IPFS News Link • General Opinion
The In-Car Checkpoint
• https://www.ericpetersautos.comA new principle forms the basis of American criminal justice. It is that innocence is irrelevant. More accurately, it is an obstruction.
It gets in the way of what government wants – which is to bully and control everyone.
The former requirement in law – and general custom – that conviction had to precede punishment and that evidence to suggest wrongdoing had to precede investigation has been thrown in the woods – so to speak – in favor of making things easier for the criminal justice system by assuming everyone is a criminal.
And treating all of us presumptively as such.
The latest such being a proposal – a threatened law, HR 3374 – purveyed by a termagant to liberty named Kathleen Rice, who is a coercive authoritarian "representative" (of whom begs some interesting questions) from the state of New York. She is demanding that all new cars be fitted with Breathalyzers – and ignition interlocks – by 2029.
You used to have to be convicted of drunk driving before they installed a Breathalyzer machine in your car. Rice wants them installed in every car – whether you drink or not.
The "drunk" part of her proposed law – the End Drunk Driving Act – is especially fatuous given the already low national standard defining it. A Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of .08 has been legally synonymous with presumptive "drunk" driving for the past 20-plus years – meaning no evidence of impaired driving had to be presented; the BAC alone suffices to convict.
This, of course, amounts to punishing people for violating a rule rather than for driving "drunk." It specifically punishes people whose driving can't be faulted – which also begs some interesting questions about the real motive behind all of this.
The former race car driver Bob Bondurant – who for years ran a high-performance driving school I was lucky enough to attend – likes his beer. And evenwith several in him was more in control of the Ford Econoline van he took us around the test track in than my ex mother-in-law is in control of her Hyundai out on the public roads, absent any beers (or BAC) at all.