People were talking about crimes they’ve committed and never got caught.
I would assume with drug usage, only a microscopically tiny % of crimes involve an arrest. Probably less than 1 in 1000 times people actually possess or use drugs results in an arrest. I’ve known people who have smoked weed thousands of times and never been arrested.
What about for DUI? How many times do you have to drive drunk statistically before you get pulled over and arrested?
I’m sure it varies wildly on a huge number of factors:
How badly were you driving
When were you driving (Friday or Saturday night has more arrests)
How seriously do they take DUI in that district
etc
But having said all that, what are the odds? I’ve heard 1 in 80, 1 in 200, 1 in 666, and am not sure if any of it is accurate.
People have researched it. But the numbers are all over the place. Here are some numbers I’ve heard from different sources.
1 in 80
1 in 200
1 in 666
1 in 2000
And on top of that, you have all the other circumstances that increase or decrease your odds.
[ul]
[li]Higher BAC and how reckless you are driving (obviously someone at 0.3 will have a higher chance than someone at 0.1)[/li][li]When you are driving (day and hour, I think many DUI arrests are on friday and saturday night)[/li][li]Where you are driving (some jurisdictions take it more seriously than others)[/li][li]What car you are driving (as I said, I’ve never driven drunk. But when I would speed or roll through stop signs, I got pulled over far far more often driving my parents minivan then I ever did driving a sedan or truck. Cops seem to take traffic enforcement much more seriously with minivans, probably because they assume you have young kids)[/li][/ul]
etc. If its 1 in 80 but you are driving a minivan with a BAC of 0.3 on Friday night your odds are much different than if it is 1 in 2000 and you are driving a Camry with a BAC of 0.1 on a Tuesday afternoon.
I don’t drink anymore but, when I did, it was very literally thousands of times. I never got a DUI despite being stopped for other things while completely loaded. I almost never looked or acted drunk and I could drive just fine with a blood alcohol level that would cause a breathalyzer to spontaneously combust if they ever tested me but they never did. I am not proud of that part of my life but it is in the past now and it worked out as well as it could have.
There is no general answer to your question for lots of reasons. Most people lie about how many times they have driven drunk or they may not even realize that they were over the limit. Alcohol also affects different people in wildly different ways. The legal limit in most areas of the U.S. is .08. That is only about 4 beers in an hour. That wouldn’t do anything to me back when I was drinking but it would cause some people to swerve all over the road.
My old psychopharmacology professor (who was quite the drinker and user himself) told me that, if you are going to drink or do drugs and drive, it is best to do it often because it is a skill that you can learn.
My guess would be somewhere in the 1 in some thousands range. I have friends and coworkers that drive legally drunk every weekend and then some for years and very few of them have a DUI. You have to be driving really badly or just crap out on luck to get one in Massachusetts (how are the cops here supposed to tell the difference?). I only know a few people that have gotten one here and it was usually because they got stopped for something unrelated and confessed.
This would be my guess, as well. Go to any bar in Chicago, observe people drinking and how much they drink, and how many of those people go out to drive in their cars. I’d be willing to bet that at least a quarter of bar patrons who drove to the bar will blow over a .08 when they leave.
Yeah, thats another factor too. If you are in a bar, get drunk and drive home I’d assume the police are more likely to catch you than if you get drunk at home and drive somewhere. I’d assume cops stake out bars and concerts.
I wonder if there are stats on how many DUI arrests come from cars stopped specifically on suspicion of impairment vs. the driver being tested in connection with an accident. If most arrests are incident to an accident, then the odds of otherwise just being caught are presumably low.
Yeah, that too. Thats also what I meant by it matters by jurisdiction. I’ve never been to a sobriety check point where I was stopped along with everyone else, but in some cities or states they are way more common.
I’m sure they do occasionally, but it sure as shit doesn’t seem like it around here. Like I said, my guess is that if you tested a quarter of the drivers at any bar leaving driving home, they’d blow at least an .08. (And I think that is fairly conservative for some bars.)
Back when I was a young boozer, long before random breath testing was introduced in Australia, everyone I knew would be driving while intoxicated several times a week. There was no such thing as the designated driver and a typical Friday or Saturday involved many carloads of us going to the pub, drinking all night, buying more grog to take to a party, drinking all that grog at the party and then driving home. Every car would have been piloted by someone well over the limit.
My brother once mentioned that, in the 70s, a friend of his was pulled over for driving erratically. When he got out of the car as instructed, he was unable to stand up without leaning against the car. Because he was only a few hundred yards from home the cop cautioned him to drive slowly the rest of the way.
I worked a 3am-11:30 shift for 19 years.
Many times driving to work tired from not enough sleep.
Once I reached the city limits,I’ve been pulled over numerous times and asked if I have been drinking because ( despite driving the speed limit) the cop said he could tell I either was tired or drunk because I was driving " too careful"
A glance at my lunch bucket and thermos and me mentioning my jobsite he wouldn’t bother to check me for drinking.
There will be hundreds of different answers depending on all the factors already mentioned, and I doubt most of the scenarios have been researched. I think you’d need to narrow your question down significantly, starting with who the odds are for. The odds of getting caught for a 21 year old college student binging most nights of the week all over town will be much different than for their parents who have a couple glasses of wine a few times per year before taking a 5 minute drive home; both in the same town.
For someone acting very irresponsibly and doing so frequently in an area where law enforcement watches closely, the odds would be low (maybe your 1 in 80 stats). For someone driving safely in an isolated area who cracks a single beer on the way home down the un-patrolled gravel road every now and then, they odds would be extremely low (1 in thousands or less).
When I used to drink (and drive), my impression was that a good percentage of the folk who got stopped for DUI were actually impaired by the combined effect of excessive fatigue.
Another factor - as with any car accidents - is dumb luck. If you are drunk but awake, it is no big deal to simply stay in your lane, maintain speed, use your signals, and look out for traffic lights. Especially if travelling a familiar route. But if something unexpected happens - another driver does something unexpected, or a pedestrian or biker appears suddenly, and your reaction is likely to be impaired.
REALLY late at night (early in the morning) was the easiest, as there was very little other traffic to deal with. The biggest fear was DUI roadblocks - but in my area, the cops were very predictable about where they did those.
I had heard that in one nearby town the cops would smear Vaseline on the headlights of cars parked near watering holes, and then stop those cars later, in the expectation of racking up DUIs. Not sure whether it was entirely an urban legend.
I was led to believe that Staking out bars was not verboten but seen as kinda shitty by TPTB. it leads to hassling a lot of people who are fine and is a great way to get the general public hating more than usual.
This is not, as far as I am aware, true at all. One’s reflexes and spatial judgement are just as impaired whether you ‘practice’ or not. There is no such thing as holding your liquor when driving.