Ah, well, your population density is much higher! Still, if the police talk to them before testing, then it really cannot be called "random" can it?
In an area with fairly low traffic flow, can stop and test the drivers all pbutting vehicles. In an area with a greater traffic flow, it can still be random if stop every fifth, tenth, 20th, or even 50th vehicle.
Ah, well, in marginal cases, probably the same here. The breath test is not dead accurate, and by the time get the person to a doctor or hospital for an accurate blood test they could be on the "sober" side of 0.05.
After all, when you have absolute limits, there will always be some doubt. The law says up to 0.05. Presumably this is inclusive. So 0.05 is "acceptable" but 0.051 is "over the limit".
In one sense it is stupid, as people vary widely in their response to drugs, including alcohol. In the "old days" here and in the US, a driver was only pulled over if he was "driving erratically". Then he was performance tested.
However, some minority groups insisted that this was "discriminatory". That they "always" were pulled over and "always" failed the test. So when accurate testing became feasible, countries chose a measurable amount for a "pbutt or fail" test. Here it is 0.05. In the US, it is generally 0.07.
Still, a lot of law enforcement is like this. If a person has a skeleton key to a warded lock, he may have moved into a place where the original key to a shed had long since been lost, so the landlord gave him a "skeleton key" to operate it.
On the other hand, of course, it can be argued that the skeleton key will open many doors, so it is a "burglar tool". :-)
If some 14 year old kid is running around town with a hatchet stuck down the front of his trousers he could argue that it was a "survival tool" and that he carried it only to chop wood in case he needed a fire to cook or stay warm. A cop is more likely to see it as a potential deadly weapon.
There are simply no hard and fast rules for some things!
Actually, I would consider it more of a mistake. Either is possible. Had he been drunk, then he might try to get out of it. He wasn't, so they accepted his explanation.
Admittedly, it turned out to be a bit of a waste of police resources, but had I been the cop I would have suspected him of trying to evade the breath test.
As to "free travel" and "unreasonable search and seizure" it won't fly, or the Supreme Court would have banned breath testing long ago.
It depends entirely on how the words are interpreted. I could claim that my right to "free travel" was being infringed if I were busted for doing 150 kph in a 25 kph school zone. And does a breath test consbreastute "unreasonable search and seizure"? Very doubtful.
This could be a very technical legal point. The Australian Consbreastution doesn't even have a "Bill of Rights" as such, and the government can insist that a condition of holding a drivers license involves consent to breath tests. However, as mentioned in an earlier post, even a driver here can refuse to cooperate and not allow a test...but the penalty for not allowing a test can be essentially equal to a high range "PCA" proscribed concentration of alcohol which means they can jerk his license anyway.
In the US, I suspect that they could do much the same thing. Has the Supreme Court ever ruled on the issue?
For instance, we have the second amendment which reads, from memory, "A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
As far as I know, there has not been an extensive Supreme Court challenge on this particular issue. Does the average gun owner belong to a "well regulated militia" or any militia at all, for that matter?
Here we agree, and that is the way it used to be when I was at university in the USA. I admit to having driven when would be well over the legal limit, even though was drinking weak 3.2% US beer at the time. :-)
Still, as have pointed out, minority groups claimed they were being "discriminated" against, so the law looked for a more accurate test. When it became available, they started using it. Now we are stuck with it.
If the police were to go back to the old system, the minority groups would again howl loud and long about how the cops were "picking on them".
In short, I too would rather get back to the old system rather than the random breath test system, but it isn't likely to happen. Sometimes we have to "move with the times" and do the best we can.
I'm probably older than you are, and I can see a continuing loss of freedom even in my lifetime, both in the US and Australia. Still, I will argue that there is more freedom here than there, which is why I am still here. :-)
Writing from misc.survivalism
Cheers,
