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Two Wheeled Clovers and Amberlamps Chasers
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/12/12/two-wheeled-clovers-and-amberlamps-chasers/
By eric -December 12, 2019871891
I got an e-mail alerting me to an outfit – ostensibly, a biker outfit – that is agitating for a national “zero tolerance” standard for motorcycle riders. It is called MotorcycleAccident.org The Clovers (it’s actually amberlamps-chasing lawyers) running this whatever-it-is are agitating for “a new national standard” that would make it a criminal offense for a motorcycle rider -but not a driver – to have any alcohol whatsoever in his system.
From the web site:
“… we are petitioning the Federal Highway Authority to pass a nationwide requirement that states raise the 0.08% blood alcohol level threshold for drunk driving to a zero tolerance threshold for motorcyclists.”
The amberlamps chasers mean lower it to “zero tolerance” – but never mind.
And never mind the unequal application of the law applied to bikers, as proposed. Which is doubly obnoxious because riders as a general rule are probably better-equipped to handle alcohol while also handling their vehicle than drivers – because it takes more skill and attentiveness to ride a bike than drive a car.
Almost anyone can “drive” – if by that one means put an automatic transmission into drive and roll on down the roads while sending a text to your girlfriend. It doesn’t take a Steve McQueen.
Bikes (almost all of them) have manual transmissions, which takes some skill to master. There are (usually) two pedals for the brakes. One must learn to modulate the pressure applied to the front brake and then the rear brake.
Even more skill is needed to master the art of balance – which is another something a driver never has to do.
Motorcycles steer by leaning; one uses one’s knees as much as the handlebars – an art most drivers who aren’t riders don’t even know about.
Point being, a person who rides is a person with more skill to start with – and who probably has a heightened sense of situational awareness in addition. Such a person is less likely to be “impaired” by a slight amount of alcohol than a driver.
But this begs the question. Several, actually.
“Zero tolerance” isn’t actually about impairment. That is merely the excuse – and end point – of the neo-Prohibitionist jihad spearheaded by the out-of-control Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which is also pushing for the same thing – for different reasons.
The fake biker site mentioned earlier is a front for shyster lawyers, who like the “zero tolerance” standard not because it “saves lives” but because it lines their pockets. They know that a law which makes a rider (or a driver) vulnerable to a DUI bust on account of having had a beer or a glass of wine over dinner an hour ago means more business for them.
MADD is just mad. As in unhinged.
The claim that having had a single drink – a single sip – amounts to “drunk” riding or driving is pathological; the frothing fulminations of a snake-handling backwoods Pentecostal preacher or his termagant wife.
It is so egregious – so bereft of reason – as to be almost unbelievable. Until you take into account the Cloverite mindset. Because the Cloverite mind cannot reason. It does not base its views on facts. It does not apply principles to particulars.
It feels. And believes. We are dealing with a religious mania.
And for a Clover, that is enough.
The BAC threshold defining “drunk” driving in all 50 states – .08 BAC – is already an affront to reason and justice. It is a political – a religious – standard that arbitrarily paints a person as “impaired” without having to establish impairment.
What happens at a “sobriety” checkpoint? A person is made to blow into a machine that – supposedly – gauges the percentage of alcohol in his bloodstream. But how is this a gauge of his driving? It is damning to this process – to the idea of its reasonableness and justice – to point out that it is not necessary to even assert that a person’s driving was impaired to convict them of “drunk” driving.
Only that they were found to have “x” BAC.
Many people are marginal – are incompetent – drivers without any BAC at all. Yet they are not considered “impaired.” And many drivers are excellent drivers with some BAC – yet are considered “impaired” even though their driving cannot be faulted.
“Sobriety” checkpoints are necessary – from the standpoint of the neo-Prohibitionists – precisely because most of the people ensnared there would never have been molested by armed government workers while on the road – because they would have given no reason to justify a stop based on erratic driving.
But, why not a “zero tolerance” law?
It is of a piece with the rest of police state America. We are all presumptively criminals – and treated as such – in order that Clovers may feel safe.
Clovers assert that theoretical “harms” justify the imposition of actual harm.
This business here being a case in point. The Clover amberlamps chaser or angry “mom” feels that any rider or driver who has even the most minuscule trace amount of alcohol in his system is “impaired” and must be Hut! Hut! Hutted!
The circle is now complete.
Probable cause was thrown in the trash back in the ’80s when the deconstructors of the Bill of Rights decreed that the plain English of the Fourth Amendment – which prohibits “unreasonable searches” defined as those without without probable cause or warrant – actually doesn’t prohibit them.
This is why you can be legally stopped at random, without having given an AGW the slightest reason to suspect you of anything – and forced to prove to an AGW that you aren’t guilty of anything.
“Zero tolerance” means no tolerance – for our former right to be left unmolested unless we have given some reason to justify otherwise.
Thanks, MotorcycleAccident.org – for furthering the cause of turning this country into a parody of East Germany. And, to be fair, in the former Deutsch Demokratische Republik they didn’t hassle you because you’d had a sip of beer two hours ago.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/12/12/two-wheeled-clovers-and-amberlamps-chasers/
By eric -December 12, 2019871891
I got an e-mail alerting me to an outfit – ostensibly, a biker outfit – that is agitating for a national “zero tolerance” standard for motorcycle riders. It is called MotorcycleAccident.org The Clovers (it’s actually amberlamps-chasing lawyers) running this whatever-it-is are agitating for “a new national standard” that would make it a criminal offense for a motorcycle rider -but not a driver – to have any alcohol whatsoever in his system.
From the web site:
“… we are petitioning the Federal Highway Authority to pass a nationwide requirement that states raise the 0.08% blood alcohol level threshold for drunk driving to a zero tolerance threshold for motorcyclists.”
The amberlamps chasers mean lower it to “zero tolerance” – but never mind.
And never mind the unequal application of the law applied to bikers, as proposed. Which is doubly obnoxious because riders as a general rule are probably better-equipped to handle alcohol while also handling their vehicle than drivers – because it takes more skill and attentiveness to ride a bike than drive a car.
Almost anyone can “drive” – if by that one means put an automatic transmission into drive and roll on down the roads while sending a text to your girlfriend. It doesn’t take a Steve McQueen.
Bikes (almost all of them) have manual transmissions, which takes some skill to master. There are (usually) two pedals for the brakes. One must learn to modulate the pressure applied to the front brake and then the rear brake.
Even more skill is needed to master the art of balance – which is another something a driver never has to do.
Motorcycles steer by leaning; one uses one’s knees as much as the handlebars – an art most drivers who aren’t riders don’t even know about.
Point being, a person who rides is a person with more skill to start with – and who probably has a heightened sense of situational awareness in addition. Such a person is less likely to be “impaired” by a slight amount of alcohol than a driver.
But this begs the question. Several, actually.
“Zero tolerance” isn’t actually about impairment. That is merely the excuse – and end point – of the neo-Prohibitionist jihad spearheaded by the out-of-control Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which is also pushing for the same thing – for different reasons.
The fake biker site mentioned earlier is a front for shyster lawyers, who like the “zero tolerance” standard not because it “saves lives” but because it lines their pockets. They know that a law which makes a rider (or a driver) vulnerable to a DUI bust on account of having had a beer or a glass of wine over dinner an hour ago means more business for them.
MADD is just mad. As in unhinged.
The claim that having had a single drink – a single sip – amounts to “drunk” riding or driving is pathological; the frothing fulminations of a snake-handling backwoods Pentecostal preacher or his termagant wife.
It is so egregious – so bereft of reason – as to be almost unbelievable. Until you take into account the Cloverite mindset. Because the Cloverite mind cannot reason. It does not base its views on facts. It does not apply principles to particulars.
It feels. And believes. We are dealing with a religious mania.
And for a Clover, that is enough.
The BAC threshold defining “drunk” driving in all 50 states – .08 BAC – is already an affront to reason and justice. It is a political – a religious – standard that arbitrarily paints a person as “impaired” without having to establish impairment.
What happens at a “sobriety” checkpoint? A person is made to blow into a machine that – supposedly – gauges the percentage of alcohol in his bloodstream. But how is this a gauge of his driving? It is damning to this process – to the idea of its reasonableness and justice – to point out that it is not necessary to even assert that a person’s driving was impaired to convict them of “drunk” driving.
Only that they were found to have “x” BAC.
Many people are marginal – are incompetent – drivers without any BAC at all. Yet they are not considered “impaired.” And many drivers are excellent drivers with some BAC – yet are considered “impaired” even though their driving cannot be faulted.
“Sobriety” checkpoints are necessary – from the standpoint of the neo-Prohibitionists – precisely because most of the people ensnared there would never have been molested by armed government workers while on the road – because they would have given no reason to justify a stop based on erratic driving.
But, why not a “zero tolerance” law?
It is of a piece with the rest of police state America. We are all presumptively criminals – and treated as such – in order that Clovers may feel safe.
Clovers assert that theoretical “harms” justify the imposition of actual harm.
This business here being a case in point. The Clover amberlamps chaser or angry “mom” feels that any rider or driver who has even the most minuscule trace amount of alcohol in his system is “impaired” and must be Hut! Hut! Hutted!
The circle is now complete.
Probable cause was thrown in the trash back in the ’80s when the deconstructors of the Bill of Rights decreed that the plain English of the Fourth Amendment – which prohibits “unreasonable searches” defined as those without without probable cause or warrant – actually doesn’t prohibit them.
This is why you can be legally stopped at random, without having given an AGW the slightest reason to suspect you of anything – and forced to prove to an AGW that you aren’t guilty of anything.
“Zero tolerance” means no tolerance – for our former right to be left unmolested unless we have given some reason to justify otherwise.
Thanks, MotorcycleAccident.org – for furthering the cause of turning this country into a parody of East Germany. And, to be fair, in the former Deutsch Demokratische Republik they didn’t hassle you because you’d had a sip of beer two hours ago.
