Originally Posted by drrhythm2

Ehaeker - I disagree. I think a DUI does show, without a doubt, a major lapse in judgement. Granted, not everyone who gets one is blackout-drunk behind the wheel. But it doesn't take blackout-drunk to kill yourself. All you have to do it be buzzed enough to not notice a red light or stop sign, and you could kill / maim / cripple a whole family or worse.

In your example of a cop waking up someone sleeping behind the wheel to give them a DUI, I don't think that's even possible (assuming the COP isn't breaking the law). Sitting in a parked car isn't "operating" a motor vehicle. The crime is "driving" while intoxicated, not sitting in a stationary object. Even if this was the case, he/she could have made better arrangements that wouldn't have put him/her in that situation in the first place. How about just having good enough judgement not to get so drunk you would need to sit in your parked car to sleep it off?

You are going to have a really hard time coming up with any scenario in which getting a DUI was the result of good judgement or decision-making. Now, whether it's possible to change your attitude, atone for your mistake, and be reliably professional in the future is much more debatable. But if you are going to try to argue that getting a DUI doesn't always indicate poor judgement and decision making at the time it happened, I just don't think you have a case.

These facts are always (or so nearly always that there is no distinction) true:

1) You got behind the wheel of something that can kill people, knowing you could put someone's life at risk
2) You did it knowing it was illegal to do so
3) You did it knowing the huge risk to your career aspirations
4) In spite of the above, you did it anyway.

If you are someone hiring at an airline, you'd have to think the following:

1) Someone with a DUI is much more likely to have problems with alcohol abuse or dependency than someone without.
2) Someone with a DUI is much more likely to exhibit poor judgement, risk management, attitude towards risk-taking, etc than someone without.
3) Someone with a DUI made a decision that put his/her immediate desire to drive somewhere ahead of the elevated risk of killing/injuring himself or others.

That doesn't sound like someone you want in your cockpit. No?