phoenix criminal lawyer

Would knowing your blood alcohol content help you make the right decision to call a cab or hail an Uber at the end of the night?

Breathometer, a portable breathalyzer that works on smartphones, has partnered with Uber to further prevent drunk driving by offering users safe, convenient alternatives to getting behind the wheel when intoxicated.

Simply blow into one of the Breathometer devices, which can be wireless or attached to the headphone jack, and the app shows the person’s current blood alcohol content.

If BAC levels are at .04 percent or higher, Breathometer provides a list of nearby restaurants, hotels and transportation options that can be contacted directly form the app.

Now partnered with Uber, an app that connects people to drivers in the area, Breathometer offers the company’s services first on the list of transportation options, and the Uber app automatically opens when selected on Breathometer.

Since the partnership began earlier this year, Uber has been selected 54 percent more frequently than the other options Breathometer offers, with approximately 1,700 Uber rides so far.

After recording BAC levels, Breathometer has the option to store this information so that over time, the app gets to know how much alcohol it takes for an individual to become intoxicated, how long it takes to sober up and more.

In the future, Breathometer founder and CEO Charles Yim has plans to expand the app even more, so that it offers users additional services, such as helpful resources for battling alcohol abuse.

The partnership between the Uber and Breathometer, and each of their respective partnerships with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Fathers Against Drunk Driving, demonstrates a serious effort to prevent alcohol-related accidents.

Gideon’s Law states that under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, every state has an obligation to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent those defendants who can’t afford to hire a private attorney.

However, many people have a misunderstanding of the public defense system and do not realize that choosing a public defender over a private attorney can be very hurtful to the outcome of their case resulting in a higher chance of being convicted as well as more severe punishment during sentencing.

Anyone who is in need of a defense lawyer should consider every aspect of using the public defense system. There are some serious issues plaguing the system including the fact that public defense lawyers are given hundreds upon hundreds of cases over the course of a year. This only allows lawyers enough time to spend 2 hours or less on each case.

In some cases a public defender technically has only minutes to spend on each assigned case and is given more than 800 cases annually. More than half of the countries legal systems also prevent public defenders from refusing to take on additional new cases.

With such minimal amount of time dedicated to each client, many defendants are simply encouraged to enter a guilty plea for the sake of resolving the case even if they might have otherwise had a relatively high chance of successfully fighting the charges against them.

Another large issue with the public defense system is a severe lack of funding. The result is that defenders do not have the necessary means to access certain resources that could make or break a case such as legal research, investigators and field experts.

More importantly, due to the problems with funding, those who are under the impression that they will save loads of money by using a public defender may be disappointed after finding themselves having to pay high amounts of court fees.

According to NPR, there has been a huge growth in the use of court fines and fees to finance the criminal justice system and other state programs. An NPR survey found that 43 states require defendants to pay fees in order to have a public defender represent them in court.

With a private attorney, there is no need to be concerned about those issues that are all too common in the public defense system. Opting to hire a private attorney gives the defendant a greater fighting chance of winning their case and saves him/her from having to worry about whether or not they are receiving the best representation in court.

Private attorneys have the education, time and resources to spend working each client’s case and will fight to get the best outcome possible in court.