www.ditl.org

Will now be in charge of hypodermic needles

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_police_dui_blood

In short they're using blood tests now to test for alcohol in people they pull over. Do you trust the cop with your arm? Do you trust the cop to have a clean needle clear of any air bubbles? I sure as hell don't.

Unless they're licensed nurses, doctors, or EMTs, I can't see how this could possibly be legal.

I'd just tell them to take me to jail immediately; I'm an extreme trypanophobe, and I certainly couldn't guarantee the safety of anyone stupid enough to try and forcibly stick a needle in me.

This is absolute bullsh*t.

With Google I found a slightly encouraging story from last week that the Arizona Court of Appeals had placed restrictions on the practice:

A new Arizona court ruling says authorities must obtain a search warrant to conduct a blood test of a DUI suspect unless the suspect clearly consents to have blood drawn.

But yeah, this is bullshit.

Why can't they just toughen the laws on a breathalyzer? Refuse and its an immediate arrest, they haul your ass to jail, and then call a real nurse. This seems like going about it the wrong way.

I'm pretty sure it's mandatory that you have to take the breathalyzer test over here. And in most of Europe, AKAIK. This is just dumb. Do the police carry around special blood analyzers in their cars as well?

Just re-write the law so that a guard can make you take a breathalyzer, or he arrests you and you do it at the station.

I wonder if they can carry around similar kits that diabetics use for testing blood sugar. The alcohol tester will have several dozen (hundred) pre-packaged needles with it, so the officer can stick you with those sterile needles, and draw two samples of blood. The first is tested by the machine to get a rough estimate, and the second is kept for testing back at a lab if necessary.

Refusal would pretty much be an admission of guilt, obviously.

The breathalyzer would be the better setting, if the code for it was open-source. At least with open-source, you would know if the program had any problems.

Refusal would pretty much be an admission of guilt, obviously.

Or you sinply can't stand needles. Honestly, I'd rather face a fireing squad than have a needle stuck into me.

Sionnach Glic wrote:I'm pretty sure it's mandatory that you have to take the breathalyzer test over here. And in most of Europe, AKAIK. This is just dumb. Do the police carry around special blood analyzers in their cars as well?

Just re-write the law so that a guard can make you take a breathalyzer, or he arrests you and you do it at the station.

That's what happens here, automatic suspension, car is impounded and off to the lockup (not to sure about this last one). Thing is that America has managed to twist that clause in the Constitution against "unreasonable search and seizure" to get things like alcohol checkpoints and breathalysers heavily restricted.

Down here in Florida possession of a driver's license is implicit consent to a breathalyzer. No questions asked. If you're driving a car they can test you. If you refuse it's your ass.

Yeah, I could see a simple blood-stick test (NOT drawing with a syringe) only if breathalyzers had been shown to be unreliable.

Tyyr wrote:Down here in Florida possession of a driver's license is implicit consent to a breathalyzer. No questions asked. If you're driving a car they can test you. If you refuse it's your ass.

Same in Missouri. Automatic DUI for refusal.

Mikey wrote:Yeah, I could see a simple blood-stick test (NOT drawing with a syringe) only if breathalyzers had been shown to be unreliable.

Breathalyzers, particularly the portable models that the police carry around, aren't all too accurate. But they do give a good indication as to whether or not someone's been drinking recently.

The police could carry the breathalyzers around to test people with, and if they test positive drag them back to the station and do the blood test thing on them.

<em>Sionnach Glic</em> wrote:Breathalyzers, particularly the portable models that the police carry around, aren't all too accurate. But they do give a good indication as to whether or not someone's been drinking recently.

That's all that's necessary. Current models in use are generally considered to be accurate to a tenth of a percent, which is sufficient for the current legal codes over here. They need to determine DUI status, not a detailed toxicology report.

Sionnach Glic wrote:Breathalyzers, particularly the portable models that the police carry around, aren't all too accurate. But they do give a good indication as to whether or not someone's been drinking recently.

The police could carry the breathalyzers around to test people with, and if they test positive drag them back to the station and do the blood test thing on them.

That's exactly what happens here, and as with (it seems) most places, refusing to provide a breath sample (or a blood sample back at the nick) carries the same penalties as drink-driving.

When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he'll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver's arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.

"I was looking at people's arms and hands, thinking, 'I could draw from that,'" Dowell said.

Is it just me, or is that a pretty creepy line of thought?


On topic, I'm with Tyyr on this. We don't need more accurate tools. Any cop that's been working for more than a year should be able to spot a drunk, and the breathalizer is accurate enough. What we need are harder laws on these people. Driving drunk is putting the lives of everyone else on the road at risk. If you want to discourage drunk driving, you need to make the penalties stiff enough to actually scare people off from trying it.