To be clear, I’m not saying either one is in any way acceptable, just that there is a difference between the two.
My thoughts and sympathies are with those who are now suffering because of this selfish dumbshit’s short-sighted stupidity. Hugs and heartfelt good wishes for those people. It’s going to be a long, painful recovery, and I’m not talking about the kid’s injuries.
My most sincere condolences. I hope your family heals in time.
StG
When I was 22 – I’m 38 now – I got a DUI trying to drive 4 blocks back to my house. I had loaned my parents car to a friend who met me at a pub by my house to return said car. We got blitzed and for some reason I decided I couldn’t leave my parents car in the parking lot where this place was. So I pulled out of the parking lot got to the one and only stop light between there and my house and a police car was coming the opposite way. Flashed his lights at me because my lights weren’t on. When I just kept going and didn’t turn on my lights the officer turned around, pulled me over and busted me.
The sentence was 1 yr no license, $1100 fine, either a weekend in jail or 16 hrs community service. I chose the cs and spent a weekend washing fire trucks and cleaning the firehouse.
I agree with Diogenes way back at post 3. I got off easy. In the DUI class I had to take we saw a documentary about a guy who’s fine was only $500 but he had to write a check for $1 every day in memory of the person he had killed. He lasted 2 weeks and just asked to be put in jail. Also as part of the class we were visited by the repeat offenders class and they told horrific stories.
It messes up your life. Thank God I didn’t hurt anybody or any property but the thought of what could have been still freaks me out. You have to disclose the DUI on job apps and your insurance is messed up for life. They tell you it is only on your record for 7 years for a one time misdemeanor but that isn’t true. It will follow you for life.
Don’t think you can drive buzzed, or you’re only going a few blocks so it is ok. Just don’t do it. No taxi fare is too expensive compared to the cost of a life.
Zoe please accept my prayers and condolences for you and your family and friends.
Impairment begins with the first drink. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves. I don’t care if you were checking a weight/drink/BAC table every five minutes; if you drank alcohol and then chose to drive, you put other people’s lives at risk without their consent. And when an impaired driver causes an accident, it doesn’t mean a damn thing to their victim’s loved ones if the driver’s blood alcohol content was .02% or .10%. Lower blood alcohol doesn’t bring back the dead.
My condolences, Zoe. Very tragic story. My heart goes out to you and to all the other people and families affected by this.
I hope your nephew was raised well enough to understand just how horrible this is and that he has to live with that horribleness for a long, long time. I hope that he eventually recovers his memories of the event so he can relive it over and over while he’s sitting in a prison cell, so he never makes the same mistake ever again. I also hope that your niece finds it in her heart to eventually forgive him. Not because he deserves forgiveness (he doesn’t), but for her own peace of mind.
What a terrible, terrible thing to have happen to start off a new year. 
>Yes, and being high on crack and playing with a loaded handgun in a daycare is a bad thing to do… but at the same time, understandable.
Seven, I take it you don’t agree.
I’m curious to hear from posters whether they have ever driven while intoxicated. I’ve been dry for 22 years but can’t fix the fact that I did. And I see that bars still have parking lots. One tempting approach to the whole problem is to heap blame upon those who drive drunk and cause accidents, while ignoring how our own histories might have turned out different. If your own history is completely free and clear of any of this, I can congratulate you, but I still don’t know what society should do so that everybody turns out that way.
Diogenes the Cynic was right on point with “Having said that, I can’t say I never did it when I was that age. There’s nothing more arrogant or unteachable than a 25 year old male. There but for the grace of God.”
When I was a kid, I dropped some litter. This is anti-social and wastes time and money clearing it up. :o
But I never considered drunk driving, nor playing Russian Roulette.
Because these activities can easily kill people.
We have non-alcoholic drinks, designated drivers, taxis and teetotallers. There is no need to drive drunk and the consequences should be severe.
My thoughts are with you Zoe how totally sad you must be feeling.
What an awful tragedy for anyone to bear.
Never, EVER.
Not only am I with Seven as far as disagreeing with your “drunk driving is understandable” but I was a keystroke away from a BBQ Pit smackdown! Particularly in a thread in which we see so many lives ruined and a young man dead. :mad:
There are no words I can use in this forum for you.
Zoe I am so very sorry that your family has to endure this. It is truly horrible. Your niece must be shattered.
Zoe, I can only offer my sympathies to you, and your family.
I’m with ivylass: I’d want to hug and strangle your nephew in your shoes.
God, I’m so sorry Zoe.
Folks, it’s an unfortunate fact that alcohol impairs your **judgement **as well as your ability to drive safely. So before you go out to consume any alcohol, you need to have a plan in place for getting home, or else your **defective judgement **may well decide you’re fine to drive, as this young man so tragically did.
Zoe I am very sad that your family has been affected by this.
I’ve said a million times “I don’t care if you drink yourself into the gutter. I’ve doneit myself a few times. But if you drink and drive, you might as well grab a gun and start shooting.” It is NOT understandable. It is illegal for very good reasons.
I join the chorus in saying this is all around horrible situation. I’m sorry that you, your family, and the young man’s family have this to deal with in the new year.
It’s my absolute worst nightmare to kill someone while driving. To do that because I’m drunk? Don’t even want to contemplate it. Even though your nephew was at fault, my heart goes out to him the most because he’ll have to live with grief, guilt, and shame for the rest of his life. What a tragic way to learn this lesson.
Fortunately, I know I am a cheap date. A glass of wine on an empty stomach and I’m already a bit fuzzy-headed. Fortunately, Ivylad doesn’t drink so on those rare occasions when I choose to imbibe, he’s there to drive.
Like I said, you’re entitled to your opinion. The courts and I have ours, and you have yours. By the way, I’m pretty sure studies have shown that things like eating, talking on a cell phone, texting, and even merely being over a certain age (meaning elderly drivers) are equivalent to having a certain BAC, which further erodes your simple black and white “bullshit rationalization” of 2 drinks being the same as 20. Also, sober people account for most auto fatalities, so you’ve put other people’s lives at risk without their consent every time you’ve gotten behind the wheel in your entire life. It’s a hard, shitty fact of modern American life that we all have to pretend doesn’t effect us, until it does.
A long time ago I decided I never wanted to look at the cars keys in my hand and ask “Well - how F’ed up am I?” So I have never had a drink of alcohol and gotten behind the wheel. If I drive I don’t drink. If I drink I don’t drive.
Drunk driving is “understandable” in that I can see how people get into that situation without intending to. That doesn’t mean I condone it, or approve of it, or even forgive it. What it means it that I understand how and why it happens. My understanding of why and how led me to the practice I referred to in my first paragraph.
Yes, some people can have 1 drink and be able to drive with reasonable safety and judgment. But after 1 drink it can be easy to have another, and another. Sometimes, when you’re tired or hungry that 1 drink hits you harder than you thought it would. If someone had two drinks with dinner at 6 pm and no more after that then they’ll be safely sober by, say, 10 or 11 pm but it’s easy to lose track of the time, or to have just one more. Not to mention that by waiting until the alcohol wears off you then get into issues of being tired.
As long as it is legal to drink at all and drive we’ll have people who get behind the wheel drunker than they intended. That doesn’t absolve them of responsibility, of course, but to think you are incapable of making a mistake of that magnitude (if not with alcohol than with something else - cellphones, drowsiness, whatever) is quite hubristic.
Not to condone drinking and driving, but unless the nephew was normally a careful or highly skilled driver it can’t be assumed that if he had been sober the results would have been different.
I’ll be gauche and quote my own post here-
And I’ll expand on it-
When I was drinking, I was an habitual drunk driver. By my best estimate, I probably drove drunk literally a thousand times before I was caught in 1990- city streets, freeways, unfamiliar neighborhoods, whatever. My justifications, such as they were, sound incredibly stupid in the light of day- I was a great driver even when drunk, I’d never been caught so that was my proof, it would never happen to me. I thought I was bulletproof in my 20’s. I wasn’t.
I never, ever thought about the possible consequences of my actions. Being an alcoholic, maybe that’s not surprising. When I was caught, it was a fairly low-drama affair, as it was a stop rather than an accident. My field sobriety test was an epic fail (I actually asked to be excused so I wouldn’t embarrass myself and just cop to drinking, but they made me do it), and I was handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car with another girl and taken to my first police station of the night- the nice, clean one. A while later, I was transferred to the horrible, dirty, nasty, scary and notorious county central jail, where I spent the longest 3 hours of my life before getting sprung at about 6:00 am.
I plead guilty and received a $1000 fine plus court costs ($100 per month for a year), plus “alcohol awareness” classes which were really not very effective. To celebrate the end of our classes, we all went out to a bar…
I did not stop drinking after my DUI, and after a short respite I began to drive drunk again. Almost a year to the day after my DUI, I got sober, but the two weren’t really connected. I haven’t had a drink since March 4, 1991.
Every individual is responsible for their own actions, drunk or sober. I cut no slack for people just because I used to be one of them.
It can’t be assumed, no, but it’s not *unreasonable *to think he might not have been driving so fast had he not been drinking. We’ll never know.
I personally have never driven after drinking, but I was stupid enough to get in the car with someone who’d been drinking. And I put that down to the fact that I’d been drinking myself, and was suffering impaired judgement.:smack: