Tennessee Cops Out for Blood

But we're not in a police state, Don. Remember that.

So I assume this is being handled by the Tennessee Special Vampires Unit.

Don said:

From the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security website:

So basically, they've got a judge on tap to rule that refusing to let someone stick a needle is your arm is sufficient cause for the state to stick a needle in your arm.

Click to expand...

Just a minor point of information… I believe it's refusing to take a breathalyzer test that would constitute sufficient cause for the blood test. I'm assuming the idea is that more people would agree to take the breathalyzer test, since at least it's better than getting a needle jammed in your arm.

As for the larger issues involved… I'm not a fan of a mandatory test, where they can actually physically force you to submit to one. But there has to be some sort of way to prosecute people for DUI, imo. The best alternative--imo--would be to allow DUI suspects to refuse but allow prosecutors to use the refusal against them in court. If a DUI suspect has a legitimate reason for refusing, they can always try to persuade a judge they were in the right.

Georgia has an "Implied Consent" law. By getting a license, you are saying you will take a breath test. Refusal is automatic license suspension, then they worry about proving the DUI.

California has had one as well, for longer than I've been driving.

Michael Wolfe said:

Just a minor point of information… I believe it's refusing to take a breathalyzer test that would constitute sufficient cause for the blood test. I'm assuming the idea is that more people would agree to take the breathalyzer test, since at least it's better than getting a needle jammed in your arm.

As for the larger issues involved… I'm not a fan of a mandatory test, where they can actually physically force you to submit to one. But there has to be some sort of way to prosecute people for DUI, imo. The best alternative--imo--would be to allow DUI suspects to refuse but allow prosecutors to use the refusal against them in court. If a DUI suspect has a legitimate reason for refusing, they can always try to persuade a judge they were in the right.

Click to expand...

It's been a while since I was familiar with the exact law, but in Georgia as of the 1980s (back when I had a slightly different lifestyle...):

When police request a breathalyzer test, you can choose to get a blood test instead. The "advantage" here is it can take a half hour or hour to get you to a hospital to have the test made, during which the alcohol level in your blood will have reduced, perhaps to below the level where you can be charged. But maybe nowadays they have police who know how to find a vein.

If you flat-out refuse a breathalyzer or blood test when police request one, you get an AUTOMATIC one-year suspension of license. I don't know if police would explain this law and then offer again, but it's certainly an incentive to take the test.

A blood test isn't the same as a breath test. You can (usually) refuse a blood test on religious grounds. (Jehovah's Witness, IIRC, don't allow blood to be taken, even for donation as part of their beliefs.) I would imagine this is a literal federal case waiting to happen. State police vs. Freedom of Religion.

As a former JW I can say that blood taken for diagnostic tests is perfectly fine. It's the taking in of whole blood (transfusions) that has always been prohibited. The administration of blood fractions has always been okay, too.

I don't really know of any other religions that prohibit blood transfusions, but in this big world there may be more.

benbradley said:

When police request a breathalyzer test, you can choose to get a blood test instead. The "advantage" here is it can take a half hour or hour to get you to a hospital to have the test made, during which the alcohol level in your blood will have reduced, perhaps to below the level where you can be charged. But maybe nowadays they have police who know how to find a vein.

Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with the procedures in every state, but normally I don't think they run a blood test at the scene. Still, I imagine this would only buy you enough time if you were only slightly over the limit.

I'd like to point out something I find FAR more disturbing in the link from the THP Website:

Seat belt usage is another contributing factor in crashes across the state. To date this year, 50 percent of vehicle occupants killed in crashes were not wearing safety restraints.

Click to expand...

50 PERCENT!?!?!?!

WTF People? Is it really so hard to click a tab into the slot? Wear your seat belts. I feel like I'm going to fall out of the car if I don't have my seat belt on. THEY SAVE LIVES. Period. End of story. I don't want to hear about some friend-of-a-friend who was miraculously saved by being ejected from an exploding car and "the authorities say" she would have died if she'd had her seat belt on. 75% of people ejected from the car in an accident die. That kind of folklore needs to DIAF.

In Germany, they have over 90% seat belt usage, and almost 1/3 the number of automobile fatalities as the US, where we have 50-75% usage. (6/100,000 vs 15/100,000)

My father was a fireman and EMT for over 20 years. He saw, on average, 3 traffic accidents a week. And he is fond of saying "I never unbuckled a dead one." And even in some horrific accidents, people walked away for one simple reason - they were wearing their seat belts.

Cyia said:

A blood test isn't the same as a breath test. You can (usually) refuse a blood test on religious grounds. (Jehovah's Witness, IIRC, don't allow blood to be taken, even for donation as part of their beliefs.) I would imagine this is a literal federal case waiting to happen. State police vs. Freedom of Religion.

Click to expand...

As a response to Ari first: I think it's Christian Science believers (and similar) who would object on religious grounds. I didn't know JW were less severe on this. Interesting.

Depending on how long ago drinking alcohol stopped, that delay might be worse. I'd heard in my Driver's Ed class that alcohol can take up to four hours to peak. I was never sure about that. This isn't a medical source, but it suggests up to two hours.

After you have a drink, it takes from 30 minutes to two hours for the alcohol to be fully absorbed by your system. As your system absorbs the alcohol, your blood alcohol content (BAC) steadily rises.

Click to expand...

Myrealana said:

I don't want to hear about some friend-of-a-friend who was miraculously saved by being ejected from an exploding car and "the authorities say" she would have died if she'd had her seat belt on. 75% of people ejected from the car in an accident die. That kind of folklore needs to DIAF.

Click to expand...

It makes me crazy. How is it that everyone knows someone who would have died for sure if they were belted in?

I knew a couple who wouldn't wear their seat belts in protest of Liberal government intrusion on our liberties. And I think there can be intelligent debate on that issue, even if it's largely philosophical and, in the end, I can't be bothered.

But when you're 4'11" as was this good Tea Party hostess, it's an hilarious thing to watch you slide around willy-nilly in the slick bucket seat of your husband's Nissan Armada because your feet don't touch the floor.

I told them both, from belted safety in the back seat, "You know, if you crash this tank, they're just going to hose you two off the dash and sell it to someone else."

They might find a little blood in my alcoholstream.

Michael Wolfe said:

Just a minor point of information… I believe it's refusing to take a breathalyzer test that would constitute sufficient cause for the blood test. I'm assuming the idea is that more people would agree to take the breathalyzer test, since at least it's better than getting a needle jammed in your arm.

Click to expand...

Actually, I think that would be unconstitutional - it'd be the equivalent of saying the police can ask permission to search someone's house, then if it's refused use that as evidence to justify a search.

The way it works (in Texas at least) is that someone's pulled over for a driving violation, the cop suspects DWI and administers the sobriety tests. If the cop deems them to be driving drunk, they're asked to take the breathalyser. If they refuse, cop fills out an affidavit for a search warrant, which the judge reviews. It's really no different than getting a warrant to search a house or car. I little more poky perhaps...

Michael Wolfe said:

As for the larger issues involved… I'm not a fan of a mandatory test, where they can actually physically force you to submit to one. But there has to be some sort of way to prosecute people for DUI, imo. The best alternative--imo--would be to allow DUI suspects to refuse but allow prosecutors to use the refusal against them in court. If a DUI suspect has a legitimate reason for refusing, they can always try to persuade a judge they were in the right.

Click to expand...

We are allowed to use the refusal against them. But jurors do like their scientific (e.g. blood) evidence...

robjvargas said:

Depending on how long ago drinking alcohol stopped, that delay might be worse. I'd heard in my Driver's Ed class that alcohol can take up to four hours to peak. I was never sure about that. This isn't a medical source, but it suggests up to two hours.

Click to expand...

Just as a matter of interest (if it is), we (and defense lawyers) use people trained in this stuff to testify about metabolization of alcohol, so if someone tries to delay the blood test we can figure out what their levels were at the time they were driving. We also try and get bar receipts etc to show when they were drinking, to better chart that. I've actually dismissed cases where the blood level was above 0.08, but I believed that at the time the person drove, it would have been below.

MarkEsq said:

Just as a matter of interest (if it is), we (and defense lawyers) use people trained in this stuff to testify about metabolization of alcohol, so if someone tries to delay the blood test we can figure out what their levels were at the time they were driving.

Click to expand...

I'd be curious how accurate that would be. I'm guessing not everyone metabolizes alcohol at the same rate.

Michael Wolfe said:

I'd be curious how accurate that would be. I'm guessing not everyone metabolizes alcohol at the same rate.

Click to expand...

Maybe not, technically. But I've always heard that it's pretty darn close to the same.

The phrase, "close enough for government work"? That.

robjvargas said:

Maybe not, technically. But I've always heard that it's pretty darn close to the same.

The phrase, "close enough for government work"? That.

Click to expand...

You could be right. But it reminded me of urine tests, which most states don't seem to use anymore. My understanding is that the alcohol levels in urine are different from the levels in blood, so they have to convert it. But the conversion rate is an average, and so DUI suspects were occasionally able to win their cases by arguing that the average didn't apply to them, and so states started relying on them quite a bit less. It would seem logical to me that you'd have a similar problem with calculating metabolic rates, but admittedly, it's not something I know a lot about.

Myrealana said:

I'd like to point out something I find FAR more disturbing in the link from the THP Website:

50 PERCENT!?!?!?!

WTF People? Is it really so hard to click a tab into the slot? Wear your seat belts. I feel like I'm going to fall out of the car if I don't have my seat belt on. THEY SAVE LIVES. Period. End of story. I don't want to hear about some friend-of-a-friend who was miraculously saved by being ejected from an exploding car and "the authorities say" she would have died if she'd had her seat belt on. 75% of people ejected from the car in an accident die. That kind of folklore needs to DIAF.

In Germany, they have over 90% seat belt usage, and almost 1/3 the number of automobile fatalities as the US, where we have 50-75% usage. (6/100,000 vs 15/100,000)

My father was a fireman and EMT for over 20 years. He saw, on average, 3 traffic accidents a week. And he is fond of saying "I never unbuckled a dead one." And even in some horrific accidents, people walked away for one simple reason - they were wearing their seat belts.

Click to expand...

The overwhelming majority of the time, a seatbelt saves you. Yes, even if the car is underwater or on fire. If you're unconscious from being tossed around like a doll inside the car, or being smacked too hard with the airbag, that extra second from not having to take your seatbelt off won't matter. And if you're ejected from the car, the odds of being killed or seriously injured are much, much greater.

My personal anecdote is from when I was a kid. We were driving on Maui, headed back from a nice afternoon at the Seven Sacred pools (the road back then was one lane and very windy). We were the first people on the scene after an engaged couple (just finished with their engagement party or something) had driven off the road. My folks administered first aid to the woman until the ambulance arrived (back then, there were no cell phones, so getting an ambulance involved sending another motorist back down the road to the nearest phone booth). She ended up being all right, though she was very beat up. Her boyfriend, however, was dead (he'd broken his neck). He hadn't been wearing his seatbelt and had been thrown from the car. I still remember sitting in our rented van while my folks did the best they could for this poor woman (who was in shock and had a broken leg and some internal bleeding) cried and asked for her fiance. They didn't say he was dead, but my brother and I knew he had to be from the way they were whispering (my folks explained everything to us later), and I think she did too.

It was horrible, but the effect is that my brother and I have never, ever willingly ridden in a car without a seatbelt or tolerated passengers not wearing theirs (which got me in some fights with my HS boyfriend, who loved being defiant and using pseudo logic in arguments).

And yes, the driver was intoxicated too, which was also not lost on me. The number of drunk driving fatalities has gone down since the draconian laws have become the norm. I don't know that roadblocks work, since people can probably plan ahead and go around them. But I can see where refusing the tests for sobriety would be an issue. If you're drunk, refuse the test. End of story.

Unless there are potential consequences for refusing.

Perks said:

But when you're 4'11" as was this good Tea Party hostess, it's an hilarious thing to watch you slide around willy-nilly in the slick bucket seat of your husband's Nissan Armada because your feet don't touch the floor.

Click to expand...

Speaking as someone who pretty much stopped growing when she was twelve, and grew up just before mandatory booster seats for kids under a certain height --

Seat belts used to be a pain the butt. More accurately, they were a pain across the chest and neck, and occasionally the face, because that's where the shoulder restraint on some cars and trucks would hit. (Most of the cars in my family were older "boats on wheels" models where everything in the front seat was pretty much built for a grown man.) Even if I didn't slide the shoulder strap behind my back, I'd pitch out from under it whenever there was an abrupt stop.

I was so happy when adjustable seat belts became the norm AND my family got a vehicle that actually had them.

robjvargas said:

But we're not in a police state, Don. Remember that.

Click to expand...

No, we're not. But, a police state is a regime that uses secret, political police to control the citizenry. That's got nothing to do with the behavior of uniformed local and state police departments.

Manuel Royal said:

No, we're not. But, a police state is a regime that uses secret, political police to control the citizenry. That's got nothing to do with the behavior of uniformed local and state police departments.

Click to expand...

I think not. More accurately, not necessarily.

a country in which the activities of the people are strictly controlled by the government with the help of a police force

Click to expand...