Due to the United States being a highly mobile nation, motor vehicle crimes are the most likely place that most citizens encounter the police. They, the accused person needs the services of a criminal defense attorney, whether paid or appointed, due to indigency. If you need more reasons to hire a DUI criminal lawyer, read this list of 97 Reasons.
Today, more and more people’s driving records (with their insurance carrier) will have some type of at-fault accident rate adjustment. Alternatively, some serious traffic crimes will create a cancellation of that policy if State laws don’t block that from happening.
Each state’s more serious driving offenses create a suspension or revocation of that license. When an auto insurer receives proof of a suspended or revoked operator’s license (which is automatic after a conviction for violating DUI laws (and some other serious driving crimes like hit and run), a cancellation notice can be expected.
About once every second, on average, or 112,000 a day, a speeding ticket is issued somewhere in the USA, according to online source CreditDonkey.com. An equal or even higher number of total other “moving violations” occur daily, too, for traffic crimes like running a stop sign, failure to yield the right of way, or following too closely.
Plus, about 2,000,000 accidents result in some type of injury or death, and speeding is implicated in nearly 25 of these crashes. Plus, drinking drivers are blamed by one federal agency for over 10,000 such accidents annually.
Collisions involving serious traffic crimes are best defended by criminal lawyers who specialize in serious traffic violations. Depending upon state laws, these charges can be misdemeanor or felony offenses.
The need to know a highly qualified traffic law specialist is the exact reason this national criminal defense lawyer website was created, to help guide those looking for competent legal help to an OUI-DWI attorney in their state. Especially in the age of Internet advertising, not every DUI or DWI lawyer nearby will be a highly trained DUI defense attorney in these kinds of cases.
In addition to traffic crimes and highway crashes, (without committing any crime) other motorists in about 37 states and the District of Columbia may find themselves being required to stop by law enforcement officers at DWI-DUI checkpoints, or a driver’s license verification roadblock. Officers will make arrests of those operators with a pending license suspension (or license revocation), or some other vehicle liability insurance issue, as well as any drivers who are suspected of DUI-DWI offenses.
How a Century of Drunk Driving Legislation Changed the Landscape
In the United States, all states (as well as the District of Columbia) have different statutes pertaining to driving while intoxicated (or driving while impaired by drugs). Penalties pertaining to driving under the influence laws have been in place in America since 1910 and have been drastically increased over the prior 40 years.
In fact, by crafting their own state laws, the various states have created a variety of “names” for their drunk driving charges. D.W.I. is the usual abbreviation in Texas, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, and North Carolina.
While DWI (which can mean driving while intoxicated or by being impaired) is the second most popular acronym, DUI has been the most widely used abbreviation for decades. This acronym is used by drunk driving lawyers in over 34 states.
Below are just a few other drunken driving acronyms and the associated, abbreviated “name” of the drunk driving cases across America:
- Operating while impaired or operating while intoxicated, which is called “OWI” (Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa use this acronym).
- Operating under the influence or “OUI” (Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island use this abbreviation)
- One state named its law “operating a vehicle impaired” (OVI in Ohio),
- Another lone, western state decided on driving under the influence of intoxicants (known as DUII in Oregon), and
- One other mid-western state opted for driving while under the Influence (known as “DWUI” in Wyoming).
The U.S. Government’s Safety Initiatives Led to Growth of Drunk Driving Attorneys
The federal agency, N.H.T.S.A. is a branch of the federal D.O.T. It was launched in 1970, under Richard Nixon. That agency was charged with developing awareness of highway hazards, and “suggesting” uniform laws that all states should enact, to assist in lowering highway deaths and injuries.
How Drunk Driving Laws have been Altered through NHTSA. So, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s efforts have led to these changes for drunk driving (DUI-DWI) laws in all states:
Raising the legal drinking age to 21, in all states;- Pushing states to pass a new type of statute, called “implied consent” laws, whereby the state’s DMV-DPS-BMV-SOS office would immediately administratively suspend or revoke the drivers’ licenses for any motorists arrested for OWI-DUI who refused to submit to post-arrest testing of breath, urine, or blood. So, the license revocation (or license suspension) would take place before the criminal case is ever brought to court;
- After the “refusal to test” laws were in place, the next NHTSA initiative was to also impose another type of administrative driver license suspension or revocation for arrested, suspected impaired motorists. NHTSA suggested imposing some mandatory jail sentence for anyone later convicted, who had refused post-arrest testing. The agency also promoted incarceration for those who TAKE the post-arrest test and yielded a reading “above the legal limit” within that state, for that category of the license holder;
- Next, NHTSA required that all states would have to set their state “adult blood alcohol level” standard at no higher than 0.10 grams percent, and requiring that any convicted person at those numbers or higher be required to serve mandatory jail time;
- enacting “open container” laws to criminalize having open alcoholic beverage containers in the passenger area;
- creating a “zero-tolerance” alcohol law for drivers under age 21, when he or she operates a motor vehicle;
- Studying recidivism for DUI Court participants (long-term intensive probation and oversight of repeat offenders) versus standard probationers,
- lowering the adult, permissible blood alcohol content (BAC) level to no higher than 0.08 grams percent, in all states; and
- NHTSA began pushing states to enact ignition interlock device (IID) laws for accused or convicted drinking drivers, as a condition for getting a restricted driving privilege via a permit. Then, by installing an IID, whereby those drivers had to install and pay for servicing of an electronic alcohol interdiction device, in order to be allowed to keep driving.
Raising the legal drinking age to 21, in all states;So, pulling the federal purse strings on federal highway funding have “encouraged” states to fall in line, or risk losing federal highway money. Thus, without having a single, national law on impaired driving, the similarity of these “driving drunk” laws is very apparent.
Obtaining Legal Advice from Criminal Lawyers who are Trained in “Police” Science
The legal professionals who are state affiliates on this attorney directory, have in excess of two decades of experience, as a DUI defense lawyer. In the year 1980, that level of legal acumen for specializing as intoxicated driving defense lawyers was highly rare, but over forty (40) years later, it is a mandatory requirement, to assure expertise.
Also, beginning in 1994, DWI defense lawyers have been able to take the NHTSA “Standardized Field Sobriety Test” (S.F.S.T.) training given to many traffic officers. This “inside information” enables these trained legal warriors to know all the details of this training and use this advanced knowledge to help prevent a DWI/DUI conviction, in many cases. Plus, in 1999, the SFST Instructor Course has been available, to learn the same rules as the police trainers know.
Many have also taken various crime laboratory training courses. In this training, taught by scientists, D.U.I. attorneys how errors can occur in breath alcohol testing devices, blood testing or urine testing. These advanced courses began at Emory University in 2007, and hundreds of training “sessions” and certification programs have been made available through different state and national sources.
The founder of this website wrote a book about 101 Ways to Avoid a Drunk Driving Conviction is 1991. It was the largest selling DUI book in history. This online DJ talks about it in detail in the Youtube video below.