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Unfortunately, at this time of year many people make poor decisions when it comes to driving after drinking. At the same time, office holiday parties and personal holiday parties often serve alcohol, allowing some drivers to make poor decisions after drinking. Drunk driving causes too many Hollywood car accidents each year – and these accidents are completely avoidable if motorists simply take some extra time to plan ahead to get home safely.

Planning ahead

Plan ahead if you will be attending any events in the next few weeks where alcohol may be served. Even if you do not have plans for drinking at a the specific party, make sure that you have at least three ways to get home safe if you do end up drinking. Keep extra money on hand to pay for a hotel room, a taxicab, or another alternative to get home. Make plans with friends and family so that you can call each other in order to get a safe ride home. Designate a driver. Do what you can, but make sure that you do not drink and drive. It is the only way to avoid a DUI Hollywood traffic accident.

Make use of more than one option to get home

Many communities offer free or inexpensive transportation options at this time of year to help people get home safely after festivities. Find out what is offered in your area. Keep a printout of local bus routes, taxi cab company phone numbers, and other information on your mobile device or in your glove compartment so that you know how to get a safe drive home. One good option is to simply leave your car at home if you will be drinking at a party. That way, you will not be tempted to drive home.

In order to stay safe on the road, you must also be well rested and alert when you get behind the wheel. This holiday season, give yourself the gift of sleep and get plenty of rest. Not only will you enjoy the holidays more, but you will have a safer holiday season as well. If holiday stress makes it difficult for you to sleep, visit your doctor in order to get assistance before your drowsiness leads to an accident. Keep in mind that even if you have not been drinking, you may be too fatigued to drive home safely after a party. Having alternative options to get home safely can help you avoid a Hollywood truck accident or car accident.

Florida Car Accident Lawyer Blog

Over the years I've posted ad nauseum on this blog about the increasing disintegration of constitutional rights in DUI cases.  See, for example, The DUI Exception to the Constitution.  This has been particularly true of the right to due process and the right to defend oneself against the sacred breathalyzers.  See Trial by Machine and Trial by Machine — but How Good Are the Machines?.

This abandonment of an accused citizen's rights is not, however, limited to the United States.  Consider the following editorial from yesterday's Toronto Globe….

Accused Drunk Drivers Deserve a Chance to Defend Themselves Against Fallible Breathalyzers

Toronto, CN.  Nov. 4 —  If judges find a certain defence to a drunk-driving charge credible, is it fair that Parliament should take the possibility of that defence away? The Supreme Court of Canada said unanimously this week that the Conservative government’s 2008 removal of a common defence to an impaired-driving charge meets constitutional standards of fairness. It’s a troubling ruling – though at least the court made sure it’s still possible for accused people to have a realistic chance at poking holes in the readings of a breathalyzer machine.

This isn’t to question the seriousness of impaired driving in Canada. It continues to be a major problem implicated in more than a thousand deaths a year. But the very seriousness of the crime, and of the consequences of being found guilty, underscore why accused people need a real chance to defend themselves.

The machines, and the people who work them, are fallible, according to the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, which has worked closely with the Canadian government since the late 1960s on standards for breathalyzers. And the Supreme Court agrees – the possibility “is not merely speculative, but very real.”

The defence that the government abhorred – because it worked – was known as the “two-beer” defence: Accused people would claim to have had just two beers (or three, or one), and would obtain a toxicology report that at their height and weight, based on the amount they said they imbibed, the breathalyzer machine’s reading could not have been accurate.

The Supreme Court said there was a scientific “disconnect”; the breathalyzer machines work when in proper repair and when a trained technician is in charge, studies show; so the defence should not have been as effective as it proved to be. It seems a reasonable point. But then ask – why, if judges find the defence credible enough in individual cases, and judges are deemed by Canadian justice to be the experts in sifting evidence and determining the facts, should the defence be taken away? Isn’t that a disconnect, too?

The 2008 law that removed the “two-beer defence” would have made it almost impossible to defend against the machine’s reading. Accused persons would also have had to show not only a failure of machine or technician but that the failure led to the reading over the legal limit; and finally, they would need the two-beer defence to show that they weren’t over the limit. It verged on the impossible.

Instead, the court snipped out the parts it didn’t like. It will now be enough to raise a reasonable doubt about the machine’s functioning or of the technician who operated it. That will start a new era, according to Toronto lawyer Jonathan Rosenthal, of requests for disclosure of all manner of information about the machine and technician.

And at least we will not have machine justice.

Trial by machine.  The future is here….
 

DUI BLOG

For those of you who follow this blog, you’re familiar with the steady erosion of constitutional rights in drunk driving cases — what I refer to as "The DUI Exception to the Constitution".  See, for example, Are DUI Roadblocks Constitutional?, Forced Blood Draws by Cops: Constitutional?, DUI and the Disappearing Right to Counsel, Believing You Have Constitutional Rights in a DUI Case Can Be Dangerous, The Disappearing Right to Jury Trial…in DUI Cases and Who Cares About the Rights of Those Accused of Drunk Driving?  

The right to jury trial is one of many constitutional rights quietly disappearing in MADD’s "War on Drunk Driving"….

New DUI Law Wasn’t Vetted


Phoenix, AZ.  May 8 – Two big, emotional issues collided at the Legislature: the scourge of drunken driving and the right to trial by jury.

But you didn’t know.

First-time, non-extreme DUI defendants have lost the right to request a jury trial.  

But the public didn’t find out until after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill.

Is this a good move or a bad one? What does it mean for public safety? For justice? How does it square with the state Constitution?

We never had a chance for debate.  Like so much legislation this year, it all happened too fast, too far under the radar.

The restriction on jury trials was a last-minute amendment to Senate Bill 1200, which dealt with penalties for driving under the influence. It was part of the onslaught of bills in the pell-mell race to end the session on April 20.

Here was legislation about core values. We should have had a chance to explore them…

As Edmund Burke once said, "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing."
  

DUI BLOG

The Supreme Court recently clarified the constitutional commitment to a defendant’s right of confrontation. The Court ruling came in a case involving laboratory analysis of evidence. The Court says the lab analyst that actually performed the tests on evidence is the person a defendant has the right to confront at trial.

In North Carolina, the ruling has been beneficial in ensuring the constitutional rights of some defendants charged with DWI. The downside is that some defendants have faced longer delays waiting for trial while charges remain looming.

Recently three North Carolina crime lab analysts left within a year’s time. The departures reportedly affected dozens, if not hundreds of North Carolina cases. Prosecutors scrambled to attempt to get evidence retested by crime lab analysts after an analyst departure. All the cases that had lab analysis, including North Carolina DWI cases involving blood samples had to be reassessed.

In Union County, for example, the prosecutor relies on the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation crime lab for testing of evidence. The county reportedly had to dismiss roughly 25 percent of its DWI cases that were based upon blood test evidence due to the unavailability of the lab analyst to vindicate the defendant’s constitutional right to confrontation.

Prosecutors had hoped to continue relying on lab analysts report, or substitute lab analysts to gain convictions in criminal cases. The sheet of paper and a substitute cannot testify accurately in court how evidence was actually handled in a specific case.

The SBI crime lab has been under fire recently about how certain evidence was handled in some cases. A substitute analyst and the report itself cannot reflect the actual way evidence was handled in a specific case.

Source: WSOC TV, “Court Ruling Causing Delays, Dismissals,” 1 Nov 2010

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