I used to drink and drive often before the introduction of random breath testing in 1982. I think most drinkers did. It was so common that there was furore at its introduction. NSW clubs banned local members of parliament from coming to the clubs because of it. Even current Roads Minister Duncan Gay recalls, " In 1982, I didn’t think much of George Paciullo. I was one of those guys, I was more interested in going to rugby training for a couple of hours and going round the bar for a couple of more hours afterwards.
There was a feeling in the community, if you had a couple of drinks, you could actually drive better than without it. We were stupid. We were absolutely stupid.
If it wasn’t for the work of George Paciullo, a lot of my friends and perhaps even myself wouldn’t be here today."
Once RBT came in with the overwhelming education/advertising program it was impossible to ignore the stupidity of drinking and driving.
Maybe if you’re the sort of person who can run up a $300 tab at Applebees. Two glasses of wine per dinner course? Who drinks like that? Besides alcoholics, that is.
A similar thing happens with unprotected sex. The other day a friend was laughing about a guy he knows getting a woman pregnant. I asked if he or anyone else in the group had ever had unprotected sex; it’s a sobering thought, we all have.
I’d venture to guess most people who came of age in the mid '80s or earlier (and who drink or used to drink) have done it and though it’s our tendency here to fall all over ourselves apologizing, I have no doubt some of us did it quite often and with very little qualms about it. I’ll admit it. Not proud or ashamed; it’s just how it was. I got a DUI, paid the price (literally and figuratively) and learned my lesson.
Oh, I was absolutely irresponsible when I did it. I will not deny that at all. I was very lucky that nothing happened. But that’s all it was, luck. And that doesn’t make me any better than you in this situation. But neither of us are bad people, at least as far as I know.
I understand what you’re saying though: it’s easy for humans to point at someone to say “but at least I didn’t do THAT”, even when the only separation is pure luck.
We used to have safety meetings at work, and one month the presenter was a highway patrol officer, talking mostly about DUI.
He recounted a story of pulling over a vehicle exhibiting classic drunk driver behavior: slow, extra careful, still not holding its lane, etc. Approached the car, full of college kids, smelled like a brewery. Asked the driver for his license.
Driver doesn’t have a license - turns out he is legally blind and had never driven a car before, but was the only sober one, so got tagged to drive everyone home.
One time for sure when I absolutely shouldn’t have, I think I was 19 and it was the first time I had too much and needed to get home. I got lucky with that one. Otherwise, I mean, I’ve driven a zillion times after having something to drink, but that was a time I definitely shouldn’t have. There might have been a few edge cases after that, but I tap out and call someone if I’ve got more than a buzz going. I’ve never been the “drink to get drunk” type, and generally don’t get too crazy.
What’s crazy to me, is here in Wisconsin it seems like every other person you meet has a DUI. Many of those people have several. Maybe I’m misremembering but I feel like it was a bigger deal to have one in NY. Here, I’ve had people shrug when they tell me they’ve got seven. It’s crazy.
Yes. We went out to dinner and won - somehow, I forget how - a pitcher of sangria. That was the tastiest fucking sangria ever, and between the two of us, we finished it. It being so tasty, we didn’t realize how strong it was. We ate, and left, and got in the car, and then I realized I was pretty far past a buzz. I drove home very slowly and got home safe and sound, but we still joke about it - it was a bad thing to do, but it ended well, and whenever anyone offers us sangria we are reminded of the time we drank a whole, huge, pitcher.
A few times in my 20’s, very stupidly of course. Never was fined, jailed, etc.
I was pulled over and breathalized once, and blew under the .1 limit of the time, so while it doesn’t count as drunk driving, it did give me a data point to judge my legality level against (I’d had 4 beers at a bar over 90 minutes or so). I didn’t feel impaired at all, but others might be staggering stumbling in the same scenario.
For better or worse, I suspect that many times that people think that they were “drunk” and feel that they were impaired while driving, they were often still under the legal limit. “Impairment” is a very subjective thing.
I never drove drunk, but I did do a lot of dumb things as a teen.
I think the dumbest was accepting a ride home in some guy’s trunk, while high on LSD.
What happened was, I went to an outdoor concert with some friends who arrived in two very full cars, and we all dropped acid. It was great. However, when the concert was over, a bunch of us stayed on sitting around and blabbing on the grass; some left with friends they met, others joined, and no thought was made as to who was doing what; eventually, when we remaining decided to leave, because the park was now deserted and it was getting late we found out that one guy had left in his car, leaving a much larger group to leave in the other - too many to actually fit in any conventional sense.
Several crammed in the backseat, some in the front. I took one look and decided I did not want to join them. Nor did staying by myself at the remote park location, stoned, with no money and no way of getting home, appeal. So I got in the trunk.
I was a bit worried, because the guy who was driving was also high on LSD … but we did arrive safely. If the cops had stopped us, they would have had a field day - something like nine-twelve stoned people, all carrying lots of drugs, crammed into a car (including me, in the trunk).
We were both fifteen years old when I saw a friend of mine get hit by a drunk driver. He flew a good 20-30 feet through the air, and I knew just by the way he landed that it was really bad. I ran over just in time to watch him die.
That was over two decades ago now, yet I still remember it so clearly. As a result, I have never driven drunk, and I never, ever, ever will. Please don’t drink and drive.
When I was in HS in suburban NJ (late '70s) the drinking age was 18 and I had a friend who worked at the local liquor hut who sold to me when I was 17 so there was quite a bit of drunk driving for a couple years and I’m damn lucky to have survived it without accident, injury, or so much as being pulled over. Maybe because usually it was so late and I only had to drive a few miles to home after a party. It makes me shudder to think of how wasted I was sometimes. A little bit more after I moved away but most of the time I was either in walking distance of the party place or just slept over.
I have drunken myself into a stupor (30 years sober now), but I have never driven, drunk or sober. I tell people “If you are going to drive drunk, you might as well go out and start shooting a gun at random.”
I’ve never driven drunk myself, but I’ve been drunk while being driven by someone else who was drunk. Wayyy drunk - “driving by braille” drunk on freeways. We realized this was not a good idea eventually, but were sorta committed at that point. This was in my very early twenties and I’ve been particularly cautious to avoid similar scenarios ever since.
If “buzzed” means after a beer or so, I’ve done that and felt very bad about it.
I’ve probably been more of a danger to other people driving when tired though, which I’d probably not have considered until later to be worse than driving after one.
I sure have. Back in West Texas when I was an irresponsible young buck. It was a lot more common back then. I even got pulled over at the age of 17 when I’d been drinking illegally, and the cops let me go since I promised I was going home. When I left my regular bar, I had all the side-street routes memorized for ease of avoiding the cops.
These were the same days when State Representative Henry Gonzalez pretty much single-handedly kept Texans’ right to drive with a cold beer in your hand on the law books. I understand things have changed a lot these days even in a hellhole like Texas, and I’d never try that anymore.
I remain skeptical that an alcoholic is safe to be on the road with a significantly elevated BAC - unless someone can point me to research indicating that alcoholics with booze on board have normal reaction times or score in the normal range on other measures affecting their ability to drive.
Seems to me there’s a difference between being able to keep from keeling over, and having sufficient coordination/ability to react while behind the wheel.
