Eric Peters has done a great job of documenting what SLL tonight launches as a new acronym: PAPS, or Personal Automotive Police State. From Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Once upon a time, Americans didn’t have to prove they hadn’t been drinking before they were allowed to drive. At least, not before they had been convicted of drunk driving, after due process and by a court. Then a judge might order them to have their vehicle fitted with a device they had to “blow” into to establish they were sober before the car’s engine could be started.
Those not convicted of drunk driving only had to worry about being stopped by a cop if they were driving in such a way as to give a cop reason to suspect that maybe they’d been drinking.
That, of course, was back in the days when Americans who were out for a drive didn’t have to stop at “checkpoints” where they were required to prove they hadn’t been drinking, even when they’d given no reason to suspect they may have been. Sometimes, this entailed performing physical acrobatics; sometimes by breathing into a machine called a Breathalyzer.
If the driver refused, he was (and is) treated as presumptively “drunk” – and his state-granted privilege to drive rescinded on that basis alone. It did not require any evidence that the driver had in fact been drinking. Much less that he or she was actually drunk – even as defined by a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) standard so minuscule it defined a person as “drunk” if their blood contained a percentage of alcohol (.08 most states; headed for .05 in many) achievable via the drinking of as little as two beers. No other evidence of “drunk” driving – such as erratic driving – was or is necessary in court to convict a person of “drunk” driving.
SCROTUS who pretends to run this fourth world turd didn’t rule against sobriety checkpoints. (from Artificial Idiot)
The Clovers will have their vee vill keep you safe helmets and bubble wrap eliminate all risk utopia by any means necessary.
I once drove off in the grass a little bit to get around trucks that were having way too fun much blocking the interstate by hogging the lanes and going too slow, you should have seen the middle fingers and furious truck drivers.
We’re all in this together, darr derp drool.