Haa! In court?! WTF?
I remember my uncle in the seventies taking corners slow so he didn’t spill his drink. He put his drinks in lowballs so the corners could be taken faster, and left the drink on his dash when we went in to stores. I don’t recall it being an issue to anyone.
And that ruined a perfectly good song:
“It’s a quarter to three/No one’s in the bar
but you and me/So set 'em up Joe…
I’ll have one for my baby/And one more for the road”.
Of course the joke "It’s a quarter to three/No one’s in the bar
but you and me/So stick 'em up Joe
didn’t help, either.
Oh my god, that’s fantastic. Talk about giving someone the proverbial rope to hang you with!
When I was 18 (legal age was 21) on weekends we would go to the drive-in with the case of beer someone’s older brother had gotten for us. And I was one of the “good kids” and the guys I was with we’re all heading to college. Different times!
I recall an episode of Quincy where a guy murdered the victim with his car, and quickly downed the better part of a fifth before the cops arrived. The premise, of course, was that he would get only a slap on the wrist for drunk driving, and Quincy had to go to some lengths to prove it was in fact murder.
Nowadays, you get a worse penalty for DUI than for murder. Well, maybe not for first-degree murder, but certainly for second-degree…
Coincidental timing, this coming up today. Had a grillout with a bunch of my mother’s friends yesterday to celebrate her retirement (to give you an idea of their ages). Everyone (except me and my kids) had a personal “…and the officer told me to drive real careful on my way home and go sleep it off!” story. Even my MOM, who is not and has never been a party animal.
It is, according to this group - comprised mostly of retired *teachers *and school principals, no less - almost impossible to articulate the impact MADD has had on changing our attitudes and laws around drinking and driving.
I believe it.
When I started driving in CA (a long time ago), drunk driving was called a 502. It was illegal to drive with a BA of .10 or more. I don’t remember any social stigma attaching to it as it does today. Nor do I remember anyone getting ticketed for it. In fact, I don’t even know it they checked drivers at accidents for alcohol unless they saw evidence of drinking at the site.
As a teenager growing up in SoCal we sometimes journeyed to Tijuana where the legal drinking age was 18. (and they gladly accepted fake IDs) We’d drink beers for a few hours and head off for the 40 minute trip home. I don’t ever remember considering the driving/blood alcohol possibilities, nor do I remember anyone ever getting in an accident or stopped by the cops. (Yes, I know, we were stupid to do it, you don’t need to remind me).
My point is that back then, it wasn’t something that was as much of a social issue as it is today.
I wonder if MADD will ever show any outrage about the highway carnage caused by Mothers using the rear view mirror to apply their makeup, while yakking on cellphones?
There should be. I was a member of the backlash group DAMM (Drunks Against Mad Mothers) for a long time.
The way I remember it, drunk driving wasn’t really considered to be a bad thing, but you were expected to be able to handle your liquor and not crash. If you did cause an accident, you were looked down upon as being an out of control drunk instead of a proper social drinker.
I don’t know about something like vehicular homicide, but if you were in a non-fatal accident I can picture the courts wanting you to clean your act up and be a responsible drinker again, instead of treating you like a reckless criminal. The overall attitude towards drinking was significantly different than today.
In the 70’s, our neighbor across the street would routinely drive home drunk and, more often than not, would take out his entire row of trash cans attempting to turn into his driveway. He was looked down on as a drunk and gossiped about, but no one felt any need to try to stop him from driving.
Plus, if you’re drunk, that impairs your judgement anyway, so you might not realize you’re too drunk to drive.
pickups with heavy gauge steel dashboards, no seatbelts, no ac, ice chest in the front seat, beer opener on the keychain, slinging empty longnecks at roadsigns, drunk sex at the drivein movie, late night car chases and streetfights, curing a hangover with a quart of bud and a chili dog on the way to work the next morning…they used to let us do whatever we wanted in Texas.
And yet we all lived through. Most of us anyway. All of the funerals of friends and family did drag down the mood after a while but it was a blast if you were lucky enough to be alive back then.
Old joke:
A priest hits a car driven by a rabbi. They both get out of their cars to look over the damage, and the rabbi offers the priest a flask of whiskey “to calm your nerves, Father.” The priest takes a healthy snort, wipes his mouth, hands the flask back and asks, “Don’t you want one, too, Rabbi?”
The rabbi smiles, puts the flask away and says, “Well, maybe after we’ve spoken to the police…”
Attitudes vary by country even today, just for example in Germany it is even more taboo than in the US despite alcohol being much more culturally accepted(although it could be argued they really hold imparied driving taboo not the detectable trace thing in the USA).
Here in Trinidad I still occasionally get in a taxi with a driver nursing a beer at night or in areas with less intense LEO attention.
I’ve said it before in these types of threads, but I disagree that drinking in the car=drunk driving. Not even MADD would suggest that if I have one beer at a bar before heading home that I should be charged with a crime.
Since that is the case, then why should there be a penalty if I stop at the convenience store and have a beer on the way home? My BAC would actually be lower if I did the latter.
Plus open container laws target passengers as well. Who cares if my passenger has a BAC of .22 and ready to pass out? That’s fine, but if he is enjoying his one beer and not affecting my driving at all, he gets a ticket. It makes no sense.
Further, if I was cleaning up litter in my community and threw an empty beer can in the back seat, I could get ticketed even though nobody ever drank in my vehicle.
Just silly all the way around. DUI laws accomplish all that open container laws accomplish without the added nonsense.
Texas may have an open container law, but what constitutes a closed container can be as little as a to-go cup that hasn’t yet had a straw pushed through the lid. Unless the situation has changed very recently, some drive-thru establishments offer margaritas to-go.
Yep there was a margarita place near where I lived in Houston that had this exact setup, they even sold jello shots to go in little condiment cups with saran wrap.
BUT that said my understanding was you could still be ticketed for those items, basically it was up to the officer if he wanted to buy it or not. Same for hauling beer cans for recycling, fancy restaurants in Houston started offering to recork expensive bottles of wine so you could take them home and they would tell you while what they were doing satisfied the law you were taking your chances.
I suppose if your margarita was half empty you’d have a tough time convincing the constable you hadn’t broken the seal.