A London cabbie, 20 shillings, and the strange reach of drink-driving law
On 10 September 1897 a London taxi driver named George Smith became the first person convicted of driving a motor vehicle while drunk. He was charged under the drunk in charge clause of an 1872 licensing law and fined 20 shillings, roughly 112 pounds today. The offence has since spread far beyond cars.
The crime goes by a thicket of names. Americans mostly say DUI, but some states prefer driving while intoxicated, operating while impaired or operating a vehicle under the influence, shortened to DWI, OWI and OVI. Britain has drunk in charge and over the prescribed limit. Whatever the label, the core offence is controlling a vehicle while alcohol or another drug, recreational or prescribed, has made it unsafe to do so.
Actual driving is often not required. In most US states a person can be charged for being in physical control of a car, so someone sitting intoxicated in the driver's seat of a parked vehicle with the keys in hand may be prosecuted. California is the exception, insisting on proof that the car was really driven. Many laws also reach motorcycles, boats, aircraft, tractors, combine harvesters, horses, horse-drawn carts, bicycles and even skateboards, sometimes at different blood alcohol limits. Washington state treats drunk cycling as mainly a danger to the rider, so police there are limited to protecting the cyclist.
Alcohol features in about 30 percent of American traffic deaths. Drugs are harder to police. Police in Los Angeles developed the Drug Evaluation and Classification program in the 1970s, a twelve-step post-arrest procedure in which a certified Drug Recognition Expert works out which category of substance is involved and may later testify in court. All fifty US states, Canada and the United Kingdom recognise it.
Cannabis poses its own puzzles. Colorado and Illinois set a limit of 5 nanograms of active THC per millilitre of whole blood, yet officers in both can arrest below that figure if they observe impairment. Because THC levels in plasma drop sharply within an hour or two, speed of testing matters, and companies are building roadside THC breathalysers. In California a plea deal can reduce a DUI to reckless driving, informally called a wet reckless.
Source: Driving under the influence
