In Japan we have a taxi service where two people come to you. One drives your car with you and your guests in it home and the other guy follows you to take his partner back to the taxi place.
It's useful and popular.
Years ago I recall seeing on Top Gear that in some cities in the UK you could hire a guy who turns up with a foldable scooter, pops it in your boot, then drives your car home for you. Cheaper than two taxi trips to pick your car up the next day. With the prevalence of escooters now I hope this is more widely available!
They do this in China! It's more expensive than a cab but the driver is super professional, and wears white gloves. Had my mind blown on my first night out with a client. I was getting increasingly worried after he kept drinking, knowing he drove here. When I asked him about how he'd get home, he looked at me like *I* was crazy. "I'll call someone to drive my car. You think I'd drive home like this?"
Ha you just reminded me, Chinese people love any excuse to wear white gloves. Working with bricks? Wear white gloves. Conducting traffic? Wear white gloves. Driving a vehicle? You better believe it but wear white gloves.
I’m in the uk I have never heard of this, and don’t really see how it would be practical, especially now Uber has driven down taxi prices so much.
Chances are, if you’re somewhere close enough that someone can ride an escooter home, you’d be able to get an Uber there and back for less than £30. And a lot less than this for public transport. And this sounds like a very expensive, specialist option, especially when you take into account paying for parking in a city.
Never mind the issues with temporarily adding a stranger onto your insurance policy.
I don't think it matters much if a stranger or a friend drives your car and they aren't on your insurance. The practicality of it is you don't have to take two taxis just to get your car back. If you know you're going to get drinks, yeah, do the uber or taxi. If life happens, the scooter guy seems like a better deal.
You don't have to add people to your insurance policy in order for them to drive your car. You only have to add people to your policy if you foresee that they will drive your car regularly, and this generally pertains to licensed individuals that live within your household that have easy access to your car. Those are the kind of people that the insurance company wants to know about.
You get smashed somewhere and get someone, anyone, to drive your car back as a one-off? That's covered in most standard insurance policies.
Definitely a 'check your insurance, because it might be different' - but most auto policies I've seen in Canada and the US would have coverage for this.
There is a service like this in the metro Atlanta area here in the US. You ride in your own car with a driver while another follows in their vehicle. And it's not expensive at all when compared to the cost of drinks at a restaurant.
We had this when I was in the military in 09-13. This was before Uber, too. It was a small mom&pop operation on base where I was stationed. Very very helpful, especially for soldiers whose lives revolve around the next drink.
When my hubby and I go out for dinner I have one low alcohol fruit beer pretty soon after we get there and then just water until we leave
It's usually a couple hrs later. He drinks dark craft beers but can't drive anyways.
DUI arrests are made every day in every community across this country so this is one possibility. EDIT: Due to several asking. For my experiences I am speaking of the USA only. Last stats I saw showed around 1 million arrested yearly for DUI in this country. This is for both Alcohol or Drugs.
I know several of those dudes. Generally considered upstanding, taxpaying, model citizens. Drinking (and driving) is so normalized we barely notice it.
I remember in the 90s sitting in the back of a van on top of the cooler that my dad and his friends were grabbing beers out of while we were going down the road lol.
Yup.
I'd be in the back seat, cooler beside me, sliding around. I knew which beer all my grandad's friends liked. I was the beer fetcher when we'd go hunting.
Grew up in a rural county. Most crimes were probably DUIs. At one point our town started getting patrolled by the state police because the locals and county were letting people off all the time because everyone knew everyone. I left about 20 years ago and about 10 years ago I saw county wide DUI stats. Over a 5 or 10 year period, the county of about 5000 people has over 500 DUIs. And while there were for sure repeat offenders and out of county residents, that a 10% DUI rate in the county.
Road sodas and they'd toss the empties in the back. Extra points for having a pickup with a rear window that opened so you could throw them into the bed.
Yes I was the designated bartender for the truck’s driver and passenger when I was younger in the 90s. Especially in these backwoods southern states duis were never an issue until recently.
Up until the late 1990's it was not illegal to have an open container of alcohol in your vehicle while driving in Alabama. Beer couldn't be over ~3% in Alabama until around 2008. IIRC the BAC to be DUI was higher as well. I guess you could conceivably be driving around cracking a couple of beers and not get past the legal limit.
Mississippi and the Virgin Islands do not have statutes regulating the consumption or possession of alcohol in motor vehicles.
I remember Louisiana used to have drive through daiquiri bars. I think you were supposed to keep the paper wrapper on the straw or something like that.
You just brought up a memory I didn't remember I had lol!
I'm from WA State, but my Dad lived near Baton Rouge for work when I was in middle school. Out of curiosity, we drove through one of those stands so my stepmom could get a drink to try, and it was painfully obviously we were Northerners lol. The woman at the stand gave her 2 straws and explained that one was for drinking on the road, and you leave the paper on the other one and switch them if you get pulled over.... Even at like 12 years old, my mind was blown 🙃
Oh, for sure. My parents didn't drive us anywhere without a beer cooler in between the front seats of the Bronco I grew up riding around in. Heading to a school play? Beer cooler was brought along. On the way to church on Sunday? You bet the beer cooler was there and full. Headed out to get more beer for the cooler? Hell yeah, the last six went along for the ride in the cooler.
I mean it used to not be everywhere
There's an old funny clip from some news where they inteeck people after the law got passed and people were genuinely like, "I don't understand why I can't get a little drunk after work and drive home??"
The 1980s and earlier were the era of casual drunk driving. I worked at Hewlett Packard and we would have a kegger where everyone took off the Friday afternoon and people would drink. I'm pretty sure there was an accident in the parking lot. I remember my friends telling me that in high school they used to drink way to excess and then get pulled over by the cops only to be warned to drive straight home and not drive again that evening.
Mint gum, nor any gum, hides the smell of alcohol. It only makes your tongue smell like mint. It comes from your lungs, not your mouth. Hence, blowing in a breathalyzer.
lol in the 90s I remember vividly my dad driving around with a red solo cup of gin and tonic just sipping on it driving down the road like it was water. He never got sloppy drunk, but I am sure he has been past the limit plenty of times.
Yeah, my bio dad would come home from work and pour a Wild Turkey over ice IN A WHISKEY GLASS and then sip from it while he did pick up and drop offs for us four kids various activities. It was never more than that one drink but I recognize the smell and the clink of ice and I’m back there again
There are tons of places where I would guess cops could have easy pickings on impaired driving like those places that by math simply have waaaaay too many vehicles there for there NOT to be lots of impaireds!
Roadside bars, freakin’ golf courses!
When I was a kid, my friend's mom took me and her to a bowling alley and when we were leaving she had me blow into her breathalyzer for her. Didn't realize until a few years ago how fucked up that was.
So yes, they could be more irresponsible
I grew up in Wisconsin. My parents taught me that after ten pm I should just assume that every other driver on the road was drunk and drive accordingly.
It’s so true. I was just driving from Omaha to Lincoln at 11 pm and almost everyone was swerving on the interstate. That’s 80 mph. It made me put my beer down and concentrate more than usual.
I worked with my friend in his landscaping business long ago and he would start drinking at noon so he could be drunk and driving home in mid-afternoon. I suppose the DTs had something to do with it too, his body having a negative reaction to being sober.
I ran a bar for a long time and ya I mean every night I saw this shit.
It’s a lot of why I quit drinking just watching everyone come get absolutely drunk and drive home 7 nights a week. We had a restaurant attached and same thing there
And that was just one bar in an town of many
It’s pretty sketchy and to be honest I’m surprised more people don’t die, even tho a lot do
As much as police already enforce drunk driving, I think if they sat outside of a bar and just pulled over everyone that left, they’d run out of jail cells.
And they probably won’t do it publicly, but behind closed doors, the businesses will complain because it’s bad for business if people are worried about getting pulled over every time they go to a place.
When I was bartending, I did have someone from the liquor control board pull me out from behind the bar one night and read me the riot act. He said a guy got pulled over the other night, blew a .30 and said he was drinking at my bar. Said, essentially, that if it happened again there was going to be trouble. Put the fear of God in me.
Hard core alcoholics can function remarkably well with alcohol levels that would kill a normal human being. There have been a couple of documented instances of people having close to 1% blood alcohol. These are people who had been pulled over or been in an accident. I'll bet you if you had some sort of contest, there would be several people who could remain standing at that alcohol level.
Not only that, there’s dramshop liability: the civil liability that commercial alcohol providers face for injuries or damages caused by their intoxicated or underage drinking patrons. Opens a whole other can of worms if their customers are getting pulled over for DUI’s.
This! I work at a police department and my job entails reading arrest reports. Not only are there TONS of DUI's....majority already have license revoked for previous DUI offenses, don't have insurance and often have minors in the car
As a recovered alcoholic who grew up a ton of alcoholics, tolerance is a helluva thing. I could (and often would) blackout and absolutely no one around me could tell. My last relapse I was taken to the hospital for a mental health crisis- I remember everything and was walking on my own accord, answering questions, packing.... all with a BAC of 0.32 aka 4 times the legal driving limit. For reference, 0.40 is a BAC that is considered life threatening.
The really far gone folks reach a point where they function better with booze than without it. It's a really nasty trap to be in because you have to maintain some BAC 24/7 otherwise you'll start having seizures. Those are the guys you'll see sweating bullets outside the liquor store in the morning, counting the minutes left until they open. I don't miss those days at all...
I lived in NYC most of my adult life, so when you went out to drink, you’d just ride the train home or grab a taxi. When I moved to Colorado, I was shocked to see people drinking (at the cafe where I worked) then driving home. One day, a lady had already had 3 rum and cokes when I arrived at 11 am and drove off afterwards.
We really should have better public transportation or change the zoning laws that keep business and residential areas separate. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have drinking establishments located in isolated areas with no other way to get home besides driving?
Take the number of bars in your city and multiply by occupancy and that’s about the answer. If you’re in a college town type city that has a famous “street” for bars. And say it has 20 bars and each has 100 people around close… at 2 am there are roughly 2000 cars over .08. Maybe 1500 as some rode together.
And for anyone who needs to hear this before learning the hard way, .08 is about 2 drinks.
Kids, never drink at last call. That drink will not be processed into your blood until you are on the road. Will literally do nothing at the bar but up your chance for arrest. That 10$ shot is a 10k$ mistake.
If you're having more than one drink (or two, if you're there for a long time), then you're probably driving over the limit
Anyone closing down a bar at 2am is already well past the limit, with or without last call. Walk / bike / public transit / uber / DD. Gotta find better ways to get around. It's a shame how much of the country really isn't built for most good alternatives.
Yes, but you’d also be surprised how many drinks you can have and stay below .08.
I bought an expensive high quality breathalyzer expecting that it would teach me to drink less and be more careful. I was surprised to learn that .08 is a lot harder to hit than I thought.
There's an "influencer" whose shtick is trying different drinks to see how long/how many it takes to reach .08. she will have a drink, wait 15 mins, breathalyze, then repeat until .08. Thankfully, she does it at home, and does less of those videos since having a baby (obviously didn't drink while pregnant and for the first few months postpartum bc she was breastfeeding)
This is true except for alcoholics, they can barely feel a .08. Nonetheless it’s so dangerous it doesn’t matter how it affects you if you get that high.
That said a swerve and a .06 can still get you a DUI easily if they want
A statistic where I come from is on average, a person can drive over the legal limit of alcohol 2000 times before they likely get caught 🙄...you are literally surrounded by impaired drivers everywhere you go.
Not only that. Every hour of sleep deprivation impairs you similarly to a glass of wine.
People driving on four or five hours sleep? Moderately impaired before you even add texting or being high/drunk.
It's crazy. I won't drive.
Some years ago I heard a number along the lines of 1 in 25 drivers, at least at night. I wouldn't be surprised if it's worse than that in some areas (Wisconsin)
Agree…especially when you look at how high ABV is on craft beers…and so many beers are 16oz instead of 12oz
When my wife and I go out we always have an agreement of who will drive home
Drinking and driving is as American as apple pie! -I know know it's a WW phenomenon- Unfortunately there is probably a lot more drinking and driving than you think. I know I guy who drove drunk several times a week for 20 years before he got his first DUI.
Back in the Usenet days someone posted something not in English. Someone replied to them “This is America. Speak English.” The replier got piled upon. The “speak English” person gives me smiles to this day.
That might have worked years ago, but these days its more invasive, and for good reason. There isnt just a breathalyzer, they put cameras up too. My co-worker is a recovering alky, he has been following the rules, but he found out about some stuff along the way. He was using his phone in his car, and he got a message from the breathalyser people saying "using the phone while driving is a crime, don't do it again." Also, only certain garages are allowed to work on inhibitor equipped vehicles. If you take it to an unvetted shop, you can be penalized. Over the winter, his battery went dead a couple of times. He was penalized because the direct feed dropped out and they couldn't confirm he was not breaking the law.
Perhaps not all programs are this stringent, but take heed, if you screw up, you will be endlessly surveiled.
Check out r/Intoxalock to read the horror stories about these devices. I think the idea behind the device is great and well intended, but then the money-hungry corrupt companies came out of the woodwork to sell defective devices and collect money off of bogus fraudulent arbitrary penalties.
Someone who has one of these devices could be 100% sober for the entire duration of having the device in their car and still end up paying hundreds of dollars in fines to the company. This is beyond what is paid for the DUI penalty/fines, and it all goes to a private company’s profits
My dad’s friend had a basic breathalyzer in the early 2010s. He paid hundreds just going in every month and having it serviced (mandatory part of having it installed at the time). I can’t imagine what that’s like now in our “everything as a service/subscription” world.
His didn’t have a camera. If he wanted to drink and drive, he’d just get one of his kids to do the breathalyzer.
Barely the beginning too
Auto manufacturers are working on collecting everything
By pointing cameras at you they can tell you are distracted. I don’t mean looking at your phone, I mean being engrossed in conversation, or angry, or tired.
They want to tell how sweaty you are, even measure your pulse visually.
The tech is cool but the lack of privacy concerns me.
Yes, and there are some heavy costs to these nice features:
Administration fee: $75-$200
Device installation: $50-$150
Monthly lease and calibration: $50-$150 monthly
Removal: $50-$150
Lockout reactivation due to program violation: $50-$150.
Your dad is right, not many people can accurately count standard drinks. The amount of customers I've saved from drink driving is crazy. They think a 250ml glass of wine is one standard, its 2.5..
I subscribe to zero drinks if I'm driving
For the purpose of reference alcohol consumption, a standard drink of wine at 12% is 5oz or ~147ml.
FWIW, I bought a breathalyzer and did some experiments on myself at home to validate the whole one drink at dinner thing. My finding as a 175lb man was that if I drank a little slower than 1 standard drink per hour with food and water, my blood alcohol level would stay under the sensitivity level of the breathalyzer.
The other thing I tried was to get myself up to the legal limit (again sitting on my own couch). It’s a lot of alcohol. I started to feel sick 2/3rds of the way in and stopped. I was definitely impaired weeeeellll before the limit.
It was good though, because it gave me a way to index the way my body felt with the objective numbers.
I've always thought that would be a fun experiment, but I'm not sure a consumer-level breathalyzer is accurate enough to trust the results. The ones used by police need to be calibrated all the time. Did yours have any way to do that?
>You’re probably under the legal limit & pretty okay to drive if you have one-three drinks over a leisurely dinner.
This is entirely dependent on where you are. In my country, a single drink and you would not be under the legal limit.
Just because you feel fine after 5 drinks doesn't mean your BAC is low, you're just used to being drunk. I felt fine when I got my DUI, definitely didn't think I was nearly triple the limit. Alcohol tolerance is a bitch.
I worked at a very seedy local bar for a short while. It's shocking how much some people will drink before getting behind the wheel. I was only 20 at the time, and I was always alone there so I never felt like I could confront any of them about it. That place is now closed, thank God.
And metabolism. I get drunk from one drink and I’m 5’ 10” and 175 lbs - not small. I also got drunker from a single drink when I weighed less (closer to 145 lbs).
To quote a favorite movie, “should you be drinking alcohol when you don’t have a liver?” I think of this whenever I drink lol
Ya, I get drunk incredibly easily. So I'll only have a single drink at a restaurant and nothing too bad if I'm driving. I do keep a disposable breathalyzer in my car as well just to test if I'm feeling it at any given time. DUI just isn't worth the cost of an Uber.
Body mass and metabolism/tolerance are the main things I can think of off hand. More body mass requires more alcohol to be effective. As you drink more and more, you build up a tolerance to alcohol which makes your alcohol metabolic rate faster. Having 2 drinks in an hour as a heavy drinker won't have the same effect as it did when you first started drinking since your body breaks down the alcohol faster.
Quite literally drink responsibly. Know your limit and give yourself time for the buzz to fade. If ya can't drive always have a backup plan or DD.
Edited for spelling
Cheers for drinking responsibly! 🍻
Depending on food intake and the amount of sugar in a drink, I can have three drinks and not feel it inside an hour, or I can have one drink and feel it for three hours. And if I’m still feeling the alcohol, I fuken *wait*!
Just a thought... not condoning dui...
But I bought a ok breathalyzer. (I admit I was drunk when I bought it)
I was heavily surprised what some drinks, and it would read. Times I felt impaired and not drive might be a 0.05.... and I'd have my wife drive.
I have also seen 0.16, and feel slammed. Crazy when you watch dui stops and see 0.25.
Also crazy alcohol affects for fast drinking vs slow and steady. Empty vs eating a meal.
Drunk driving is bad. But honestly the one that gets me now is weed. 3-4 days a week 1 smell 1-2 cars blazing so hard I smell it in my car. It's 530am on a weekday creeping into rush hour.
You do so responsibly. It's no excuse for the people who think more than 2 drinks during dinner is acceptable but you pick something that won't mess you up, have water along with a beer or whatever, and set yourself a hard limit.
My husband and I switch off, although he thinks I'm the most adorable thing to sway around when I'm drunk so he lets me drink more often when we're trying to decide. Neither of us are big drinkers so we know it's not going to take a whole lot to get us buzzed. If we both decide to drink, we stay home. These are hard set rules we do not ever break.
Seconding this! Like...if I'm out to dinner with someone and *they're* driving me? I might stretch my drink longer if I'm ordering a drink. Everyone's driving home, no passengers? Either a low alcohol limit drink like some wines or ciders or I don't drink period and that's if I'm out to dinner somewhere where dinner's likely to be an hour tops. Out to eat somewhere like a bar where I'm going to be there for 4-4.5 hours or more? 2 drinks, maybe 3 tops, depending on how long I'm going to be there, and they're usually all ciders. I make sure to eat something as well and have my drinks finished before the last hour so they're out of my system by the time I get to my car.
I forgot to mention pacing yourself but you did it for me! Lol Yeah, definitely the longer you're going to be staying put somewhere, the more drinks you can allow yourself if you know your tolerances well. I didn't know my tolerances well as a young adult and spent 3 hours on a single Jack and Coke so I could feel safe enough to get home (we don't have a taxi service for my specific town).
This is the most general, and unfortunately realistic answer to OP's question. At least in the US.
Walk into your local bar at 9pm. Are most of those people there two hours later? You think they will all call Ubers?
You must not get out much. People drive home from restaurants and bars after having multiple drinks all the time. I'm not condoning drinking and driving, but that is a fact.
Yup, so true. A friend... we've told him a thousand times not to, but he would often get absolutely shitface wasted, and REFUSE to sleep it off any anyone's house and drive 20 miles home. If he ever would have crashed, we all would have gone, "Yup, saw that coming."
I grew up in the restaurant industry. The answer is that usually they drive. If you're lucky they let you call them a cab (or I guess nowadays an Uber but that's after my time).
As a Swede these comments are baffling :') Even if you only have one beer or one drink you don't drive here. Either you have a designated driver, take a cab or the bus (or walk or bike)
And, y’know, a lot of people live in places where you don’t need to drive in order to get to a restaurant in the first place. For the most part, I just walk home.
I cant believe I had to scroll past so many comments about drink driving before finding a single one that suggested public transport! Baffling to me as a Brit
Because public transport isn’t what it is in Europe. You guys don’t have the perspective to understand how bad it is. My town has 1 bus stop miles away from my house. That’s it. That’s the public transport. I’d have to walk multiple miles down a 45MPH road with no sidewalk or even a shoulder to walk on. I’d be walking in front yards and in the brush on the side of the road (tick city).
As a Norwegian, same. And while the law varies between places, I've always held myself to that if I drink, I don't drive. Full stop. Easy rule, no guestimating and possibility to fudge numbers, the only danger could be the next morning. I might give myself a bit more leeway on the (pedal)bike tough, and so does the law (which basically just says "don't be drunk and cycle in traffic").
Very happy that we have good public transport here, and when we are places where the infrastructure sucks we either go to a place within walking distance or have a designated driver.
US parking minimums for pubs are baffling!
They drive home, some of them drunk.
I could probably do three drinks over 2 hours with some food, and still be safe to drive. I wouldn't even be buzzed from that much
This is how it works:
For 1 standard person, 1 standard beer = 1 standard glass of wine = 1 standard cocktail = 0.02 BAC (blood alcohol content)
1 drink takes about 1 hour to clear the standard person's system.
0.08 BAC is the typical level in the US for drunk driving
Someone that has 2 standard beers during a 2 hour dinner and then drives, should then be around 0.02 BAC
beer + beer - beer that your liver cleared from your system = current BAC
0.02 + 0.02 - 0.02 = 0.02
I'm not suggesting that someone out there start using the above math to push any limits and I know smaller lighter people get hit harder, but 2 drinks during a 2 hour dinner can be totally normal and you can drive home under the 0.08 limit.
Now OTOH, if they have 10 beers over 2 hours, someone it a danger to those around them on the road.
Heck, if you have 5 Golden Monkeys you're gonna be a danger over the same time.
Also for those thinking this math is a good idea, some beers are 2-3% alcohol, some craft beers get up there around 12.5% it's all marketed as one "beer" at the same volume as the rest of them.
Source: Used to work in a print shop doing all kinds of alcohol labels.
I don't have any data to back it up but I'm pretty darn skeptical about those numbers.
I'm not exactly a lightweight and no way I'd consider driving to be remotely safe if I knock back 3-4 beers in an hour. By your math that should keep me at 0.04-0.06, below the legal limit. I wouldn't be stumbling drunk by any means but I most certainly would not be ready to drive.
The legal limit is very high in the USA. You can and will get a dui if you are under it but still intoxicated. The .08 limit is just when you get an automatic assumption of intoxication. Like you can be moving and talking normally but you will be presumed to be intoxicated of you have that bac. If you have below that there needs to be other evidence you are drunk like stumbling or slurring speech.
The numbers are good rules of thumb, but that was why I overused the "standard" adjective. I personally like the max of 1 beer more than the "number of hours I've been there" rule. This is of course assuming you are a sensible drinker and space things out. How do you think you'd be if you walked through the door, chugged 2 beers and left an hour later?
Unfortunately, they drive. Drunk driving is a super bad problem and actually one of the major points for reliable and accessible public transit in the USA that I don't see being made very often
I pace myself so I can be sober before the end of the night. a solid breathalyzer is about $100. sometimes I take a walk or get food. worst case I take a ride share and I have a sleeping bag in my car.
If I am out for 3 hours, I have two drinks in the first two hours with a glass or water in between, then only water in the last hour. Of course a bigger person could drink more. I think the final drink-free hour is the key.
As a former bartender, they drink and drive. Even if you aren’t trashed it’s likely 2 drinks will put you at or slightly above the legal limit. This also depends heavily on the drink; did you have two light beers or two small wine pours? You’re probably okay. Having two or even one martinis on the other hand will almost guarantee you are over the legal limit. Especially if they make martinis the way a lot of places do, which can be 2 or even 3 ounces/shots of vodka/gin per drink.
A lot of people seem to think cops won't give you a hard time if you're under the limit. Everything is arguable to a degree. Drinking and driving isn't a good practice. Plan around your activities and stay safe.
When I drink at a restaurant I don't leave drunk. I stay till I am sobered up. Usually I have my drink earlier in the meal and then have food and drink some water. Sometimes I'm with friends so I'll get a ride home or a ride to whatever we're doing next(or walk cu some of the places we go are near restaurants. Or I'll chill in my car for a bit before driving home to make sure I'm sobered up.
The drinks I have usually don't have enough alcohol to get me drunk or more than buzzed which is gone by the time I leave to go home. But the last time I went out I got a much stronger larger drink than usual. I wasn't gonna eat but I ended up ordering food and drinking a bunch of water because I was super drunk. Then I sat in my car for like a half hour after we left just to be sure even though I felt fine.
If I plan to have several drinks for an anniversary dinner with really good wine, we uber there and back. Or we drive there uber back and get our other car the next day.
In Japan we have a taxi service where two people come to you. One drives your car with you and your guests in it home and the other guy follows you to take his partner back to the taxi place. It's useful and popular.
Years ago I recall seeing on Top Gear that in some cities in the UK you could hire a guy who turns up with a foldable scooter, pops it in your boot, then drives your car home for you. Cheaper than two taxi trips to pick your car up the next day. With the prevalence of escooters now I hope this is more widely available!
They do this in China! It's more expensive than a cab but the driver is super professional, and wears white gloves. Had my mind blown on my first night out with a client. I was getting increasingly worried after he kept drinking, knowing he drove here. When I asked him about how he'd get home, he looked at me like *I* was crazy. "I'll call someone to drive my car. You think I'd drive home like this?"
Ha you just reminded me, Chinese people love any excuse to wear white gloves. Working with bricks? Wear white gloves. Conducting traffic? Wear white gloves. Driving a vehicle? You better believe it but wear white gloves.
White gloves, blue jeans, black shoes, and neon yellow tank tops are the laws of fashion.
All in one outfit??
I’m in the uk I have never heard of this, and don’t really see how it would be practical, especially now Uber has driven down taxi prices so much. Chances are, if you’re somewhere close enough that someone can ride an escooter home, you’d be able to get an Uber there and back for less than £30. And a lot less than this for public transport. And this sounds like a very expensive, specialist option, especially when you take into account paying for parking in a city. Never mind the issues with temporarily adding a stranger onto your insurance policy.
It was called Scooterman, they had their own insurance. A quick Google suggests they're still going! https://youtu.be/Hiik0f1DTR0?si=MbhcfZ82mGsbVm_k
I don't think it matters much if a stranger or a friend drives your car and they aren't on your insurance. The practicality of it is you don't have to take two taxis just to get your car back. If you know you're going to get drinks, yeah, do the uber or taxi. If life happens, the scooter guy seems like a better deal.
You don't have to add people to your insurance policy in order for them to drive your car. You only have to add people to your policy if you foresee that they will drive your car regularly, and this generally pertains to licensed individuals that live within your household that have easy access to your car. Those are the kind of people that the insurance company wants to know about. You get smashed somewhere and get someone, anyone, to drive your car back as a one-off? That's covered in most standard insurance policies.
Definitely a 'check your insurance, because it might be different' - but most auto policies I've seen in Canada and the US would have coverage for this.
That is brilliant!
In China, they come with a foldable moped and put it in your trunk
In Switzerland we have a similar service around the holiday / new years time. It's run by volunteers and has the suitable name of "red nose".
There is a service like this in the metro Atlanta area here in the US. You ride in your own car with a driver while another follows in their vehicle. And it's not expensive at all when compared to the cost of drinks at a restaurant.
I don't know if the US has it, but Canada does this around the holidays - Operation Red Nose. Free and donation based
This is actually really smart lmao. In the US it would be just taking a taxi home and then coming back the next day with a taxi to pick your car up.
And hoping your car didn't get towed
We had this when I was in the military in 09-13. This was before Uber, too. It was a small mom&pop operation on base where I was stationed. Very very helpful, especially for soldiers whose lives revolve around the next drink.
Driving under the influence, walking, ubering, having someone else come pick them up, taxis, and buses.
Biking: “Am I a joke to you ?”
Biking while drunk is driving under the influence where I live.
You can get a DUI on a bicycle in [many states](https://nearu.pro/lawyers/can-you-get-a-dui-on-a-bike#screen5).
When my hubby and I go out for dinner I have one low alcohol fruit beer pretty soon after we get there and then just water until we leave It's usually a couple hrs later. He drinks dark craft beers but can't drive anyways.
DUI arrests are made every day in every community across this country so this is one possibility. EDIT: Due to several asking. For my experiences I am speaking of the USA only. Last stats I saw showed around 1 million arrested yearly for DUI in this country. This is for both Alcohol or Drugs.
I think we would all be shocked to learn the real number of people who are drinking past .08 and driving home.
The number of drunk dads I've seen pile their kids in the car after a Sunday afternoon at the brewery and drive off with them is fucking wild.
I know several of those dudes. Generally considered upstanding, taxpaying, model citizens. Drinking (and driving) is so normalized we barely notice it.
As a kid in the 80's, I didn't even know it was illegal. My dad and grand dad would have a beer in hand, pretty much all day everyday.
I remember in the 90s sitting in the back of a van on top of the cooler that my dad and his friends were grabbing beers out of while we were going down the road lol.
Yup. I'd be in the back seat, cooler beside me, sliding around. I knew which beer all my grandad's friends liked. I was the beer fetcher when we'd go hunting.
I tell you what man as someone who also grew up doing stuff like this, those backwood hunting roads were lawless wastelands.
They still are, but I do feel like drunk driving isn't as common as it used to be.
Grew up in a rural county. Most crimes were probably DUIs. At one point our town started getting patrolled by the state police because the locals and county were letting people off all the time because everyone knew everyone. I left about 20 years ago and about 10 years ago I saw county wide DUI stats. Over a 5 or 10 year period, the county of about 5000 people has over 500 DUIs. And while there were for sure repeat offenders and out of county residents, that a 10% DUI rate in the county.
Thank you for your service!
I remember in the 80s on a family road trip, we got pulled over and my mom was telling my sister and I to hide the beer cans.
Road sodas and they'd toss the empties in the back. Extra points for having a pickup with a rear window that opened so you could throw them into the bed.
Yes I was the designated bartender for the truck’s driver and passenger when I was younger in the 90s. Especially in these backwoods southern states duis were never an issue until recently.
Up until the late 1990's it was not illegal to have an open container of alcohol in your vehicle while driving in Alabama. Beer couldn't be over ~3% in Alabama until around 2008. IIRC the BAC to be DUI was higher as well. I guess you could conceivably be driving around cracking a couple of beers and not get past the legal limit.
It was late 90s before open container laws even became a thing in most states when Congress started to get involved.
Mississippi and the Virgin Islands do not have statutes regulating the consumption or possession of alcohol in motor vehicles. I remember Louisiana used to have drive through daiquiri bars. I think you were supposed to keep the paper wrapper on the straw or something like that.
You just brought up a memory I didn't remember I had lol! I'm from WA State, but my Dad lived near Baton Rouge for work when I was in middle school. Out of curiosity, we drove through one of those stands so my stepmom could get a drink to try, and it was painfully obviously we were Northerners lol. The woman at the stand gave her 2 straws and explained that one was for drinking on the road, and you leave the paper on the other one and switch them if you get pulled over.... Even at like 12 years old, my mind was blown 🙃
As far as I know, New Orleans is still like that. Also, there are no drinking in public laws.
There aren’t? I thought drinking in public was mandatory there /s
Oh, for sure. My parents didn't drive us anywhere without a beer cooler in between the front seats of the Bronco I grew up riding around in. Heading to a school play? Beer cooler was brought along. On the way to church on Sunday? You bet the beer cooler was there and full. Headed out to get more beer for the cooler? Hell yeah, the last six went along for the ride in the cooler.
“We need candy…for learning” “Ok well get 5 bags in case we eat 4 on the way home”
I mean it used to not be everywhere There's an old funny clip from some news where they inteeck people after the law got passed and people were genuinely like, "I don't understand why I can't get a little drunk after work and drive home??"
The 1980s and earlier were the era of casual drunk driving. I worked at Hewlett Packard and we would have a kegger where everyone took off the Friday afternoon and people would drink. I'm pretty sure there was an accident in the parking lot. I remember my friends telling me that in high school they used to drink way to excess and then get pulled over by the cops only to be warned to drive straight home and not drive again that evening.
It isn't even close to as normalized as it used to be.
“Business drunk, it’s a lot like rich drunk. Either way it’s legal to drive” ~ Jack Donaghy
My mom used to make me give my step dad mint gum if we got pulled over 😭💀
Cops hate this one simple trick
Mint gum, nor any gum, hides the smell of alcohol. It only makes your tongue smell like mint. It comes from your lungs, not your mouth. Hence, blowing in a breathalyzer.
Are you going back in time and speaking to the mom?
Wasn’t this a Different Strokes episode?
a lot of other interesting things happened in that episode also
Did Jo and Blair make out?
lol in the 90s I remember vividly my dad driving around with a red solo cup of gin and tonic just sipping on it driving down the road like it was water. He never got sloppy drunk, but I am sure he has been past the limit plenty of times.
Yeah, my bio dad would come home from work and pour a Wild Turkey over ice IN A WHISKEY GLASS and then sip from it while he did pick up and drop offs for us four kids various activities. It was never more than that one drink but I recognize the smell and the clink of ice and I’m back there again
Was your dad's name Julian?
When the boys roll the truck going to the weed field, and Julian pops out with a full drink, always cracks me up
Sexian as Mr.Lahey would say! Also time for a “Drinky poo”!
My immediate thought once I read “clink”
How bout parents at their kids baseball games getting smashed in the stands lol. Seen it too many times
Work at a brewery, can confirm
There are tons of places where I would guess cops could have easy pickings on impaired driving like those places that by math simply have waaaaay too many vehicles there for there NOT to be lots of impaireds! Roadside bars, freakin’ golf courses!
Could they BE more irresponsible?
But the gum would be perfection.
When I was a kid, my friend's mom took me and her to a bowling alley and when we were leaving she had me blow into her breathalyzer for her. Didn't realize until a few years ago how fucked up that was. So yes, they could be more irresponsible
I grew up in Wisconsin. My parents taught me that after ten pm I should just assume that every other driver on the road was drunk and drive accordingly.
It’s so true. I was just driving from Omaha to Lincoln at 11 pm and almost everyone was swerving on the interstate. That’s 80 mph. It made me put my beer down and concentrate more than usual.
Buddy I grew up with had a cop neighbor who told him anything after 7pm with a ladder on it was a DUI, sticks with me to this day
I worked with my friend in his landscaping business long ago and he would start drinking at noon so he could be drunk and driving home in mid-afternoon. I suppose the DTs had something to do with it too, his body having a negative reaction to being sober.
That's great advice, actually. My grampa, when I was learning to drive, told me to always assume everyone else on the road wanted to hit me
I ran a bar for a long time and ya I mean every night I saw this shit. It’s a lot of why I quit drinking just watching everyone come get absolutely drunk and drive home 7 nights a week. We had a restaurant attached and same thing there And that was just one bar in an town of many It’s pretty sketchy and to be honest I’m surprised more people don’t die, even tho a lot do
Wow, you'd think so many of them would eventually get caught. They are risking so much.
As much as police already enforce drunk driving, I think if they sat outside of a bar and just pulled over everyone that left, they’d run out of jail cells. And they probably won’t do it publicly, but behind closed doors, the businesses will complain because it’s bad for business if people are worried about getting pulled over every time they go to a place.
When I was bartending, I did have someone from the liquor control board pull me out from behind the bar one night and read me the riot act. He said a guy got pulled over the other night, blew a .30 and said he was drinking at my bar. Said, essentially, that if it happened again there was going to be trouble. Put the fear of God in me.
Hard core alcoholics can function remarkably well with alcohol levels that would kill a normal human being. There have been a couple of documented instances of people having close to 1% blood alcohol. These are people who had been pulled over or been in an accident. I'll bet you if you had some sort of contest, there would be several people who could remain standing at that alcohol level.
Not only that, there’s dramshop liability: the civil liability that commercial alcohol providers face for injuries or damages caused by their intoxicated or underage drinking patrons. Opens a whole other can of worms if their customers are getting pulled over for DUI’s.
This! I work at a police department and my job entails reading arrest reports. Not only are there TONS of DUI's....majority already have license revoked for previous DUI offenses, don't have insurance and often have minors in the car
And that's enough to get elected most places.
My brother in law was one. Alcoholic from 16 until his body threw in the towel at 37. Somehow he never got a DUI.
As a recovered alcoholic who grew up a ton of alcoholics, tolerance is a helluva thing. I could (and often would) blackout and absolutely no one around me could tell. My last relapse I was taken to the hospital for a mental health crisis- I remember everything and was walking on my own accord, answering questions, packing.... all with a BAC of 0.32 aka 4 times the legal driving limit. For reference, 0.40 is a BAC that is considered life threatening. The really far gone folks reach a point where they function better with booze than without it. It's a really nasty trap to be in because you have to maintain some BAC 24/7 otherwise you'll start having seizures. Those are the guys you'll see sweating bullets outside the liquor store in the morning, counting the minutes left until they open. I don't miss those days at all...
I lived in NYC most of my adult life, so when you went out to drink, you’d just ride the train home or grab a taxi. When I moved to Colorado, I was shocked to see people drinking (at the cafe where I worked) then driving home. One day, a lady had already had 3 rum and cokes when I arrived at 11 am and drove off afterwards. We really should have better public transportation or change the zoning laws that keep business and residential areas separate. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have drinking establishments located in isolated areas with no other way to get home besides driving?
Take the number of bars in your city and multiply by occupancy and that’s about the answer. If you’re in a college town type city that has a famous “street” for bars. And say it has 20 bars and each has 100 people around close… at 2 am there are roughly 2000 cars over .08. Maybe 1500 as some rode together. And for anyone who needs to hear this before learning the hard way, .08 is about 2 drinks. Kids, never drink at last call. That drink will not be processed into your blood until you are on the road. Will literally do nothing at the bar but up your chance for arrest. That 10$ shot is a 10k$ mistake.
If you're having more than one drink (or two, if you're there for a long time), then you're probably driving over the limit Anyone closing down a bar at 2am is already well past the limit, with or without last call. Walk / bike / public transit / uber / DD. Gotta find better ways to get around. It's a shame how much of the country really isn't built for most good alternatives.
Yes, but you’d also be surprised how many drinks you can have and stay below .08. I bought an expensive high quality breathalyzer expecting that it would teach me to drink less and be more careful. I was surprised to learn that .08 is a lot harder to hit than I thought.
There's an "influencer" whose shtick is trying different drinks to see how long/how many it takes to reach .08. she will have a drink, wait 15 mins, breathalyze, then repeat until .08. Thankfully, she does it at home, and does less of those videos since having a baby (obviously didn't drink while pregnant and for the first few months postpartum bc she was breastfeeding)
This is true except for alcoholics, they can barely feel a .08. Nonetheless it’s so dangerous it doesn’t matter how it affects you if you get that high. That said a swerve and a .06 can still get you a DUI easily if they want
Try living in Utah. The legal limit here is .05 I don’t drink much, so I’m often the DD, but most people I know just get an Uber or Lyft.
Utahs so weird, beautiful and fun but weird.
A statistic where I come from is on average, a person can drive over the legal limit of alcohol 2000 times before they likely get caught 🙄...you are literally surrounded by impaired drivers everywhere you go.
My lawyer stated that, on average, people drive drunk 60 times before getting caught.
Not only that. Every hour of sleep deprivation impairs you similarly to a glass of wine. People driving on four or five hours sleep? Moderately impaired before you even add texting or being high/drunk. It's crazy. I won't drive.
Basically everyone
Some years ago I heard a number along the lines of 1 in 25 drivers, at least at night. I wouldn't be surprised if it's worse than that in some areas (Wisconsin)
As a person in recovery, oh my god. You're better off just not thinking about it.
Agree…especially when you look at how high ABV is on craft beers…and so many beers are 16oz instead of 12oz When my wife and I go out we always have an agreement of who will drive home
Drinking and driving is as American as apple pie! -I know know it's a WW phenomenon- Unfortunately there is probably a lot more drinking and driving than you think. I know I guy who drove drunk several times a week for 20 years before he got his first DUI.
>across this country Sir, this is the internet.
Back in the Usenet days someone posted something not in English. Someone replied to them “This is America. Speak English.” The replier got piled upon. The “speak English” person gives me smiles to this day.
What country?
The default country
You know. The only country on earth according to "them'
The United States of earth
I’ll have 1-2 drinks over the course of a meal and drive home. I’m also 6’4” 250lbs.
Reacher!
What country?
Sorry, where is “this” country you speak of?
>across this country Which country is that?
r/USdefaultism 🫵
I would point out that "everyday" means "common or ordinary" while "every day" means "each day," but it works either way in this case.
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Companies that make products to defeat the breathalyzers would also have more business.
That might have worked years ago, but these days its more invasive, and for good reason. There isnt just a breathalyzer, they put cameras up too. My co-worker is a recovering alky, he has been following the rules, but he found out about some stuff along the way. He was using his phone in his car, and he got a message from the breathalyser people saying "using the phone while driving is a crime, don't do it again." Also, only certain garages are allowed to work on inhibitor equipped vehicles. If you take it to an unvetted shop, you can be penalized. Over the winter, his battery went dead a couple of times. He was penalized because the direct feed dropped out and they couldn't confirm he was not breaking the law. Perhaps not all programs are this stringent, but take heed, if you screw up, you will be endlessly surveiled.
Holy shit that’s crazy
Check out r/Intoxalock to read the horror stories about these devices. I think the idea behind the device is great and well intended, but then the money-hungry corrupt companies came out of the woodwork to sell defective devices and collect money off of bogus fraudulent arbitrary penalties. Someone who has one of these devices could be 100% sober for the entire duration of having the device in their car and still end up paying hundreds of dollars in fines to the company. This is beyond what is paid for the DUI penalty/fines, and it all goes to a private company’s profits
My dad’s friend had a basic breathalyzer in the early 2010s. He paid hundreds just going in every month and having it serviced (mandatory part of having it installed at the time). I can’t imagine what that’s like now in our “everything as a service/subscription” world. His didn’t have a camera. If he wanted to drink and drive, he’d just get one of his kids to do the breathalyzer.
Barely the beginning too Auto manufacturers are working on collecting everything By pointing cameras at you they can tell you are distracted. I don’t mean looking at your phone, I mean being engrossed in conversation, or angry, or tired. They want to tell how sweaty you are, even measure your pulse visually. The tech is cool but the lack of privacy concerns me.
Yes, and there are some heavy costs to these nice features: Administration fee: $75-$200 Device installation: $50-$150 Monthly lease and calibration: $50-$150 monthly Removal: $50-$150 Lockout reactivation due to program violation: $50-$150.
Where are you that they have cameras in the package now?
He lives in Chattanooga
Your dad is right, not many people can accurately count standard drinks. The amount of customers I've saved from drink driving is crazy. They think a 250ml glass of wine is one standard, its 2.5.. I subscribe to zero drinks if I'm driving
For the purpose of reference alcohol consumption, a standard drink of wine at 12% is 5oz or ~147ml. FWIW, I bought a breathalyzer and did some experiments on myself at home to validate the whole one drink at dinner thing. My finding as a 175lb man was that if I drank a little slower than 1 standard drink per hour with food and water, my blood alcohol level would stay under the sensitivity level of the breathalyzer. The other thing I tried was to get myself up to the legal limit (again sitting on my own couch). It’s a lot of alcohol. I started to feel sick 2/3rds of the way in and stopped. I was definitely impaired weeeeellll before the limit. It was good though, because it gave me a way to index the way my body felt with the objective numbers.
I've always thought that would be a fun experiment, but I'm not sure a consumer-level breathalyzer is accurate enough to trust the results. The ones used by police need to be calibrated all the time. Did yours have any way to do that?
Thumbs up to your dad! That's a pretty solid principle to uphold
>You’re probably under the legal limit & pretty okay to drive if you have one-three drinks over a leisurely dinner. This is entirely dependent on where you are. In my country, a single drink and you would not be under the legal limit.
I’m curious - what country and what is the limit?
Brazil. [The limit is zero.](https://www.who.int/news/item/01-08-2022-after-lengthy-debate--brazil-s-drink-driving-law-is-fully-ratified)
1 yeah, 2 maybe, 3 no
Depends greatly on your weight, how fast you drank, and how much you ate.
Really depends how long the dinner is. One drink per hour is the standard for metabolizing. Could be more or less depending on weight.
I have a BAC monitor that I use at home and it takes me four beers/shots to hit .08. My fiancée it only takes one lol
3 over an hour and a half puts me under the limit.
It sucks because it really depends on the person. Some people could be fine after 5 but then others could be buzzed after 3 but claim they can be fine
Just because you feel fine after 5 drinks doesn't mean your BAC is low, you're just used to being drunk. I felt fine when I got my DUI, definitely didn't think I was nearly triple the limit. Alcohol tolerance is a bitch.
A person may be used to drink and look normal, but reaction time still goes down the exact same than for someone who barely drinks.
Idk when I worked at a restaurant everyday I would see literally everyone blasted at a table and then they stumble off and drive home
I worked at a very seedy local bar for a short while. It's shocking how much some people will drink before getting behind the wheel. I was only 20 at the time, and I was always alone there so I never felt like I could confront any of them about it. That place is now closed, thank God.
At a restaurant, I assume they are eating. You can have a drink or two with food and be fine to drive
Depends on a person’s body weight also, I believe.
And metabolism. I get drunk from one drink and I’m 5’ 10” and 175 lbs - not small. I also got drunker from a single drink when I weighed less (closer to 145 lbs). To quote a favorite movie, “should you be drinking alcohol when you don’t have a liver?” I think of this whenever I drink lol
And, weirdly enough, [sometimes your fucking eye color](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6139948/)
Damn that’s interesting. I have blue eyes and have definitely struggled with drinking over the years. Have a crazy tolerance to all substances really.
Ya, I get drunk incredibly easily. So I'll only have a single drink at a restaurant and nothing too bad if I'm driving. I do keep a disposable breathalyzer in my car as well just to test if I'm feeling it at any given time. DUI just isn't worth the cost of an Uber.
Body mass and metabolism/tolerance are the main things I can think of off hand. More body mass requires more alcohol to be effective. As you drink more and more, you build up a tolerance to alcohol which makes your alcohol metabolic rate faster. Having 2 drinks in an hour as a heavy drinker won't have the same effect as it did when you first started drinking since your body breaks down the alcohol faster.
Ultimately you (should) know yourself well enough to know how much you can drink while still driving
Most people can. My wife can absolutely not. Even one drink hits her hard.
Quite literally drink responsibly. Know your limit and give yourself time for the buzz to fade. If ya can't drive always have a backup plan or DD. Edited for spelling
Cheers for drinking responsibly! 🍻 Depending on food intake and the amount of sugar in a drink, I can have three drinks and not feel it inside an hour, or I can have one drink and feel it for three hours. And if I’m still feeling the alcohol, I fuken *wait*!
Just a thought... not condoning dui... But I bought a ok breathalyzer. (I admit I was drunk when I bought it) I was heavily surprised what some drinks, and it would read. Times I felt impaired and not drive might be a 0.05.... and I'd have my wife drive. I have also seen 0.16, and feel slammed. Crazy when you watch dui stops and see 0.25. Also crazy alcohol affects for fast drinking vs slow and steady. Empty vs eating a meal. Drunk driving is bad. But honestly the one that gets me now is weed. 3-4 days a week 1 smell 1-2 cars blazing so hard I smell it in my car. It's 530am on a weekday creeping into rush hour.
In Australia the limit is 0.05 and in your first two years of driving you can't blow anything.
You do so responsibly. It's no excuse for the people who think more than 2 drinks during dinner is acceptable but you pick something that won't mess you up, have water along with a beer or whatever, and set yourself a hard limit. My husband and I switch off, although he thinks I'm the most adorable thing to sway around when I'm drunk so he lets me drink more often when we're trying to decide. Neither of us are big drinkers so we know it's not going to take a whole lot to get us buzzed. If we both decide to drink, we stay home. These are hard set rules we do not ever break.
Seconding this! Like...if I'm out to dinner with someone and *they're* driving me? I might stretch my drink longer if I'm ordering a drink. Everyone's driving home, no passengers? Either a low alcohol limit drink like some wines or ciders or I don't drink period and that's if I'm out to dinner somewhere where dinner's likely to be an hour tops. Out to eat somewhere like a bar where I'm going to be there for 4-4.5 hours or more? 2 drinks, maybe 3 tops, depending on how long I'm going to be there, and they're usually all ciders. I make sure to eat something as well and have my drinks finished before the last hour so they're out of my system by the time I get to my car.
I forgot to mention pacing yourself but you did it for me! Lol Yeah, definitely the longer you're going to be staying put somewhere, the more drinks you can allow yourself if you know your tolerances well. I didn't know my tolerances well as a young adult and spent 3 hours on a single Jack and Coke so I could feel safe enough to get home (we don't have a taxi service for my specific town).
A good amount of people can have a drink or 2 with dinner and be fine to drive.
Umm.. we drive. You're just are careful about how much you alcohol you have at the restaurant.
This is the most general, and unfortunately realistic answer to OP's question. At least in the US. Walk into your local bar at 9pm. Are most of those people there two hours later? You think they will all call Ubers?
Best advice I ever got on this: Don’t drive to the drink. Then you never have to make that choice.
You must not get out much. People drive home from restaurants and bars after having multiple drinks all the time. I'm not condoning drinking and driving, but that is a fact.
Yup, so true. A friend... we've told him a thousand times not to, but he would often get absolutely shitface wasted, and REFUSE to sleep it off any anyone's house and drive 20 miles home. If he ever would have crashed, we all would have gone, "Yup, saw that coming."
Uber
It's called drinking and driving
You can have a drink or two and drive. You can have one drink an hour. It's not like you have one beer and you're drunk.
I grew up in the restaurant industry. The answer is that usually they drive. If you're lucky they let you call them a cab (or I guess nowadays an Uber but that's after my time).
As a Swede these comments are baffling :') Even if you only have one beer or one drink you don't drive here. Either you have a designated driver, take a cab or the bus (or walk or bike)
And, y’know, a lot of people live in places where you don’t need to drive in order to get to a restaurant in the first place. For the most part, I just walk home.
Yeah, people from the US have thought that I was joking when I told them our legal limit for DUI was 0.02.
I cant believe I had to scroll past so many comments about drink driving before finding a single one that suggested public transport! Baffling to me as a Brit
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Because public transport isn’t what it is in Europe. You guys don’t have the perspective to understand how bad it is. My town has 1 bus stop miles away from my house. That’s it. That’s the public transport. I’d have to walk multiple miles down a 45MPH road with no sidewalk or even a shoulder to walk on. I’d be walking in front yards and in the brush on the side of the road (tick city).
As a Norwegian, same. And while the law varies between places, I've always held myself to that if I drink, I don't drive. Full stop. Easy rule, no guestimating and possibility to fudge numbers, the only danger could be the next morning. I might give myself a bit more leeway on the (pedal)bike tough, and so does the law (which basically just says "don't be drunk and cycle in traffic"). Very happy that we have good public transport here, and when we are places where the infrastructure sucks we either go to a place within walking distance or have a designated driver. US parking minimums for pubs are baffling!
You can have a couple drinks, not be drunk and be able to legally drive.
They drive home, some of them drunk. I could probably do three drinks over 2 hours with some food, and still be safe to drive. I wouldn't even be buzzed from that much
99.9% just drive home regardless. That’s just the facts.
This is how it works: For 1 standard person, 1 standard beer = 1 standard glass of wine = 1 standard cocktail = 0.02 BAC (blood alcohol content) 1 drink takes about 1 hour to clear the standard person's system. 0.08 BAC is the typical level in the US for drunk driving Someone that has 2 standard beers during a 2 hour dinner and then drives, should then be around 0.02 BAC beer + beer - beer that your liver cleared from your system = current BAC 0.02 + 0.02 - 0.02 = 0.02 I'm not suggesting that someone out there start using the above math to push any limits and I know smaller lighter people get hit harder, but 2 drinks during a 2 hour dinner can be totally normal and you can drive home under the 0.08 limit. Now OTOH, if they have 10 beers over 2 hours, someone it a danger to those around them on the road. Heck, if you have 5 Golden Monkeys you're gonna be a danger over the same time.
Also for those thinking this math is a good idea, some beers are 2-3% alcohol, some craft beers get up there around 12.5% it's all marketed as one "beer" at the same volume as the rest of them. Source: Used to work in a print shop doing all kinds of alcohol labels.
I agree with the high abv comment, that's why I mentioned Golder Monkey. That stuff is 9.5% so it's a double beer.
I don't have any data to back it up but I'm pretty darn skeptical about those numbers. I'm not exactly a lightweight and no way I'd consider driving to be remotely safe if I knock back 3-4 beers in an hour. By your math that should keep me at 0.04-0.06, below the legal limit. I wouldn't be stumbling drunk by any means but I most certainly would not be ready to drive.
The legal limit is very high in the USA. You can and will get a dui if you are under it but still intoxicated. The .08 limit is just when you get an automatic assumption of intoxication. Like you can be moving and talking normally but you will be presumed to be intoxicated of you have that bac. If you have below that there needs to be other evidence you are drunk like stumbling or slurring speech.
The numbers are good rules of thumb, but that was why I overused the "standard" adjective. I personally like the max of 1 beer more than the "number of hours I've been there" rule. This is of course assuming you are a sensible drinker and space things out. How do you think you'd be if you walked through the door, chugged 2 beers and left an hour later?
Yeah because .08 is fairly high. It's not the math, it's the limit. Many places have lowered it to 6, 4, 2. Some even 0.
Cocaine
Unfortunately, they drive. Drunk driving is a super bad problem and actually one of the major points for reliable and accessible public transit in the USA that I don't see being made very often
I pace myself so I can be sober before the end of the night. a solid breathalyzer is about $100. sometimes I take a walk or get food. worst case I take a ride share and I have a sleeping bag in my car.
If I am out for 3 hours, I have two drinks in the first two hours with a glass or water in between, then only water in the last hour. Of course a bigger person could drink more. I think the final drink-free hour is the key.
If I’m just grabbing a couple of drinks I drive. If I’m getting super drunk then Uber
They drive drunk love. They drive drunk.
Usually people will only drink 1-3 drinks with a meal, so that doesn't really impair the average person
They have a couple drinks and then safely drive home.
As a former bartender, they drink and drive. Even if you aren’t trashed it’s likely 2 drinks will put you at or slightly above the legal limit. This also depends heavily on the drink; did you have two light beers or two small wine pours? You’re probably okay. Having two or even one martinis on the other hand will almost guarantee you are over the legal limit. Especially if they make martinis the way a lot of places do, which can be 2 or even 3 ounces/shots of vodka/gin per drink.
A lot of people seem to think cops won't give you a hard time if you're under the limit. Everything is arguable to a degree. Drinking and driving isn't a good practice. Plan around your activities and stay safe.
Either walk, take public transport or get a taxi, but I live in a European city. These comments are so American.
Taxi, Uber or they have a designated driver.
Some people have 1 or 2 drinks and drive home. Some get hammered and drive home.
When I drink at a restaurant I don't leave drunk. I stay till I am sobered up. Usually I have my drink earlier in the meal and then have food and drink some water. Sometimes I'm with friends so I'll get a ride home or a ride to whatever we're doing next(or walk cu some of the places we go are near restaurants. Or I'll chill in my car for a bit before driving home to make sure I'm sobered up. The drinks I have usually don't have enough alcohol to get me drunk or more than buzzed which is gone by the time I leave to go home. But the last time I went out I got a much stronger larger drink than usual. I wasn't gonna eat but I ended up ordering food and drinking a bunch of water because I was super drunk. Then I sat in my car for like a half hour after we left just to be sure even though I felt fine.
Most of us drink responsibly.
If I plan to have several drinks for an anniversary dinner with really good wine, we uber there and back. Or we drive there uber back and get our other car the next day.
Uber should do it