system where people have to 'qualify' based on skill just like a pilots license to fly bigger crafts. I think millions of people would immediately be disqualified and we wouldn't even see that many DUI checkpoints all the sudden b/c part of the problem is a lot of these people are bad at driving before they even have a drink anyway so they would fail and not be riding around in 5,000 lb trucks / vans endangering everyone anymore. Why should I be late to work and possibly get reprimanded or fired because Johnny Law wants to stop 100 cars in a row to catch 2 drunks who most likely would have made it home without crashing anyway?

 

[rustyroger]

Why should I be late to work and possibly get reprimanded or fired because Johnny Law wants to stop 100 cars in a row to catch 2 drunks who most likely would have made it home without crashing anyway?

Because you're not above the law, that's why.
That's one method law enforcement agencies employ to catch drunk drivers. I don't have a problem with that, I have been subject to random breath tests several times, at the same time I was checked out for insurance, valid licence, roadworthiness certificate (mot test in the UK), and my vehicle has been checked for obvious defects like bald tires, broken lights etc. The officers involved have always been polite and courteous, and apologised for delaying me. I have always responded by saying something like "That's fine, I hope you catch those driving drunk, because I don't want to share the road with them".

When I was at school occasionally the whole class would be subject to revoked privilege such as no swimming class or whatever because a few individuals misbehaved.
I learned from this that life isn't fair, and sometimes we all suffer because of the bad behaviour of a few.
The same applies to driving nowadays. Get over it and set out in good time so an unexpected delay won't make you late.
Would you face the same reprimand if you were stuck in traffic because of a wreck caused by a drunk driver?.

Roger.

 

[pontiacgp]

Why should I be late to work and possibly get reprimanded or fired because Johnny Law wants to stop 100 cars in a row to catch 2 drunks who most likely would have made it home without crashing anyway?

if the drunks can most likely make it home then what are we worried about...

 

[-83MONTESS-]

Pencero let's say one of your closest friends or family members is killed by a drunk driver tonight. I guarantee that changes your argument into "how could the cops let this happen". During my last 3 yeas of high school I worked at a salvage yard and part of my duties were to be on call after normal hours to go out on the wrecker for accidents. I had the unfortunate task of cleaning up a bad accident where a drunk driver killed a kid that graduated 2 years ahead of me. As we loaded up the kid's car the family showed up and let me tell you I will never forget seeing and hearing his mother that night. So now I gotta ask is someone's life not worth a few minutes of your time if we can stop these idiots from killing another person? I guess other people don't matter as long as you get to work on time

Now imagine being a police officer handed the task of pulling into someone's driveway and trying to figure out a way to tell them that there child, wife, husband, parent, etc was killed because of an impaired driver as you walk toward the front door knowing that whoever answers it will be hearing the worst news of their life. I don't care if these huge checkpoints only catch 1 impaired driver per 100 cars. That's 1 driver that won't be killing anyone today so its worth it to me. If your argument is that your going to be late for work then leave early like normal people do when they announce things like this ahead of time.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

It is not the cops' job to stop crime, that would be pre-crime and something we would not want in this country, sounds like they might already have that in the UK? Sucks to be them, then. The job of the police (at least in the US) is to solve crime and catch the perps after the fact, the courts have even ruled the cops are not responsible for protecting anyone, only enforcement. This helps to protect our rights from being infrienged. So that argument is mute about cops performing pre-crime actions. Besides being against the 4th, it is also against the 5th to force people to undertake such tests, it is forcing people to self-incriminate themselves. While I do not like like drunks driving, I also don't like rights being eroded for the claim of public safety, that is also dangerous and more so in fact. As Ben Franklin once said, those who give up rights for safety, deserve neither. The rest of your argument is appeal to emotion.

Yes with rights comes responsibilities, you do something bad then you are responsible for it. Yes you should have the right to drive a unsafe car while drunk and/or high, cause an accident then get nailed to the wall for it, that is responsibility. You can't stop bad things from happening by passing a bunch of feel good laws that harass the innocent. All you end up doing is oppressing people and create even geater unhappiness. So no, the cops should not be harassing all drivers in case their might be one who is drunk or high, etc.

In the days of amimal drawn transpotation, plenty of people where killed by reckless driving of animals. A man on horseback can reach speeds of 44MPH, fast enough to kill a bystander if they were struck. Many early autos were slower than horses.

Lastly you can't compare the UK with the US. The US has laws meant to limit our government's power while protecting basic rights that even many modern countries do not protect. These laws protect our rights from the government, that may sound silly but it is quite serious and why our founding fathers after kicking the Brits out were so concerned to not let oppression happen again here. Over in the UK, people are subjects, they don't have the rights that US citizens take for granted. The UK law system is much more oppressive and draconian than in the US, like having no rights to bare arms and Judges are allowed to make up crimes on the spot to charge people of, but the subjects of UK don't seem to mind which echos what Ben said.

Sorry Rodger, you are not a citizen of the free world, you are a subject and were not born with the same rights that me and my fellow citizens of the US were born with. As such I understand why you can not understand why some of us are upset over having our rights that are supposed to be protected from our government being infringed upon. You never had such freedom or responsibility to have first hand knowledge of it, you have had your government run your life for you which is the life of a subject. However you made appreciate being an American even more, glad I was never brainwashed like that.

 

[pontiacgp]

Yes you should have the right to drive a unsafe car while drunk and/or high, cause an accident then get nailed to the wall for it, that is responsibility.

That is one of the most ridiculous things I have read....