You don’t even have to be driving to get a DUI
For any Alabama fans out there you may have heard about Da’Shawn Hand catching a DUI last month. This isn’t a normal DUI case however, in fact, it’s totally bizarre. Hand wasn’t actually driving. He was doing what a lot of drivers think is right. Instead of driving after a night of drinking, he pulled his seat back and took a nap.
This is a great opportunity to discuss another way to get a DUI. In many states, you merely need to be in a car while drunk to get a DUI. Now this may seem a bit unfair but the police do have probable cause to assume that you will drive at one point or another. And sometimes taking a nap before driving doesn’t always work.
It’s not uncommon for people to get a DUI the morning after a night of drinking. This can happen because the body can take up to 12 hours to fully bring you blood alcohol level back to zero. Everybody handles alcohol different, so unless you have a breathalyzer with you at all times you can’t be sure if you’re under the legal limit or not. A nap might work for some people in some situations but it all depends on size, weight, tolerance, and total alcohol consumption.
Controversy arose around the case when the Head Coach of the University of Alabama’s football team Nick Saban decided not to suspend Hand. This was particularly problematic because a year prior Alphonse Taylor was found not guilty of a DUI but was suspended from playing by Saban.
Saban quickly points out that Hand wasn’t actually driving. In Taylor’s case, he was in a car accident and had some alcohol in his system. Saban has received heat for this decision by those who think he isn’t going far enough to discipline drunk drivers.
This is a difficult case. DUIs’ are extremely harmful to society, everybody knows that. Hand may not have been driving at the moment, but nobody knows if he was about to wake up and try to get home while drunk. It seems incredibly invasive to pull somebody out of their parked car to test them for a DUI, but at the same time it could have prevented Hand from actually hurting himself or somebody else that night.
Imagine this, what if the cops found a man perched on a roof looking through the lens of a sniper rifle. After a closer look, they realized he was asleep with his finger on the trigger and the safety off. Would it be unreasonable to arrest the man? He had everything set up to cause harm, would you believe him if he told you he wasn’t planning to shoot anybody that night?
Driving a car while drunk is like handling a deadly weapon without your glasses on. Arresting Hand that night was the right thing to do because DUIs’ are serious, and if we take it lightly then drivers will take it lightly. Let’s stand against anybody who gets in their car, with the key in the ignition, while drunk, even if they are asleep.
