Man, the US must have been a mad house before 1980 with all those armed, drunk iconoclasts running about unchecked. Good thing you got that sorted.



No prizes for guessing when people started really making a profit out of prisons.

And crime is at an historical low. Which is why we don’t hear that much complaining. Then again, we also took away criminals right to vote along with their guns. Political junk.

Regarding drunk driving, we have a society that wants to punish these offenders. Which is why we have creatively found new methods to convict people.

Ostensibly it is also to show that if you had anything to drink, stay the **** away from a car.

.05 BAC on the horizon.

To be fair you have to superimpose the crime rate graph. This does not count drug offenses.



...and that's all for my politarding. I should know better, there are true pros here.

So just kill the guy, right? Don't show him to his mom?

Passengers are specifically exempted because another person has 'physical control' over the vehicle.

I get lapka's point but I don't think it applies here. It's not unreasonable that as a matter of policy, we might decide to show leniency towards people who start to drive drunk, then see the error and stop.

But a man sleeping on the side of the road in the driver's seat is not evidence of that.

pulling over and sleeping is an almost guaranteed dui. unless you are just incapacitated and all over the road, you have an excellent chance of making it home, like over 95%.

Only drunks and people with poor logical thinking would be 'encouraged' to continue to drive drunk. Rational people would understand that a better plan needs to be in place when having drinks.

Does it not occur to drunk drivers who pull over to lay down in the back seat or lay the front seat all the way back so they can't be seen? No tinted windows?

Im just not buying that sleeping in your car guarantees a visit by the police, especially if the driver takes any precautions whatsoever
. Although given that the person is driving drunk I guess that goes out the window

For many people who end up there, jail is an improvement in both creature comforts and safety over their life on the outside.

I drove around the country sleeping in my SUV last summer. Never had a visit from the cops, granted I parked in big parking lots or rest stops. A couple of times on residential streets that weren't directly in front of houses.

It transfers for a lot of different offenses, of course. The law very clearly wants to incentivize the broad class of contemplating wrong-doers to stop before fully completing offenses.

Hell, stopping in the “middle” of certain offenses can negate attempt liability.

Regarding the DUI issue: throw the keys in the trunk and shut it and you can sleep it off.

wouldn't help in many states, keys in trunk=keys in pocket since you have immediate access to both

besides, most modern cars are equipped with keyless entry so you wouldn't even be able to lock your trunk with a key fob in it

I don't dispute that, but the solution to that is to improve our society, not to make jail worse.

It always helps in proving that you didn’t have intent to operate the vehicle.

It’s the best option if you find yourself in that spot.

A car parked in a normal parking area doesn't draw attention. Any stopped vehicle on the side of an interstate/highway, will eventually be checked out by cops.

Stopping on the side of the highway is stupid. Its incredibly dangerous, drunk or not.

This is certainly not true. Am I living in an alternative universe from some people in this thread? If you pull over into a parking lot or residential area, turn off your car and sleep in the back, the odds of you get hassled from the cops is very minimal in my experience.

cardshark, yep that's what I'm saying too.

That's why I dont really buy the "disincentivizes" argument.

True. Once a car right in front of me drifted right and rear ended a car on the side of the freeway.

The first time i slept in my car I pulled off the main road into a residential area, leaned the driver's seat all the way back and fell asleep. The cop showed up in 20 minutes. I assume a neighbor saw me and called the police. Cop believed me that i hadn't been drinking and wanted to chat poker a bit.

So the next time i drove down the same road another 10 miles or so and pulled over onto a little road in a wooded area that leads to some abandoned factory. Cop was there in like 5 minutes because he saw my headlights on the abandoned road and wondered wtf i was doing. I blew a 0.00 and the cop told me i could stay there and get some rest but my adrenaline was up so i drove straight home.

As I said earlier I just pull over and take a nap if I'm sleepy. It doesn't happen that often, but I drive a lot and if I'm really tired and am stuck in miserable traffic, sometimes I take a quick break. There's one particular place in Culver City right off the freeway I've stopped at a few times. Police haven't come knocking yet.

Eh, my anecdotal evidence of ~50 times sleeping in my car with no issues vs your 2. you run bad in these spots in any case. Maybe I run good.

Compare that anecdotal evidence to the likely hood of getting stopped if you continue to drive home. Unless you're really plastered, or there's something wrong w/ your car, the chances of getting puled over while driving home have to be a crazy long shot like 1 in 5k or 1 in 10k. It's a really rare event to be puled over by a cop unless there's something wrong w/ your car or you're driving really bad.. Most people are pretty good at driving home w/ o any effort and it greatly reduces the amount of time you're exposed to having a run in w/ a cop.

Boil it down to whether you're more likely to have an interaction w/ a cop while parked in a car anywhere at night vs. the likely hood of being pulled over while driving down the road. Being in a parked car somewhere is considerably more likely to result in a run in w/ a cop.

Cops on the road are mainly looking for speeders or really egregious driving. Cops in any neighborhood where you would park are cruising around slowly looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. The density of cops anywhere you'd park is also higher than those on the road.

That is way too much of a generalization for you to be comfortably making like that.There is a lot of depends in there.