Over Service Laws – “Visibly Intoxicated” – a way to Stop DUIs?
by Lisa Frederiksen
A number of municipalities / states have laws to try curb drunk driving known as “over-service laws — laws that say an alcohol server cannot serve a visibly intoxicated customer.” The problem is that by the time a person is “visibly intoxicated,” they are flat out drunk and should have been cut off long before that.
Look at this story, for example, posted on wral.com, about a Raleigh, N.C., doctor “who is facing a murder charge in a weekend DWI [after he] had been drinking the afternoon prior to the wreck that killed a Winston-Salem ballet dancer.” The doctor’s last stop of the day was the Piper’s Tavern. Earlier he had “played golf and drank at the Raleigh Country Club.” According to the article, the doctor “had only two drinks before he was cut off [at the Piper's Club]” and left around 8:15 p.m. The crash happened about 15 minutes later, less than 3 miles away.
The doctor was traveling at 90 mph in a 45 mph zone when he slammed into the back of the vehicle of Elena Bright Shapiro, a 20-year old dancer from Winston-Salem who was scheduled “to perform three parts in the dance company’s upcoming rendition of ‘Swan Lake’.”
Vail, Colorado’s Town Council is grappling with this same problem. According to Lauren Glendenning’s article in the Vail Daily News, “Judge Says People Are Drinking Harder,” Judge Allen finds “people are doing more shots — slamming concentrated amounts of alcohol into their systems in short periods of time, meaning blood alcohol contents are higher and higher in the cases he sees, he said. It used to be that a .2 blood alcohol level was unusually high, but now it’s almost normal for Allen to see blood alcohol levels at .2 and higher, he said.’” Judge Allen goes on to say that proving “over service” laws are difficult. One Town Council member suggested an alternative law — perhaps one that would limit the number of drinks a person can order or have in front of them. The doctor in Raleigh, N.C., demonstrates that doesn’t necessarily work.
So… what do you think?
