Yep, Mark, it was not illegal to drink while driving as long as you were not intoxicated. It used to be a bit funny when someone drinking a beer would try to hide it when he saw a police officer, but it was perfectly legal to drink a beer or drink from a whiskey botte driving down main street. Actually, it's no more dangerous to be drinking a beer than it is to be drinking a coke while driving, and maybe even safer than drinking coffee while driving, since the beer's not hot if you spill it on yourself.:laughing: But MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), with the best of intentions, but sadly misdirected, harrassed the legislature until they passed a state law prohibiting drinking while driving. The first law specified that an officer had to personally see you take a drink, be able to prove it was an alcoholic beverage, and then could only issue a citation with a maximum penalty of $75. And there was no prohibition against passengers in the vehicle drinking. After all, most of those legislators sometimes had a beer while driving. But MADD kept after them year after year until we finally got an "open container" law, like a lot of other states. So now instead of drinking one beer on the way from work, folks have to stop at a bar and get drunk before going on home.:laughing:
As I said, the best of intentions, but in reality, open container laws have done nothing to reduce drunk driving, but they do provide another source of income in the way of fines. Although I'm not sure they raise enough revenue in fines to pay the cost of the officers' and courts' time and paperwork to do the enforcing.
I've actually arrested a 19 year old drunk driver who blew .09 and I took him to the auto pound, released him, and released his car to him to drive away in. I didn't like it, but that was the rule at the time.
