It's not pre-crime. It's threatening people with the inability to properly control a multiple thousand pound object by choice. Threatening another's life voluntarily is a crime. Sure people get on the road, and know there is a chance an "Accident" may happen, but driving a vehicle in a state that greatly increases the odds, is voluntarily increasing the odds you will kill, injure or damage anothers property. Regardless, if the Federal Government,State, or local government handled the driving laws, Drunk driving will always be illegal. So, this is a lot about nothing in reality land, unless your position is that no body of government should license anybody, and 3 year olds are cool to drive about town.
As far as your two links, they don't source any of their material. I'm trying to find the los angeles times article the second referenced without luck, thus far. But if I find it, and the method is sound, I might reconsider.
Anyway, pre-crime would be me predicting before you even drank a beer that you would then drive, or even seeing you drunk and predict you are going to drive. Not getting into a vehicle in a state proven to slow reaction times, and thus increase the odds you will hit a person or property.
I am sure you are lobbying for laws to stop people from driving tired, when ill, or when elderly. Every day, millions of elderly drivers get behind the wheel in a state proven to slow reaction times, critical thinking ability, and sometimes alarmingly affect memory.
Given that not everyone's reaction time is slowed beyond functional ability by the "legal limit" in many states, and that proof of reduced reaction (swerving, braking short, driving stupidly) is against the law and would get someone pulled over anyhow, what is the justification for these laws again?
If someone over the legal limit is, as you assert, in such a terrible state that they can't drive worth a shit, then THAT is what should get them pulled over. It should also get them pulled over if they're fiddling with their gadgets, falling asleep, making out with their passenger, trying to calm their baby, reading a book, eating while driving, or anything else. The CAUSE is not the problem. If you are so sure that being legally drunk makes one a bad driver 100% of the time, then this should be easy: all those "drunks" will be caught anyhow.
It is pre-crime, by the way, and it's funny you said "getting into a vehicle" because sometimes that's all it takes. If you are drunk, and get into your car and sit behind the wheel, maybe even for an hour, maybe just with the radio on and the engine running, you can still expect a tap on your window from the police. The crime in question is damage to person or property. You do NOT know, just by testing someone's blood, whether or not they are going to cause that damage. You only know the statistical probability is changed by alcohol in volumes high enough to affect reaction time. It is changed in those scenarios I have described, too, and myriad more. Why isn't there such a crazy effort to stop those folks?
The last accident I saw in person was:
Curiously enough, the woman was just driving fast, passing people, driving like SHIT and then her car spun and went across the median. The pickup, going the right way and going a normal speed, almost cut the car in half. There was no "almost" about the way the black car's driver was found.
Now, that day there were all kinds of cops along the interstate, stopping people in teams for not moving over when the lights were flashing. This caused the lanes to stop and start and go at uneven speeds. This caused a lot of us who were trying to get to work to be late. I guess this lady decided she wasn't going to be any later than she already was.
Maybe if the cops had been more worried about who was driving poorly, swerving, cutting people off, and generally disobeying just about every traffic law out there... instead of their specific enforcement of one stupid law... she would have been stopped before she caused that idiocy and got herself killed.
No drinking was involved, but do you need to know the cause, or the effect?
