Drink driving
 

I'd be interested to hear what people think of this practice. Do you drink and drive? Do you do it on any sort of regular basis? If you have/do, have you ever had a narrow escape? Have you breathed a sigh of relief when you made it home that you weren't pulled over or hurt/killed someone? If you had a near miss, did it sway your mind on the issue?

If you're going out drinking, would you not consider taking a taxi home or bringing a designated driver with you? Do you feel it's worth taking the risk? Do you consider "one over the limit" is ok? Have you driven (or been driven) blind drunk? And if so, how did you feel?

I can't talk, as I neither drive nor really drink, but it constantly shocks and saddens me the amount of deaths on the road --- drivers, passengers and other motorists or pedestrians --- that seem to multiply every year. Lives destroyed, families broken up, children without parents all because someone wants to take a drink and --- let's be honest --- break the law. Is it worth it? Do you think it is? Can you understand this behaviour?

Also, do you think current penalties for driving drunk are enough? Do they deter people from "chancing it"? Should they be tougher? Judge Judy has often said that if you get behind the wheel drunk your car ceases being a vehicle and becomes a mobile lethal weapon. How do you feel about that?

Don't f*cking drink and drive.

/thread.

Of course, you're never supposed to do it, but like Peter Griffin said, if you're drunk at the bar and no designated driver, what are you gonna do, get a taxi and leave your car there? It's dumb as **** to drive drunk, but if you're at least kind of okay to drive ... well, don't pretend like you're gonna be responsible. Otherwise, of course not. If the same situation happens at a buddy's house, you crash there like an ******* and hope they don't stop inviting you to their parties.

I've done it a few times, crashed once into a wall while reversing at speed and another time turning a corner, hit a parked car. Didn't have a license then though and was too young to get one.

Drink drivers are the scum of the earth.

EDIT: Not including motorbikes. I've drank and rode bikes loads of times.

EDIT 2: Motorbikes not pedal bikes.

If you drive to a bar and get too drunk to drive home, then yeah, you're going to leave your car there and get a taxi. It's your fault that you drank to much so tomorrow is unfortunately going to be inconvenient. There's just no acceptable reason to drive home drunk unless you live at the hospital and you have just cut off your arm.

one of my good friends just got acquitted for his dui. scary shit even if youre not "too drunk". guy I went to highschool with drove drunk and ran into a coffee shop sign and killed one his good friends.

Ive drove after 1 or 2 casual beers at the pub, which technically is still illegal as per my licence so I guess im somewhat a hypocrite here. only once have I actually been drunk, and that was the next day when I was driving home from a night of debauchery. was still fairly fucked in the morning but I needed to get to work (where I promptly puked at).

but yes drunk driving is very stupid and should never be done. I leave my car at bars and shit all the time.

http://i.imgur.com/xvE9dmi.png

Well the nice thing is, is that you can use your seatbelt as a way to open your beer.

I've never driven with more than a single bottle of beer in my system but with my current level of license any percentage is worth a DUI, intoxicated or not, half a glass of wine is enough to have my license revoked. I've driven past and behind cops, white knuckled, but I've never been pulled over.

i had a couple near misses. one time i blacked out and didn't recall how i got home.

the other time i was drunk and i got pulled over. the cop searched my van for drugs and everything and then he gave me the standard sobriety test which i passed. the twat was too dumb to make me take the breathalizer so i didn't get a dui.

one time i was high out of my mind on shrooms and me and my friend were driving around. actually my friend was driving. he was sober and he didn't have a car so he liked to practice driving and i let him drive my car. it was maybe 2 in the morning and apparently there had been a string of robberies in the area. we got swarmed by maybe 5 cop cars. it was terrifying. anyway since my friend technically wasn't insured to drive my car the cops forced me to drive home. they could tell i was high too. that was really scary. my perception of time was all distorted so when i looked at the speedometer it said 60 yet i felt as if i was going maybe 5 mph.

there was another near miss as well which i am too paranoid to share.

i don't do it anymore, this was in my younger years.

My thoughts:

• Is it worth possibly killing someone/yourself and ruining your life over an inconvenience of calling a cab?
  
• Is it worth losing your license over an inconvenience of calling a cab?
  
• Is it worth going to jail/prison over an inconvenience of calling a cab?

Here's some more info for those in the US (click on your state):

https://www.edgarsnyder.com/drunk-dr...-alcohol-laws/

Illinois DUI laws are tough. 3rd violation, and you're doing prison time. I know people that have gone through it. Pretty much ruined their careers, family life, and a few other things.

Use your fookin heads.

I have zero tolerance.For it.

^that post was written on a smartphone

but to bring up a somewhat related topic, in my experience driving while tired is just as dangerous if not more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. if i am drunk but not drunk to the point of stumbling around, i can probably drive safer than i can if i am in that state where sleep is beckoning me and my brain is shutting down against my will.

not that i am encouraging drunk driving or anything, but honestly i used to work the graveyard shift and sometimes after work on the way home i would find myself on the sidewalk or i would hear my car just barely bumping up against the bushes next to the guard rail on the high way while going 80 mph. and that's what broke me out of my sleepy trance. and the thing that really sucks is i honestly didn't have much of an alternative. i lived a few towns over from my job. i couldn't afford to live where i worked, and i couldn't take public transport cause of the hours that i worked. the economy was **** and so i was lucky to even have a job, so it wasn't easy for me to just find somewhere closer to work.

My friend got a DUI. I let him know how big of a dumbass he was for it.

I've done stoned driving, but that was just for a few blocks and I wasn't that baked (my friend was incapacitated).

Well, glad to see everyone here agrees it's a stupid thing to do. And yet so many do it. You'd have to wonder why? When you're drunk, does the idea of crashing into someone not enter your head, or do you think "**** them I'm gonna do what I like gimme those keys"? I've only been drunk twice in my life, and as I say I don't and can't drive so the situation has never come up, but I'd like to think that even then, had I been able to, I would have been in enough of a fit state of mind to know not to get behind the wheel. So why do people do it? Is it seen as a "**** you" to the cops? Seen as their right? Or not even thought about at all (maybe till it's too late)?

No matter how many heart-rending ads they run on TV, showing the effects of drink driving, people still seem to ignore it and go ahead. I mean, if you were drunk and someone handed you a loaded gun would you fire it? Is there that much of a loss of control/common sense when you're drunk? I ask because as I say I hardly drink and I just can't get my head around the state people get into when drunk.

I gotta agree with Exo here. Drink responsibly or not at all. Moe rons.

Interesting. Can you tell us more? :D

honestly, i can say personally that what made me do it was just the confidence that i wouldn't actually wind up wrecking. obviously when you're drunk you don't have the best reasoning skills, personally booze tends to make me feel invincible and makes me very reckless. there was one time when i was honestly really close to stealing a car when i was drunk. as i've gotten older i've had enough bad experiences with dumb intoxicated decisions to be able to remind myself whenever i'm ****ed up that i am an idiot while intoxicated, and that is basically how i learned to stop letting drugs & booze make me make reckless decisions.

Drove drunk in my younger years, felt like a piece of **** for it, even then. I had two good friends die after wrecking while drunk when I was 18 and know many others with similar stories. I got a DUI several years ago and am still struggling with it. I made the decision to stop driving altogether and if I ever do drive again it won't be with a single digit on my breath.

I'd bet for most people they simply feel that they haven't drank enough to impair their motor skills to the point of danger.

Cars are pretty easy to sleep in too.

Think for most people it comes down to thinking they'll be OK as they're not that pissed.

Either that or it's a short distance. Unless you're absolutely steaming past the point of thinking straight.

A lot of people don't think very clearly, and actually believe they aren't staggering all over the place, slurring their words, etc. when they're really past the point of having any motor skills at all. So they get behind the wheel, and sometimes they dodge the bullet, and sometimes not. It's all pretty much luck at that point.

I was the victim of 2 drunk sailors that slammed into our vehicle doing 60mph when I was in HS. The driver was in critical condition, the person behind me flew out the back window, and I lost consciousness for about a minute, after slamming my head off of the door jam. I had someone watching over me that day.

Can't drive but I never would risk someone else's safety with my destructive behavior. I would not be able to live with myself if I had killed or seriously harmed someone while driving drunk. Still have some stuff on my conscience that haunts me a bit, I can't imagine what kind of guilt that would be like. All that said, and it's redundant to say so again but booze has a funny way of encouraging people to make decisions they wouldn't make sober.

Thank GAWD you own a skateboard.

It's easier than walking sometimes. I just can't go down hills or in the street because cars.

I'm fascinated that it's apparently called "drink" driving on the other side of the Atlantic.

Why mate what do you call it?

Drunk driving...

k...

Tis true, totally thought the title was a typo initially.

Maybe he was drunking when he made the thread.

No, it's called drink driving here. Because you don't necessarily, I assume, have to be blind drunk to be not in control of yourself. You may think one or two pints and you're fine, but the law says otherwise. It's basically drinking-and-driving put together, and I think they use the phrase to make it clear that you don't have to be out of your head to be in breach of the law and a danger to yourself and others.

Good point TH.

I remember when I found out if you ride a pedal bike after a beer or ten, that's drink driving as well.

@EPOCH6 I wasn't being an arse or anything just thought you had a completely different name (DUI or something). Janz's post makes more sense now.

Yeah, I know, the ... was meant to express my confusion as to why anyone would call it drink driving, but now TH has kind of cleared that up, I still think it sounds silly, though. Maybe drinking and driving, but drink driving just sounds like you're drinking a verb.

It's a thing:

Drink driving : THINK! : Roadsafety

Them crazy Brits.

You just gonna take that Trollheart? :p:

oh. i thought you guys meant like drunk drunk driving.

if i've only had a few drinks i guarantee i will make it home safely & without incident. in fact i'm extra careful because i know if i get pulled over i might blow over the limit.

i know everyone's probably going to say i'm a piece of ****, now. but honestly it's really not that hard to drive normally if you've only had a few drinks.

oh shit ya ive drank a few pints and then drove home quite a few times. like even if im dd ill have a casual beer here or there

I'm coming to kill you.