When the Miami Beach Police Department recently unveiled a squad car of theirs that they had repainted, it turned a few heads. That’s because the vehicle is painted to make the front half of the vehicle look like a police cruiser and the back half to look like a taxi cab. As some of our readers here in Orlando may have guessed, the car is meant to make people stop and think about the important choice people have after consuming alcohol.
The message may be fairly obvious to most: choose to drink and drive, and you could find yourself getting a ride in a police cruiser. Call a taxi instead, and you have a ride that won’t result in a potentially serious accident or one that could lead to criminal charges. For many across Florida, the distinction between these two decisions is powerful, especially because one of these choices has more serious consequences than the other.
Your choice, your consequences
As we said above, the repainted police cruiser represents the important decision people need to make after having a few drinks: to get behind the wheel of a vehicle or let a sober driver take the wheel. But as our more frequent readers may be thinking, the decision to drink and drive forces an individual to make other important decisions as well: to refuse a breath test or not, to plead guilty or fight the charges, to get a lawyer or take one’s chances against the court on their own.
Though we’ve presented just a fraction of the choices a person may need to make after being pulled over for drunk driving, it’s up to every person to make the right ones when the time comes. Sometimes this is easy to see, other times it isn’t. So just remember that you do have the right to an attorney who can help you make the best decisions possible.
Source: NBC Miami, “New Patrol Car Aimed at Preventing Drunk Driving,” May 29, 2015
