My wife tells a story of when she was young and going out w/ friends. One dad said, “Don’t drink and drive,” and one of the young people responded, “We won’t! We’re going to park and party!”
I’ve been sober some 15-ish years. It is nice to know I will NEVER blow positive. When my wife and I go out, she likes to drive, but if she’s had any ETOH, we generally figure it is just safer for me to drive home.
IRT to the OP, I’d say it means don’t drive while impaired - as measured by your personal performance and BAC. I would not consider it drinking and driving if someone had 1-2 beers with food during a several hour gathering, and then drove home. But technically …
He could have been more explicit, but I don’t really see why it’s unclear. If you have a beer at 1 o’clock in the afternoon and then drive out with to meet friends at 7 o’clock that evening, that afternoon beer has had plenty of time to get out of your system.
What I assume the OP is referring to is going out at 7 p.m. having a beer or two with dinner before heading back home. Someone who does that might be under the legal limit, but they’re impaired whether they realize it or not.
FFS, that’s the point of a designated driver. I think it ALWAYS meant NO alcohol at all. The group should maybe buy his/her dinner and all the soft drinks he/she wants.
I said in the OP that the context is driving home after eating dinner with friends, so the question is how much alcohol you’re consuming at that dinner. Not how much did you have with lunch three days prior.
As a general rule, you process 1 drink per hour (this assumes standardize portions, which you can look up on line easily). So… 1 drink is processed in 1 hours. 2 drinks in 2 hours. Etc., etc.
You can go with that, or, if you really want to make sure, double that time. So, 2 hours for one drink, 4 hours for two, and so on.
Sure, have your mimosa with lunch. Walk around shopping and what not for 2 hours, then drive home. Should be fine.
That “buzzed driving is drunk driving” ad further muddies the waters. How could the driver have been convicted without a BAC of > 0.08? I get a “buzz” from ~2 drinks, and according to the charts that the DMV puts out, that should be well below the 0.08 threshold at my body weight even assuming the drinks are larger than standard. I have seen some reports that the “optimal buzz” is at a BAC of 0.04 - 0.06, which matches my own experience. It’s totally legal to drive at that point, at least for adults in the US.
That’s not a general rule. A general rule would be one that is applicable generally, but the rule you propose would be equally inapplicable to a 400lb man and an 85lb woman. Sure, if you’re 150-200lbs, it’s probably fine.
It’s also not one of the options listed in the poll (except “something else”).
I googled it before posting that, on the grounds that my own lingo is way out of date; and all the first page hits I got said that it means under the influence of alcohol, but below the legal limit.
Just so you know, going forward, when people say ‘general rule’, they mean something that’s roughly true for the fat middle bell curve of the population, not something that’s completely true for every individual.
I think it’s interesting to have all these posts referring to ‘buzzed driving’, which isn’t quite what the OP said. The option in the OP said:
I wouldn’t describe the bottom of the range of feeling the effects of alcohol as ‘being buzzed’, though I might describe it as feeling a ‘faint buzz.’ That’s the option I chose, since I try to keep it below that bar. If I’m out for an evening, say 3-4 hours, I’d have 2 drinks and still feel good to drive at the end. Wouldn’t do more than that, though.
Well, that’s precisely why there are separate poll options for “buzzed” and “above the legal limit”: because they’re not the same thing.
To me, the statement “Buzzed driving is drunk driving” means the same as choosing the poll option that says “don’t drink and drive” means "don’t drive while you have a “buzz.”
The vast majority of the legally adult population old enough to drink is either in that range or pretty close, hence “general” rule, not absolute rule.
Neither someone 400 lbs nor 85 lbs is in the range the “dietary portion of alcohol” rules were formulated for. Which is why any particular person needs to evaluate what’s best for them.
When I was driving big rigs my limit was 0.04 BAC and I was subject to urine tests at random. I was told it takes 1 hour to metabolize the alcohol from 1 drink (1oz alcohol, 6oz wine, 12oz beer)
I virtually never drink at home, but when I travel abroad, I usually order one beer with dinner. I can’t recall ever feeling the effects of it when I stood up, So I’d feel OK driving after a beer – although I never did.
I used to teach DUI/DWI school- the class people have to take to get their licenses back post-DUI and six month’s suspension. I found the students’ ideas of how much drinking before driving was safe depended entirely on how much the drinker desired to drink. This attitude is what brought 90+ percent of my students to my classroom, of course.
The course attempted to change that attitude and replace it with safer alternatives. It recommended low-risk drinking guidelines of 0-3 standard drinks of 1 ounce alcohol content, less than daily, and never drinking more than one drink per hour. These amounts were reduced for those with family histories of alcoholism or low body mass.
