Drunk Drivers

A drunk driver trapped after overturning his car cracked open another can of beer while he waited for emergency crews to rescue him, a New Zealand court was told. Paul Nigel Sneddon, 47, pleaded guilty to careless driving and drunken driving after being nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit in a district court in the city of Palmerston North, the Dominion Post newspaper reported on Wednesday. Police found Sneddon, a former baker, trapped in his overturned Ford Laser on June 1, drinking a can of beer after he failed to take a corner properly and crashed through a wooden barrier, flipping his vehicle.

The Supreme Court cast some doubt today on the legal authority of a police officer to pull over a suspected drunk driver based solely on a caller's tip. Over a strong dissent by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the high court let stand a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that held a police officer can follow but cannot stop a suspected drunk driver's car until he sees it do something suspicious, such as swerve in a lane. "The effect of [this] rule will be to grant drunk drivers 'one free swerve' before they can be pulled over by the police," Roberts said.

Some of the highs and lows of watching Angels-Red Sox Game 1: Say hey: Welcome to Angels Stadium. The high-definition blimp shot of all the traffic lights? Almost pretty enough to send a person to a car and onto the 5 Freeway. Or maybe not. Say what? Someone needs to change this now. TBS ran an ad for Captain Morgan liquor touting the benefits of the big bottle that offers drinkers 40 shots. Immediately followed by a Fox/TBS ad for its postseason baseball coverage that begins: "Every game the Angels honor their teammate Nick Adenhart."

For the last seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunk driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an "ignition interlock," acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he's sober before the engine will start. New Mexico, which led the nation in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state to require the interlock for every convicted drunk driver.

Everyone knows it's dangerous and illegal for a sloppy drunk to get behind the wheel and power the car home through an alcoholic haze. And it's certainly dangerous and illegal for a tipsy twentysomething starlet or a trashed fortysomething actor to buzz through city streets among the rest of us. Consider it sheer luck if their reckless behavior hasn't yet caused injury or death.

Motorists convicted of driving drunk will have to install breath-monitoring gadgets in their cars under new laws taking effect in six states this month. . The ignition interlocks prevent engines from starting until drivers blow into the alcohol detectors to prove they're sober. Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska and Washington state began Jan. 1 requiring the devices for all motorists convicted of first-time drunk driving. South Carolina began requiring them for repeat offenders.

Re "CHP ups patrols for the holiday," Nov. 28 The sobriety checkpoints that took place in California over Thanksgiving weekend served to funnel limited state and federal grant money away from measures that have proved to be most effective in combating drunk driving. Because they are highly visible by design and publicized in advance, roadblocks are all too easily avoided by the chronic alcohol abusers who make up the core of today's drunk-driving problem. Conversely, the number of driving-under-the-influence arrests made by roving patrol programs is nearly 10 times the average number of DUIs made by checkpoint programs, according to testimony by a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation official.

A toddler was killed and her mother, father and year-old brother seriously injured when a suspected drunk driver struck the family as they were on a bicycle ride Sunday afternoon in Rialto, officials said. The suspect, Jesse Rolando Astorga, 27, of Phelan, Calif., has been charged with murder, said Lt. Joe Cirilo of the Rialto Police Department. He is being held at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga in lieu of $1-million bail.

Should convicted drunk drivers be forced to pass an alcohol breath test before starting their cars? Should everyone? For more than 20 years, special breathalyzers -- hard-wired to a car's ignition to prevent the vehicle from starting if alcohol is detected -- have been installed under judicial order in the cars of repeat, or especially egregious, alcohol offenders.