Sure, but “drunk driving” is usually referred to by the legal definition, which is cut and dried from a legal and law enforcement perspective, but awfully vague when you’re the guy out having a couple of beers with your friends at happy hour. Just the presence of a basket of chips and salsa may be the defining factor as to whether you’ll actually have a 0.08% BAC when you get pulled over.
That’s what I’m talking about- it’s really hard sometimes to know, and a lot of people think they’re “not really drunk” or whatever.
As for the people who are snot-slinging drunk and drive anyway… I’m not exactly sure. There’s probably some willful disregard for how much drinking has been going on, as well as a certain amount of “I can handle it.”. I doubt they’re just sociopaths who don’t care.
Exactly. I took the OP as less of an actual question than a commentary on his personal feelings about driving under the influence. It really is just as simple as one needing to get home. Why people drink when they know they have to drive is a completely different question, though I think bump pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I know it’s not popular to admit, but I’ve driven drunk, and in fact got a DUI many (about 30) years ago. This was right after MADD got all the laws changed. Before that, I knew people who had multiple DUIs and still had licenses. I assume they continued their behavior because if you didn’t hurt anyone or damage property, the penalty was pretty much a traffic ticket.
That’s why I’ve always thought that anti drunk driving campaigns should focus on the monetary/ legal ramifications rather than appealing to peoples’ consciences. Nobody drives thinking they’re going to hurt someone, but they do drive knowing there’s a possibility of going to jail but take the risk anyway, hoping against hope it doesn’t happen to them.
And if you’ll forgive the hijack, I’d much rather be on the road with drunks than people texting / on their phones. Of course I’m not talking 4 mile per hour, swerving all over the road drunk, but someone who would be considered drunk under the law.
I agree with both paragraphs. And, actually, I just saw a great PSA commercial on TV within the past couple of weeks. It shows a guy who is fumbling in his pocket for his keys walking toward a car. He drops his keys and they are picked up by a cop, who says something about getting arrested if he drives drunk. The cop throws the keys to another guy who mentions it will cost hundreds of dollars to pay a bail bondsman. This guy throws the keys to a guy who is in overalls who says it will also cost a couple of hundred to have the car towed. He throws the keys to a woman in a suit who says his car insurance will likely go up for several years. And, finally, she throws the keys to a guy in a suit who says lawyers like him will charge thousands to defend against a DUI charge. The final tag line is something about how a DUI arrest will likely cost as much as $10,000, and isn’t a cab a lot cheaper.
I couldn’t find a link to the PSA video, but I’ve only just started seeing it within the past three weeks. Very well done and hits some additional buttons beyond the normal “cop and handcuffs” and “hurting other people” ones.
There is a very large difference distance between being intoxicated and not being able to control your vehicle. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven drunk, and very fortunately for me and everyone around me, there were no negative consequences except for fear (in retrospect, when I fucked up but someone else was sharp enough to avoid me).
In my experience drunk driving is more about reactions and judgment and caution than simply driving off the road or being an obvious danger to everyone around you. It’s doing things like deciding to change lanes without checking you blind spots, not properly judging the distance to other cars or objects, etc. I was never so drunk that I couldn’t stay between lane lines, though certainly I’ve witnessed that in others.
It’d perhaps make sense to complain about the wording of the question on a test about what the legal limit is for BAC, but the question isn’t wrong. At any rate, you DO “have [a] way of measuring”. (roughly), and you outlined it … the way to figure out what one’s BAC is. (There are also commercially available testers as far as I know.)
No, I think, again, that appealing to peoples’ conscience doesn’t work because nobody thinks they’ll hurt someone; not that they don’t care of they do, they just really believe that they certainlywouldn’t drive if they were *that *inebriated. Wrong or right, when people drive drunk they’re extremely aware that they could get busted; much more so than the concern that they may harm someone.
You’re coming back from a bar. You know you’re a little buzzed but that a couple of hours of sleep will put you in a reasonable state. You could sleep it off in your car.
So do you crawl into the back seat and take a nap? No, because this will get you a DUI just as easily, if not more so, than weaving on the highway. Any officer walking around the bar parking lot will spot you and likely cite you.
Why not drive home at that point? Unless you hit a checkpoint or are really impaired, the chances of getting a ticket are pretty low. As was said, taxis/mass transit/etc. are often expensive or unavailable. Even “walking it off” is likely to get you cited for public intoxication.
Like those old signs we used to have announcing the fines for different amounts over the speed limit. They actually and truly did do away with those because the Staties pulled over people who said “No problem – I can afford it”. Strange state we have sometimes.
That might be the case in the US, but here in Finland I’ve seen police set up free breathalyzer tests on the last day of a big rock festival, allowing people to check whether they are still too drunk to drive back home.
If I owned a bar I would certainly invest in a few police grade breathalyzers, train the staff on their use and encourage driving customers to ask for a reading before they leave - in some cases I would insist. With server liability laws such as they are, I’m surprised places don’t do this as a matter of course.
No way. Do you really expect a bar owner to properly train bartenders and/or servers, who tend to come and go pretty rapidly at most bars? Doing what you propose would require fairly expensive devices, regular recalibration and periodic training. In addition, readings are only reliable if a user has not had anything to drink for 30 minutes (I believe I am correct about that), and blows properly into the device. Who is going to order someone to not drink for 30 minutes and then monitor that? What if they refuse and leave? Are you going to call the cops on your customer? You can’t detain them.
In addition to the logistics, it seems to me this shifts a lot of liability onto the bartender or bar owner. What if someone blows a 0.07, but gets pulled over and blows a 0.08? “The bar’s machine said I was 0.07!”
I think holding bars and bartenders responsible at all is wrong, but laws in some cases do just that. Makes no sense to me. In any case, by the time someone is “visibly intoxicated” and refused service, they are well over 0.08 BAC. I really don’t understand the bartender liability law at all.
How does seeping in a car which isn’t running and is parked legally = DUI/ Sure there’s that one case but R. v. Smits also had the *keys in the ignition and open booze in the car. *
