Akron, OH. June 19 – When it comes to combating drunk driving, Ohio leads the league in crackpot ideas.

One of our most recent legislative brainstorms — special license plates for convicted drivers — has been a total bust.

Since the law was changed in 2004, Ohio has issued 46,627 ‘’restricted plates.’’ In Summit County alone, 2,949 individuals and/or families have been sentenced to drive around with the distinctive yellow-and-red plates, the modern equivalent of The Scarlet Letter.

If these plates were working — if the drinking populace is cowering at the notion of having to adorn its vehicles with these things — we would have experienced a significant drop in alcohol-related traffic fatalities.

Nope.

If you compare the last year without special plates, 2003, to the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2007, you find that, while Ohio’s overall crash rate has plummeted, the number of alcohol-related fatalities has increased.

• Total crashes of all types: down 16 percent.

• Fatal alcohol-related crashes: up 2 percent.

• Alcohol-related fatalities per 1,000 total crashes: up 21 percent.

Lord knows how many plates would have been manufactured if the legislature hadn’t changed its mind about mandating them for every offender. Only nine months after the new law was implemented, it was adjusted to eliminate first-timers with a blood-alcohol level below 0.17 percent…

Restricted plates — originally called ‘’family plates,’’ apparently because they bring ridicule to the entire family — actually have been available since 1967, but their use was left to the discretion of judges. Clearly, most judges didn’t believe singling out DUI offenders for public humiliation was appropriate.

No kidding. If we single out drunk drivers, why no special plates for murderers, rapists, extortionists, armed robbers and child molesters?

Heck, if legislators really believe public scorn is an appropriate element in our criminal justice system, we should bring back pillories.

At least those might have an impact.

Halifax, Nova Scotia. July 12 – DRIVING while intoxicated has become such a social taboo that most people recognize the acronym DUI (driving under the influence) used by police and prosecutors, and rightly so. But according to a growing body of research and empirical observation, DWT is a potentially worse hazard than DUI, and should be just as socially unacceptable as driving drunk.

DWT? That would be “driving while texting” (sub-category: driving while tweeting) — the most pernicious of a variety of distempers afflicting our culture as a consequence of pandemic cellphone addiction.

According to a U.K. Transport Research Laboratory study, commissioned by the Royal Automobile Club Foundation, motorists sending text messages while driving are “significantly more impaired” than ones who drive drunk. The study showed texters’ reaction times deteriorated by 35 per cent, and a whopping 91 per cent decrease in steering ability, while similar studies of drunk driving indicate reaction time diminishment of about 12 per cent. By that measure, DWT is three times more dangerous than DUI, and should logically be treated as severely, if not more so, both under the law and in terms of social censure…

Ongoing surveys by the U.S. National Highway Safety Administration show 85 per cent of all auto crashes and 65 per cent of all near-crashes result from distracted driving.

Laws banning texting behind the wheel are relatively rare as yet. Only a handful of U.S states have full or partial bans in place…

Washington, D.C. July 23 – Drunk drivers and potheads, rejoice. If you get caught, the Supreme Court has made it easier for you to beat the rap..

That pesky Bill of Rights is creating hurdles for the police again. The justices ruled 5 to 4 last month that prosecutors can’t make their cases by relying just on a document like a lab report (yes, it was marijuana) or breath test printout (he blew twice the legal limit, your honor). Now, the state must also make available as witnesses the lab technicians, breathalyzer operators or other individuals who prepared the documents.

The court said that’s necessary because of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees defendants’ rights to confront their accusers at trial. The argument boils down to “You can’t cross-examine a machine.” The ruling is right in theory but really wrong in practice…

The ruling is going to force a lot of costly changes with little practical long-term benefit. It will require new laws and court procedures, and cost a lot of money to hire and train additional forensic technicians and other employees, to make it work.

Worse, it hands a new weapon to defense lawyers that’s going to benefit them mostly in battles over procedure rather than justice. Because the state won’t be able to produce witnesses in many cases, defense lawyers already are saying they expect to win more acquittals at trial…

Stephen Saltzburg, professor of criminal law and procedure at George Washington University, said Scalia was right to say that scientific tests are a kind of testimony that defenders need to be able to challenge. But he added that the dissenters “had a very strong argument that perhaps there could be an exception for these highly reliable mechanical tests that didn’t exist when the framers wrote the Sixth Amendment.”

DUI Checkpoint Stops 1,131 Vehicles

Gainesville, FL. July 6 – DUI checkpoint over the holiday weekend resulted in 10 people being arrested and more than 100 drivers being issued traffic citations.

The Florida Highway Patrol arranged for the checkpoint to be set up in the 2500 block of Southwest 13th Street in Gainesville between 10 p. m. Friday until 2 a.m. Saturday. FHP Lt. Pat Riordan said that during that time, 1,131 vehicles were checked.

“We conduct these checkpoints to enforce and to educate,” Riordan said. “It’s a way for us to bring the public’s attention to things like faulty equipment they need to fix as well as being a way for us to get people out from behind the wheel who do not belong there.”

Although no one was arrested for DUI, FHP said the following actions were taken during the checkpoint:

–Two arrested on outstanding warrants.

– Seven arrested on felony charges, including six on drug-related charges.

– One arrested for misdemeanor drugs.

– 104 traffic citations issued.

– 10 faulty equipment warnings were issued.

In a follow-up to our recent post about police attempting to station officers at drive-thru lanes of fast food restaurants to spot impaired drivers…….

Jun. 14, 2009 09:28 AM
Associated Press

Tucson, AZ  –  A plan by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department that would have stationed deputies at fast-food joints to sniff out drunken drivers appears to have fallen flat.

The department had hoped to target drunken driving by putting undercover deputies inside 24-hour fast-food restaurants to spot impaired drivers placing their orders. If deputies spotted someone with classic symptoms of impairment, they were to call a uniformed deputy stationed outside to pull the driver over.

But sheriff’s Lt. Karl Woolridge says the department asked various fast-food chains if they’d agree to be a part of the program, but all of them declined.