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Convicted NY Drunk Drivers Need Ignition Interlocks
pickens writes "Starting yesterday in New York state, anyone sentenced for felony or misdemeanor DWI, whether a first-time or repeat offender, will have to install an ignition interlock in any vehicle they own or operate. The interlock contains a breath-checking unit that keeps the car from starting if the offender's blood-alcohol level registers 0.025 or higher, a little less than one-third of the legal limit. 'The addition of ignition interlocks will save lives in New York state,' says State Probation Director Robert Maccarone, who led the team that wrote the regulation. 'It's been proven in other states. New Mexico realized a 37 percent reduction in DWI recidivism.' Whether that will be enough to persuade more people to take a cab or find a designated driver is unknown. 'It's one more thing to make people think, it may help — it may keep a few people from getting behind the wheel,' says Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh."
is one thing that bothers me. $70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate. Given that drunk driving convictions skew to lower income, this has real potential to put even first-time offenders into bankruptcy.
The fact that it triggers on as little as 1/3 of the legal limit is also troubling. Maybe they should trigger at slightly below the legal limit, but 1/3? They couldn't get convicted of a DWI at that number, and yet you're going to shut off their car?
I'm just waiting for the day when the "reenact prohibition" assholes get enough power to try to make these things mandatory in all cars. After all, if it "saves lives", why not make everyone blow into the damn box to start the car, and at random times?
Insert obligatory "won't someone think of the children" bullcrap here too.
Right, next you'll be asking for building and fire codes. I swear, you liberal nanny types are never satisfied!
and what's wrong with that? it needs to be a pain in the ass, that's the whole point.
weinersmith
To address some questions ... I'm sad to say but I dated a girl who had one of these and it really did destroy the relationship because she could only drive to work and home from work. I would have to drive out and pick her up since she had a restricted license after getting a DUI.
... where do we draw the line?
So to address people's questions: you have to make a sound with your voice as you blow and you have to blow strong while making that sound. I think it's calibrated to your voice so if you try a dust buster (not going to make the force needed) or your child you're not going to get your voice. The kid might work if you have enough time for them to try different ranges but it has to be a long continuous breath of full air.
To address the questions about drinking after you start the car, the system will beep loudly indicating you must blow into it again while you're driving or your vehicle will shut off. This happens once every 20-40 minutes.
To answer the questions about why it's 1/3 the legal limit, my (now ex) girlfriend had also been ordered by her program to not drink for a year. If you blow anything recognizable, it locks out you out of your vehicle and reports it. If you don't believe me look at how they keep track of starts. This isn't something for you to wonder if it's okay for you to drive or to test your friends with. She was warned by other friends with DUIs (that's DUI) that they will get you the morning after if you still have alcohol on your breath.
A month before she blew this, she was in the lowest range and then she blew right on the edge of this range that demanded this. I know there's a lot of people out there that have been negatively affected by drunk drivers but in most states the punishment really can be life destroying. I avoid it by using public transportation in DC when I drink but not everyone has that option.
I'm not against these things being used in serious cases. But your first offense with a DUI
My work here is dung.
Who feels that is their right these days? I've never heard someone say "it's my right to drink and drive".
.08 to .05 soon. Just try arguing against that. If you do, you're immediately regarded as an advocate for drinking and driving, rather than an advocate for moderation. Even if the subject is brought up among my friends, all of whom enjoy their beer, there's little to no indignation on their part, or a feeling that their rights are being taken away. The consensus is "well, guess we shouldn't be drinking and driving anyways." Never mind that the new limit will only punish moderates rather than the truly incapacitated that were already targeted under the previous limit.
Actually, the opposite is usually true. Here in BC the legal limit will be dropping from
In the end, I don't really care either - I'm just a little miffed MADD continues to push the laws towards their prohibitionist ideals and there's nothing you can do about it without looking like a drunk.
I suspect, and this is from when I was a cop in a former life, most folks who are on probation (which you would be if you have to comply with the orders of the court in this situation), almost always no alcohol consumption is a part of the terms of your probation. Even if your offense has nothing to do with alcohol, its just part of the gig. I guess the thought is - if you're not intoxicated (or at least under the influence) you may make better decisions and likely you're not hanging out in places like bars where 'bad people' are.
I don't know that I totally agree with it, it just is part of the gig. I guess another way to look at it probation is almost like being in jail without the guards, steel bars and bad food (well maybe not the last one, I guess). You still have the system up your ass.
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Yeah, I had to drive a friend's car around with one of these as a favor (getting the breathalyzer rechecked monthly or something while they were on vacation - pretty strict). While I didn't mind it at start-up, it was downright dangerous while driving. The intervals didn't seem random at all, it was always 5 minutes apart, and it gave you like 10 second window to start the test or it would report a failure to the authorities. So the whole pull-over and test is bullshit, whenever it beeped, whether it was on a curve or straight-away or heavy traffic, I had to sit there and breath as hard into it as possible while still paying attention to it. Imo, whatever the brand name of the device was, it was a terroristic little thing not suited for safe-driving at all.
BTW, I think the idea is good in theory, just the particular implementation I had was stupid, at least 2 minute should be given to pull over, and it should beep and light up like Vegas just because of 10 seconds coming and going.
Of course, I wasn't used to this car, it was a manual on top of that, something I don't drive often, which may have made it harder than it seemed.
Ahahahahahahahaha this is hilarious.
I mean, honestly, I hate the draconian nature of this, and would rather live with the consequences of not having these than have police-state laws like this, but...
Two of my idiot friends got their second DWIs recently. One of them recently enough that he's almost certainly going to have to put one of these things in, and I hope the other one as well. The less recent one rear-ended a stopped car at a traffic light--no one was injured, but he's still driving around his brand new car (brand new because he had a girl drive drunk while he was drunk and she smashed into a telephone pole... that one was new too) with a smashed up front end. He's probably been sentenced already, although tbh I don't talk to him much anymore because he's self-destructing in other spectacular ways that I don't want to be around. The more recent one went off the road and broke both his arms, almost died. He put off his court date for a month, GOD I hope he has to put this thing in.
So, as much as I don't like them ... people will drive drunk. Over and over again, for no fucking reason. I was out with one of the two a couple months before all this, at a bar. I drove down with the plan to leave the car in the public lot and get a $10 ticket, then take a cab back home and a friend would drive me to my car in the morning. Well, closing time came around and this moron asked me to drive because it was kind of cold and he didn't want to wait a half hour for the cab to get there. I said no, so he, already with one DWI and drunk (but not drunk enough that he should have that poor of decision making ability), offered to drive my car. I said fuck no, and we waited, but the whole time he hounded me about it. It's just unfathomable how stupid people get about this, and they make the decisions drunk or sober. For instance, I drove down, but only because I know myself well enough to know that I'm not going to do something stupid once I get a buzz on. Other people, as you can see by reading this thread, will do anything they can to drive drunk, like leaving their cars running outside a bar. It's fucking insane, like straight up some kind of mental imbalance. Hell, I've stopped going to bars more than once every few months because it's such a pain in the ass and I can't see any reasonable explanation for anyone doing otherwise short of being broken in the head somehow.
So yeah, it sucks, but you won't hear me bitching about the law. No, I'll be laughing as these dipshits blow their car started at the order of some beeping box, and watching with interest to see what kind of backflips they'll do to fuck their own and other people's lives up even more, for NO REASON. Addicted to alcohol? Go to the grocery store, and drink for a quarter of the price! Throw a party at your house, sleep over at others' houses when you drink there, get a motel room if you're out of town and have nowhere else to sleep. D-d-d-don't drink so fucking much! It's the sober guy that gets laid at the after-party anyway. Jesus.
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I used to install ignition interlocks, so i'll try to answer your questions:
'Hacking' an interlock isn't very practical as they usually require unique hardware that would be a pain to duplicate.
Bypassing them is not at all difficult. I could easily do it in 20-30 seconds with a pair of scissors or side cutters. However the unit will know that you're driving without having taken a test, which is a huge black mark on your report.
Bypassing them and not getting caught on report day is orders of magnitude more difficult, because if your mileage doesn't match the expected test-rate you'll be flagged for inspection. And, at least when/where I installed them, we put tamper seals on pretty much every connection between car and interlock. Cut into anything, and we would know.
As for the test itself, it's not nearly as simple as "blow and drive". You have to take a full breath, seal your lips around the mouthpiece, hum, and exhale an entire breath quite rapidly. Air pumps (balloons, tires, etc) just won't cut it. It's something most people need to practice in order to perform reliably, and I witnessed many, many cases where people just could not get the hang of using the devices even months after install. Suffice to say it is not something a child would be able to perform regularly. A young teenager might be able to pull it off with some practice, if you're lucky enough to own, er, have one.
Also, temperature and humidity are not (as far as I know) measured as a part of the test. The devices I worked with actually had a small heating element inside the head unit in order to maintain a standard test temperature (which sucks in a cold winter). As for humidity, it was usually a bad thing (especially in colder climates) because it would interfere with the very small microphone inside. Air pressure and sound were the two most critical aspects of a successful test. Like Goldilocks, it had to be not too hard and not too soft, and the hum not too quiet and not too loud. Something most people can reproduce fairly often, but very very difficult to simultaneously recreate both elements mechanically.
So the TLDR version is this: The devices were not designed to be infallible, just secure enough to make cheating your way around them a bigger pain in the ass than calling a friend or a taxi. Circumventing them isn't really worth it, especially considering the penalty for getting caught was almost always taking a pair of scissors to your provisional drivers license, a monetary fine, and boot out the door. YMMV.
I myself got a DUI three years ago. First time offense, I had my license taken away for a year and if I wanted it back that second year I would have had to go with an interlock device. I decided to forgo driving another year to bother with the costs of the device and by that second year I had already adjusted my lifestyle to accommodate not driving.
I don't begrudge anyone but myself, I even thanked the officer who stopped me (two blocks from my house going to the gas station late at night to pick up some snacks, stopped due to headlight out). I'm glad I got stopped because as everyone already knows that was the first time I got caught, not the first time I had risked going to the store after some drinks like that.
I had to pay a large fine, I had to attend education classes, a victims panel and I had to meet with a diversion officer once a month for a year. It changed my life. I was lucky to afford the large costs, I know it would've completely broken a lot of other people.
I also believe that people who text and talk on phones while driving should be held to the same standard as DUI. People who are morally outraged about DUIs do not bother me, but the ones who are morally outraged and then don't bat an eye when they reveal to me they text all the time while driving make me stabby.
How about just not drinking at all when driving? I won't even get on my motorcycle if I've had anything to drink in the past 12 hours. It really isn't all that hard you know.
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