Thursday, March 27, 2008

Thursday, March 20, 2008

DUI Law: World History of Driving Under the Influence

As a California criminal defense lawyer who has defended DUI cases since the time of Moses, I enjoyed reading Wikipedia's entry for "driving under the influence."

Some items found there and randomly selected include:

* Norway introduced the world's first "per se" law in 1936. All 50 states in this country subsequently followed Norway's lead and all now have two categories of DUI offenses: the per se violation based on the amount of alcohol in your system (requiring no other proof of intoxication) and the other drunk driving violation (requiring independent proof, such as the testimony of a police office).

*Turkey has a limit of 0.05 for PASSENGER-LESS COMPACT CARS only; otherwise, it is 0.00% (as in zero).

*In this country California leads the way (of course) in bringing second degree murder charges if there is evidence of reckless indifference to the lives of others.

*Germany takes your license away automatically for one year if found driving with a blood count of 0.08% or higher and takes it away indefinitely if found driving with a blood count of 0.16% or higher--that it, until you pass a rigorous medical-psychological driver assessment test.