DUI – A path to enlightenment

Residents annoyed by battleship-sized tour buses, stretch limos and converted produce vans hauling gaggles of tourists through the Valley should consider that those traffic-clogging monstrosities perform an important public service. Namely, keeping inebriated, cluelessly-lost tourists from getting behind the wheel and becoming menaces to themselves and sentient beings alike.

Case in point: A visiting reveler recently smashed a perfectly expensive sports car into a tree which was standing by the roadside minding its own business. Fortunately, the tree survived.

No local winery or tasting room has been implicated, Praise Be. For if tyrannical government can crack down on honest businesses pouring chardonnay into tourists, surely our pot farms and meth labs will be next.

But alas, an all-too-frequent result of drinking wine is impaired driving, known in police parlance as “DUI.”   Along with people convicted of strangling kittens or setting fire to puppies, DUI convicts are often among the yellow-vested trash-pickers seen along our highways, doing ‘community service’ ordered by judges loathe to turn our jails into dumping grounds for riff-raff.

Under the California Motor Vehicle Code, however, DUI is not just your grandfather’s traffic ticket. It’s a crime with serious consequences, especially if the prosecutor gets wind of an injury or dead body. In a masterstroke of understatement, one attorney who defends DUI cases has noted: “The stakes are high in a drunk driving case.”

As are the legal fees. Fees charged by skilled DUI attorneys keep them well above the federal poverty guideline for a family of 750. However, if one can’t afford a private attorney, one may be assigned a public defender. Technically speaking, one can even represent oneself in court, an exercise that can cause the judge and prosecutor to giggle uncontrollably throughout the proceeding.

Fortunately, tourists can Google “DUI California” to find DUI defense lawyers, plus links to unsettling information not mentioned in the Visitors Bureau ads that lure out-of-town drunks to our Valley. For example, they’ll learn that even with a blood booze level below .08, one can be charged with an offense known as “Wet Reckless,” not to be mistaken for an option on Ashley Madison.com.

The Good News for panicked Arrestees is that this information can begin to instill a calm, Buddha-like acceptance of the many possibilities that await those charged with DUI, among which are:

~ Serious jail time. An opportunity for new friendships, perhaps intimacy.

~ License suspension. With buses, who really needs one?

~ Fines to choke a horse.   And to free one from the responsibilities of wealth.

~ Mandatory DUI classes, ranging from 12 hours to 30 months. In Sonoma County, tuition is but $364 to $1,637, a pittance for knowledge unavailable in tasting rooms.

~Ignition interlock for the car. A mere $75-$100 installation, plus $2.50/day, plus maintenance.

~Community service. Walking meditation to cleanse the soul and the world’s roadsides, one napkin and used condom at a time.

Repeat offenses are but stepping-stones on a path leading inexorably through a forest of towering fines to the serenity of State Penitentiary.

Along the Way, one encounters many blessings: bail bondsmen; lawsuits for damages; soaring insurance premiums; mortgaging one’s car from the pound where it was lovingly towed for safekeeping., etc.

And when one’s only ride becomes a bicycle and one’s employer has no Work-From-Jail policy, one is finally liberated from the worldly torments of crowded freeways, frequent dating and constant employment.