And not only is the first part necessarily the worst, but once you’re in the system they make it hard to get back out by throwing all sorts of arbitrary requirements on you to fulfill, with little to no flexibility. 10-week class that occurs right in the middle of your work-day? Fuck you. It all serves to essentially keep you in the system as it keeps on fucking with your life. Not to mention prison/jail, which brands you with a permanent scarlet letter that bars you from even working at many jobs even after you’ve gotten out.
Same thing with having one of those breathalyzer things on your car. You have to pay to have it installed, pay a monthly fee in addition to all the other shit you've already paid for. And then you can only go a very few certain places. Makes it incredibly difficult to recover from that. It's not to punish you or keep you off the road after a DUI, it's so they can extract more money from you
Our entire bar/nightclub economy would collapse if nobody drank and drove. Not defending it, just pointing out America has terrible public transportation and very little means to access these places without driving.
In the other article linked by that one it says it's just a recommendation. Seems weird.
A federal advisory board recommended yesterday that safety regulators require “alcohol impairment detection systems to be included in all new vehicles.” The move is just a recommendation, but it has the weight of law behind it.
I’ve unfortunately had the pleasure of needing one of these interlock devices installed on my car back in 2010. It’s definitely been awhile but the device only limits where you could go if you had alcohol in your system, and that limit would be NOWHERE. If you were sober you just had to blow clean every 5-20 minutes and I could drive as much as I pleased. The option without the device was no driving except to and from work and maybe the grocery store 1-2 times a week.
I’ve had one before and without it you can only go to work and the grocery store. With it you just have to blow sober and you are free to drive as you please, it’s like having the judge in the car to make sure you don’t fuck up.
And then they charge you hundreds to thousands of dollars for those classes so that once you do find a job, they just garnish your wages.
They charge you for drug tests and "renting" ankle monitors, and if you don't pay they just throw you back in jail. Which sometimes has its own fees. Even public defenders can have fees depending on your state/county, and they will threaten to take you to small claims court over the $50 they billed you without telling you. For counsel that literally exists to represent poor people. Ask me how I know.