Yes, drinking any amount and driving does increase your chances of an accident (although that’s lumping together a wide range of possible cases, some of them MUCH more risky than others).

In numbers, your chance of an accident causing any injury or death on one trip home is increased from about 1 in 20 million to 1 in 200,000. I wouldn’t drive drunk myself, but it seems to me that 1 in 200,000 is an acceptably low risk.

But what we should REALLY be questioning is not the DUI law itself, but the way that law enforcement has lobbied for and used “secondary” laws, or misinterpretations of laws, to effectively destroy the presumption of innocence for anyone who “just might” have drunk something and driven before the cop got there. Examples of this range from the open container law, to the practice of arresting someone sleeping it off in his car, or pushing a car home with the engine off instead of driving it, or even arresting people for public intoxication just for being over .08 in case they “just might” plan to drive later.

So long as the police are willing to perpetrate the abuses I’ve just listed (all of which are common in my area), I’ll never make a call to the police that might cause one of them to happen to anybody.

The presumption of innocence is the ONLY thing that makes America a country worth defending. No price is too high to keep it — or to get it back.

But the crime, regardless of the outcome, is the volitional acts of drinking and driving, thereby setting up the scenario for a potentially tragic outcome. DWI only means nothing bad happened by the time you got nailed.

The consequences are the result of turning it into another bogeyman crime, creating the impression of far greater moral turpitude and harm than reality justifies. But there will never be balance as long as groups like MADD exist and politicians get elected playing on fear of harm.

On the other hand, I know many people who feel zero tolerance for drunk driving. Of course, they conveniently forget their own days when “dumb luck” got them home safely and without being arrested.

I would bet that driving while intoxicated is victimless at least 99.9 percent of the time. I think it’s less than one time in a thousand that an impaired person gets behind the wheel and someone (or someone’s stuff) gets damaged as a result. Most of the time the intoxicated person makes it home just fine, like you did, Ron (and if you didn’t get caught or convicted, you weren’t legally guilty of DWI).

I think there’s an analogy to be drawn between the act of driving while intoxicated and lots of other activities. For example: surgery can kill people. Yet not only do we not call surgery a crime with a victim, but we don’t call it a crime at all.

Of course speeding is victimless. A risk is not the same as a victim. If there’s a victim, it becomes something else. Not all crimes need victims to be justified.

It’s the other 20% that’s the problem. Walter P. Moore who designed the Astrodome was the victim of a DWI driver.

The problem is whether our reaction to the “problem” is appropriate or justified.

I know I’ve been guilty of DWI. I didn’t kill anyone or even cause an accident. I didn’t get caught or convicted. Should I have been given a criminal record for the rest of my life? I don’t think so. Then again, I’d suppose that you’d say I’m biased.

Bill M, Thanks. I usually don’t read Chronicle comments — they make me feel dirty. But since it’s all about me this time (sorry, SC) I read them. They did get better toward the end.

John, I think that defense should work here. Any crime requires a voluntary act; the “act” in DWI is driving; if the person is driving involuntarily, it shouldn’t be a crime. I doubt that our courts of appeals would agree with this fundamental proposition.

BTW, Windy, Epictetus said “Don’t call yourself a philosopher; behave like one.”

Now having set the stage, the commenters on your article were pretty even-keeled. There was only a relatively moderate proportion damning you outright, which was surprising given that: 1) you’re a lawyer, 2) who unapologetically defends the accused, and 3) this is a newspaper website.

You put out some pretty challenging ideas in very straight-forward language. Based on the comments, I’d say you made more than a few people really stop and think.

Congrats.