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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not saying it's the most professional choice, but if I were about to burgle a courthouse as part of my work, I'd like a beer or two to calm my nerves beforehand.

This is a job where having impaired judgment is a terrible idea.

If someone needs alcohol to do a job that involves taking the role of a criminal and summoning the police, drinking alcohol before it is a terrible choice no matter how you look at it. If they can't do the job without alcohol, they shouldn't be doing the job at all. Maintaining unimpaired judgment is a baseline expectation for a job like this.

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I doubt judgement is heavily impaired at 0.05 BAC. That is at or below the legal limit to drive a car.

And it really is more of a red herring since they were obviously not visibly intoxicated and they didn't actually do anything illegal. Their BAC is more of an issue between them and their employer, and has no bearing on their false arrest.

> I doubt judgement is heavily impaired at 0.05 BAC. That is at or below the legal limit to drive a car.

0.05% BAC will result in a DUI in many countries. Regardless, any impairment on a job where you're doing things guaranteed to summon the cops is a very bad idea.

BAC also declines linearly over time. I doubt (hope?) they weren't drinking on the job, but a 0.05% BAC measured after their arrest means their BAC would have been higher when they started breaking into the building earlier in the night.

Only Utah has a 0.05 standard. (I think drinking before a nighttime physical pentest is a bad idea).

Washington might be moving to 0.05 too. (A bill just narrowly passed the state Senate; still has to clear the state house)

Is USA the outliner here? In (most of) canada 0.05 will get your license suspended (but you dont go to jail unless its 0.08).

Australia, scotland and france are also 0.05.

There are quite a few countries where the limit is less than that.

Maybe? Virtually everywhere in the US is 0.08. I don't think it's a good idea for physical pentesters to drink anything before a gig, for whatever that's worth, so hopefully we're just shooting the shit about different countries rules.

The "legal limit" is terribly misunderstood, but 0.08% is just legal threshold where the state doesn't need to prove impairment and the offense is upgraded to an automatic criminal DUI. A driver in an accident with a BAC of 0.03% could still be charged with a DUI if impairment can be proven but most prosecutors' offices have more important things to work on.

Sure, I don't disagree.

It's also terribly misunderstood by pedants since you can be charged with a DUI with a 0.00 BAC by doing drugs. The point isn't that it's a definitive line in the sand between impairment and not, but if people are trusted to drive a car (generally or broadly speaking, not pedantically speaking), being above or below said limit is a reasonable litmus test for "visibly/obviously impaired" or not.

> I doubt judgement is heavily impaired at 0.05 BAC

Physical coordination becomes an issue. 70% of subjects tested struggled to maintain lane position at 0.02%.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC102344

I don't see how that relates to, say, software engineering or physical pentesting though. And 1/3 people is still a fairly significant number that do not suffer ill effects. I also said heavily impaired—not that they were categorically not suffering from any effect of the alcohol.

My point is not that they definitely should have done it. It is simply that, in this context, it's really not a big deal & is not really germane to the discussion at all. They did nothing wrong, stone cold sober or not.

That’s not what your link says; impairment at 0.02 BAC is measurable, but a fraction of standard day-to-day variation for a person. It’s roughly equivalent to missing coffee at breakfast.

Is this something that has been rigorously studied? Like multiple follow-ups?

This article is from 2002 - twenty years ago. It cites several other studies, which seem not great overall.

One studied a driving simulator, the others looked at deaths in the single year after lowering blood alcohol.

The one about minors in Maryland seemed especially strange, as minors are usually required to have 0% BAC.

It sounds like cherry picking.

> heavily impaired

The level of impairment doesn't matter. They are impaired. There is no standard or testing which reveals the minimum level of impairment that one can safely do the job. So, you don't do it impaired, at any level, period.

> and has no bearing on their false arrest.

Two people that have obviously been drinking, hiding from police, and then making up fantastic sounding stories as to why they're in a tax payer owned facility outside of working hours. The police had good reason to effect an arrest so it can't be "false arrest."

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