Drink Driving Laws

[joeSoap]

I thought drink driving laws were standard across the board...get caught and you get a hefty fine and a minimum one year ban....Obviously not!!

Saint Niall of Kildare's court case came up yesterday, and after admitting driving over the limit carelessly on a National Motorway (M50) he gets hit with a 3 month ban and a €200 fine.

I always thought that court fines were means tested...this mans a millionaire several times over, and will get his licence back in less than 6 weeks.

Unbelieveable!! :confused: :mad:

[anto eile]

was a conviction recorded?

[Troy.McClure]

The minimum ban is for 3 months, which he got. Apparently he was the minimal amount over the limit so it seems fair that he gets the minimum ban.

Now, that the minimum ban goes in the blink of an eye is another matter. Personally I would favour a total ban on drinking and driving. How a learner driver can have a few pints and then try to figure out how to drive a car (probably at night too!) is beyond me :mad:

[Macy]

Personally I would favour a total ban on drinking and driving.
There's no point in that, or even reducing the current limit, as most people caught are 2 or 3 times the limit rather than just over it.

I'd say Saint Niall did a deal to save embarrassment over all the missing documentation...

[Gareth]

We are totally soft. I am 26 years old and I have been driving 8 years and I have never drank and drove. I have had plenty opportunity to do so but I was wise enough to get other means home. Driving under drink should be totally banned. The effect of alchohol varies massively from person to person and from day to day in people. The idea of attempting to put a limit on it is like trying to guess how many strands of hay there are in a bale.

A total ban should be enforced. We should have harder hitting penalties, should as naming people in the papers on a weekly basis, community service rather than jail time as we just cant get jail spaces (unless it results in a further crime).

It is like any law, people fail to follow it due to the lack of consistancy in enforcing it. Sure most of the police I know are the worst offenders of the drink-drive rule. How can you expect them to police it if they don't abide by it.

[pete]

I don't like absolute bans. By this reasoning someone who a bit too much trifle & a galss of wine with their meal & was slightly above ther limit wouod get same ban as someone 2-3 times over the limit. Need proportionality.

How much was Quinn over the limit?

[Gareth]

Alcohol in food is usually in much lesser quantities and soaked up my food etc to register on a test. Naturally there would be a minute level of acceptance for medicines etc that may produce small rises in alcohol blood levels however if you eat a trifle and its laced with brandy or whatever and its enough to measure as a glass of brandy then you would be over the limits existing today as well. Just because I eat four slices of trifle, a couple of Grappa-chocolates and maybe a bit of whiskey in my coffee still means I have comsumed alcohol and therefore over a limit. Its not about HOW you take the alcohol into your body, its how much you have in there. Its just your perception that its food therefore not really alcohol.

[Macy]

tbh Gareth, people having a pint and then driving is a miniscule problem. It's people having 5 pints and then driving that is the problem. When we properly enforce the current laws, then look at bringing down the limit (possibly to zero), until then it's a pointless debate imo.

[town73]

Quinn had a reading of somewhere between 38 and 44 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath, which commands a mandatory three month ban. The only way the ban would be longer for a reading like that would be if he had been previously convicted for drink driving - the ban would double in that instance.

Anyone with a reading of between 45 and 66 would command a one year ban. Anyone with a reading in excess of 66 gets a two year ban. These are mandatory. The Judge only has discretion in relation in the fine.

A judge in the midlands - John Neilan - went on a bit of a crusade against drink drivers and started to jail any driver convicted of drink driving for three months and fined him or her €800. All of the cases were appealed to the circuit court and the jail term was removed. He eventually backed down after a higher court ruled that it was a bit harsh to impose a jail term for a first offence.

Anto, Quinn does have a conviction recorded against him, which will remain on his permanent record.

[monutdfc]

I don't like absolute bans. By this reasoning someone who a bit too much trifle & a galss of wine with their meal & was slightly above ther limit wouod get same ban as someone 2-3 times over the limit. Need proportionality.

How much was Quinn over the limit?
Apparently Quinn wasn't far over the limit, but that doesn't stack up with the fact that he was stopped when someone reported him driving erratically on the M50. I mean, you must be pretty p*ssed to be driving so erratically that someone phones the garda.

I don't know, but I'm guessing that it was probably the delay between being stopped and eventually being tested that resulted in his alcohol level falling in the interim. A doctor has to administer the official test afaik, and they have to be called into the station, whole process could take a couple of hours.

[town73]

A doctor has to administer the official test afaik, and they have to be called into the station, whole process could take a couple of hours.

Anyone suspected of drink driving is tested on a breath test machine called an intoxilyser. After being arrested, a person is brought to the garda station where he or she must be observed for 20 minutes, during which time you can't eat, drink or smoke - 'nil by mouth' they call it. A doctor is called to take a blood sample if the breath test fails.

[pete]

Surely the longer you can delay the urine sample the better chance you'll have "consumed" the alcohol & got some of it out of your system.

Erratic driving is subjective so we don't know what this involved.

As was said above we need to enforce the laws on people driving while seriously impared before going on crusade against people who on;y caught by checkpoint & no noticeable difference in their driving ability. There are many crap drivers in this country that would be worse sober than drink drivers on a daily basis.

[paul_oshea]

gareth im not having a go, but you live in dublin dont you? if you decide to have a glass of wine with your meal you can get a bus/dart or whatever other form of public transport you so wish, for someone down the country to go and have a meal etc, they generally have to travel to another town, where they cant abide by public transport to get back home, and taxis can be relatively expensive. therefore i think a total ban is wrong.

[town73]

Surely the longer you can delay the urine sample the better chance you'll have "consumed" the alcohol & got some of it out of your system.

There is a time limit - not sure what it is - where the gardai will say you have to provide a sample of urine or blood. If you don't, it's taken a refusal to give a sample, which carries a mandatory two-year ban.

I agree more needs to be done with regard to drink driving. More presence on the roads by gardai. The last time I saw a checkpoint on the roads was about five years ago. Drivers are too confident that they won't be caught.

[Poor Student]

I see in Thailand they're coming down tough. Someone ran over 4 people while drunk and got the death penalty.