A Fairfax, VA judge has ruled that Virginia’s law presuming a .08 blood-acohol level of is de facto grounds for conviction.

It’s a strikingly common sense ruling. His ruling was that different people become differntly intoxicated at different ends of the blood-alcohol spectrum, so other evidence must be present in order to secure a conviction. It states, merely, that a .08 reading isn’t grounds in itself for conviction. That it’s getting such big play around the Web and in the media is telling of just how ridiculous our approach to drunk driving has become.

Study after study after study has shown that significant driver impairment doesn’t begin until about .12, and that an overwhleming majority of drunk driving fatalities involve drivers with a BAC of .15 or higher. The .08 standard was thrust upon the states in 2000 by the MADD-led cadre of neoprohibitionists under the blackmail threat of withholding federal highway funds to the states who refused to adopt it. And, as predicted by critics of the law, drunk driving fatalities have started to inch upward again since, after a twenty-year decline.

The judge’s ruling is almost certain to be overturned.

Lawrence Taylor has more.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2005 at 12:09 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.