Excuses That Sound Good When You're Drunk!

[LillFilly]

A family friend is a Phlebotomist at the local hospital and usually works the night shifts. Which means she gets to draw blood on a lot of suspected DUIs.

She recently had to draw on a man who had an excuse and by gum he was stickin' to it! He argued that the Police COULDN'T arrest him for driving drunk because...He wasn't in the car when they caught him!

See, the Police had chased him quite a ways when he finally stopped, jumped out of the car and started running, at which point they caught him. But, he argued that they couldn't arrest him for a DUI once he was out of the car! Umm, yeah, right.

[Sapphire Silk]

"Let me know how that worked, in two to five."

[Captain Trips]

Yeah, I'm hoping my daughter's lawyer has talked her out of using the same defense.
Yeah, she's up for a DUI herself. Her second. Hey, if you haven't gotten it through to them by the time they're 30, they'll have to learn for themselves. I love her dearly, but she has to wake up (while she still can.)
She was trying to say "the cop who arrested me wasn't the one who saw me driving, and I wasn't even in my car when he arrested me." I've tried telling her that don't matter. Maybe the judge will get it through to her. (And maybe a year without her license will get through to her, too?)

[Kristev]

More likely a year without her license won't stop her from doing it again. It doesn't seem to stop most people.

[Sapphire Silk]

Yeah, I'm hoping my daughter's lawyer has talked her out of using the same defense.
Yeah, she's up for a DUI herself. Her second. Hey, if you haven't gotten it through to them by the time they're 30, they'll have to learn for themselves. I love her dearly, but she has to wake up (while she still can.)
She was trying to say "the cop who arrested me wasn't the one who saw me driving, and I wasn't even in my car when he arrested me." I've tried telling her that don't matter. Maybe the judge will get it through to her. (And maybe a year without her license will get through to her, too?)

I certainly hope so, for her sake and the sake of the innocent person(s) she is well on her way to killing in an alcohol related motor vehicle collision.

I hate to say this, but a little time in the county jail might change her tune.

And I don't hear a denial of having driven drunk in there . . . only an argument over the technicalities of how she got caught.

I'm very sorry you're having to deal with that. It must be very difficult to watch your child in such denial.

I remember sitting in the family room chatting with Mom one Saturday night, when my brother came home from a party. I was 19, he was 16 and hadn't been driving all that long (back then new drivers could still drive at night). He called out, "Good night, Mom" and went straight back to his bedroom.

Mom knew immediately that something was up. His usual pattern was to come into the family room and tell her all about the party and what a good time he had.

She got up and went to his bedroom, and could smell the alcohol reeking on him.

(I had snuck up behind her to eaves drop )

She held out her hand without a word. Brother's head sagged, and he handed over his keys.

Brother: How long?
Mom: This time . . . a week. Next time. . . forever.

He never drove drunk again.

[laborcat]

More likely a year without her license won't stop her from doing it again. It doesn't seem to stop most people.

Shoot... my brother-in-law got his license yanked because he owed some money to something or other... not child support, but something for the county or something like that. He went without his license for what, seven years, I think, drove all that time, never got caught. Makes me mad. If I had done that, I'd have been pulled over so fast... I never get pulled over unless I've left my license at home or lost it. Once I lost it and drove to the BMV to get another one and got pulled over on the way there!

[LillFilly]

Our family friend actually hears a lot of excuses like this; lucky her! The best one before this was when the police were getting dozens of calls from people reporting that their cars parked on the street had been sideswiped. The police discovered damaged cars going for about 10 blocks, and finally found a girl passed-out drunk in her mangled car at the end of the trail of destruction. SHE argued that they couldn't get her for drunk driving because, DUH! She was PARKED when they caught her! Bet her insurance company dropped her like a hot turd.

[Sapphire Silk]

Our family friend actually hears a lot of excuses like this; lucky her! The best one before this was when the police were getting dozens of calls from people reporting that their cars parked on the street had been sideswiped. The police discovered damaged cars going for about 10 blocks, and finally found a girl passed-out drunk in her mangled car at the end of the trail of destruction. SHE argued that they couldn't get her for drunk driving because, DUH! She was PARKED when they caught her! Bet her insurance company dropped her like a hot turd.

Actually, they CAN get you for DUI. If you are in the driver's seat of a motor vehicle and are drunk, you demonstrate intent to drive while intoxicated.

I'm pretty sure she was either convicted or pled down to something else.

[Seshat]

If the damage to her car was consistent with the damage to the other cars, and paint swapping between her car and the other cars was consistent with her car sideswiping them; circumstantial evidence would be that she was indeed the one who did it.

Basically, that would be evidence that the car she was found in would be the car that caused the damage; they can even do forensics on the paint swapping to prove that the paint on her car was from the same batch of (make) (model) (year) cars as each of the damaged cars. (Or the paint on those cars, from the same batch as hers).

With that number of sideswipes, it would be almost impossible for some other car to have done it.

Ergo, unless she claimed that some 'friend' of hers moved her to the driver's seat, buckled her in, and fled.... and they can fingerprint the steering wheel to check that.

[Andara Bledin]

Actually, they CAN get you for DUI. If you are in the driver's seat of a motor vehicle and are drunk, you demonstrate intent to drive while intoxicated.

Actually, if you're in a running car without someone sober in the driver's seat, you can be tagged for DUI. Which includes running your engine to heat your car so that you don't freeze to death while waiting for your friend to come pick you up/drive your car home.

^-.-^

[tropicsgoddess]

More likely a year without her license won't stop her from doing it again. It doesn't seem to stop most people.

That maybe so, but perhaps the other penalties associated with DUI's (fines, probation, breathalyzer in the car, boot on the car, jail time, etc.) would.

Actually, they CAN get you for DUI. If you are in the driver's seat of a motor vehicle and are drunk, you demonstrate intent to drive while intoxicated.

I'm pretty sure she was either convicted or pled down to something else.

Yep! Even if the keys are in the ignition and the car isn't running.

Actually, if you're in a running car without someone sober in the driver's seat, you can be tagged for DUI. Which includes running your engine to heat your car so that you don't freeze to death while waiting for your friend to come pick you up/drive your car home.

^-.-^

Absolutely!

[blas]

So if you're drunk and have to sleep in the car.......sleep on the passenger side

By the way, a lot of people don't learn after one or two or three. Or five. Just ask my ex. And he's about to get off nearly scott free for Felony 5th OWI.

[suburbandecay]

So if you're drunk and have to sleep in the car.......sleep on the passenger side

Even that isn't good enough in some jurisdictions. As long as you have the keys to the car, and you are in the car, you retain the ability to drive drunk and can thus be cited for DUI.

[MadMike]

That maybe so, but perhaps the other penalties associated with DUI's (fines, probation, breathalyzer in the car, boot on the car, jail time, etc.) would.

I'm hoping that drives the point home with my one friend. She made the mistake of driving like that almost three years ago, and she's still paying for it. She hadn't even gone out to drink, just to take some medicine to a sick friend. While she was there, her friend's boyfriend offered her a drink, and she overdid it. I'm not sure how much she drank, but she's a bit on the small side, having lost a lot of weight after being around 200 lbs for several years.

I can't be too hard on the guy for letting her get drunk, as he and her friend offered to drive her home, which was only 5 miles away, but she insisted on driving anyway. Sometime after that, her friend caught me online and told me what happened, and that she was worried about her. A few minutes after that, she told me there was a report of an accident just down the road from their place, and she was worried that it was our friend. They went and checked it out, and it was. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and it turned out that the other driver had actually caused the accident. But it was obvious to the cops that she was drunk, and they arrested her.

She ended up calling me to pick her up, and she was upset. Can't really blame her, because she was in a lot of trouble. She ended up doing some jail time, and visiting a friend in jail is not something I ever want to have to do again. She did get somewhat lucky about halfway thru her sentence -- the county where it happened did not have house arrest, but they decided to experiment with it and picked one person for it, and it ended up being her. She still wasn't exactly free, but at least she was at her house instead of a jail cell, and I could visit her whenever we wanted, instead of that tiny window of visiting hours at the jail.

Once she got off house arrest, she was able to get a provisional license to go back and forth to work, which was good because she had several thousand dollars in fines to pay off, including the cost of the monitoring while she was on it. Her fines are paid off now, and she's off probabation. She recently got her full license back, but she has to drive with a breathalyzer device for a year.

I hope she's learned her lesson. She already knows that if it happens again not to call me to come get her this time. I already gave her hell for the last time. I still have the email she sent me that day. It said something like, "After I get my hair done, I'm going to take some Theraflu to (friend's name.) I'll talk to you when I get back."