Opinion ID: 1259532
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Legislative Response

Text: Recognizing the effect of alcohol on drivers, state legislatures early in the century attempted to regulate such conduct. Because both popular and legal views of the problem centered on the grossly intoxicated driver (Ross, Deterring the Drinking Driver (1982) p. 2), the laws also reflected that conception. Thus, California's first statute on the topic read simply, No intoxicated person shall operate or drive a motor vehicle or other vehicle upon any public highway within this state. (Italics added.) (Stats. 1913, ch. 326, § 17, p. 646.) A more satisfactory means of defining the problem of drinking and driving emerged in the middle decades of this century, with the development of scientific measurement of blood-alcohol levels. (Ross, Deterring the Drinking Driver (1982) p. 2; Cameron, The Impact of Drinking-Driving Countermeasures: A Review and Evaluation 1979 Contemp. Drug Prob. 495, 497-498.) Research on alcohol's effect on both motor skills and judgment revealed that impairment occurred at alcohol concentrations as low as 0.05 percent (Hurst, Estimating the Effectiveness of Blood Alcohol Limits (1970) 1 Behav. Research Highway Safety 87), considerably below the point at which typical clinical symptoms of intoxication appear in most persons. (Ross, Deterring the Drinking Driver (1982) p. 2; Jones & Joscelyn, Alcohol and Highway Safety 1978, op. cit. supra, at pp. 35-50.) Thus, in 1969, after a number of intervening amendments that attempted to refine definitions and specified penalties, California's driving under the influence statute (former § 23102) was fortified by the addition of former section 23126, which created a presumption of being under the influence if a driver had 0.10 percent or more by weight of alcohol in his blood. (Stats. 1969, ch. 231, § 1, p. 565.) By 1972, 47 states had similar statutes. (Murray & Aitken, The Constitutionality of California's Under-the-Influence-of-Alcohol Presumption (1972) 45 So.Cal.L.Rev. 955, 958, fn. 8.) Even these laws, which considerably assisted the prosecution of driving under the influence cases, proved inadequate in many respects. Under them, the ultimate question was defined in terms of the defendant's subjective behavior and condition: Was the defendant under the influence at the time he drove? Celerity and certainty of punishment were frustrated by the ambiguity of the legal criteria; no matter what his blood-alcohol level, a defendant could escape conviction merely by raising a doubt as to his intoxication. ( People v. Lachman (1972) 23 Cal. App.3d 1094, 1097 [100 Cal. Rptr. 710]; People v. Schrieber (1975) 45 Cal. App.3d 917, 923 [119 Cal. Rptr. 812]; Cameron, The Impact of Drinking-Driving Countermeasures: A Review and Evaluation (1979) Contemp. Drug Prob. 495, 510-511.) In response to this continuing problem, in the past decade most states enacted additional legislation supplementing existing driving under the influence statutes and fashioned after what has been termed the Scandinavian model. (Ross, Deterring the Drinking Driver (1982) pp. 21-70; Ross, The Scandinavian Myth: The Effectiveness of Drinking-and-Driving Legislation in Sweden and Norway (1975) 4 J. Legal Stud. 285; Snortum, Alcohol-Impaired Driving in Norway and Sweden: Another Look at The Scandinavian Myth (1984) 6 Law & Policy 5; Snortum, Controlling the Alcohol-Impaired Driver in Scandinavia and the U.S.: Simple Deterrence and Beyond (1984) 12 J.Crim.Just. 331; Votey, Scandinavian Drinking-Driving Control: Myth or Intuition? (1982) 11 J. Legal Stud. 93.) These statutes  which are most frequently subdivisions of a general driving and alcohol statute  define the substantive offense not by the subjective term driving under the influence, but instead as the act of driving with a specified blood-alcohol level. (Macdonald & Wagner, Rep., Nat. Study of Preliminary Breath Test (PTB) and Illegal per se Laws (U.S. Dept. of Transp. 1981) (Executive Summary) p. xv.) Under these laws, proof of being under the influence is unnecessary. The statutes represent a legislative determination that public safety is endangered when a person drives a motor vehicle while having a specified percentage (typically 0.10) or more by weight of alcohol in his blood.