POLL: Driving Drunk

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I have once.
About 2am down very quiet country lanes at a very slow speed. This was as a teenager after a friends parents came back and found their son in rather a sorry state. The other two of us decided it prudent to make ourselves scarce but in hindsite it was a major mistake.

I won't anymore - a single pint on a Friday lunchtime (Leaving work at 5:30) is as much as I allow myself. On the other hand, the elder generation seems a lot worse. There are a few of my mothers friends who frequently drink and drive and my Director often has a couple of bottles of wine before driving home, sometimes abetted by my boss.

 

Pretty similar to Carcaroth - I have drove drunk once in my life, and I didn't ever realize at the time that I was drunk. I was in my early 20s - legal drinking age - and I went out with a couple of my friends to a bar. I drove my car to a friend's house and we left from there in his car. At the end of the night we drove back to his house, I got in my car and started driving home.

Even though I felt OK at the time I left, I started feel queasy shortly after getting behind the wheel. Fortunately, my friend only lived about 1.5 miles away from me, so it was a short trip, with very little traffic at 2 AM. As soon as I got out of my car, I felt really sick and threw up on the front lawn. So obviously, I was drunk, even though I didn't realize it when I got behind the wheel. That one incident was enough to cure me though. Now if I have more than a drink or two, I won't drive.

I actually know someone who says they are a better driver after having a few drinks. He says he "pays attention more" because he knows his reflexes aren't what they should be. I cannot say I agree with that analysis.

 

Amaster says:

Yeah, and that's a serious problem, too, not just among students doing recreational substances (my favorite euphemism) but among adults doing prescription drugs, either as prescribed or abusively.

I decided a couple of decades ago that I can't always tell how a presciption drug is actually affecting me, after sitting in a doctor's office with a normally polite friend who was on painkillers and made loud comments about how other patients in the office probably had cooties (for those of you outside the southern U.S., a very derogatory comment usually interpreted to mean having body lice). She was aghast later to hear me repeat the conversation. I had to wonder if I had ever said or done idiotic things, those times I was on painkillers after surgery. So, now, when the label has a warning about not driving, I don't.

 

I have driven after having a drink with dinner but I was most certainly not intoxicated and my blood alcohol level would have been well below the legal limit.

Actually, I rarely drink alcohol except when I am travelling - either or vacation on business trips. In those cases I don't have a car with me so drinking and driving isn't even a possibility.

 

I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything.

 

Drink driving is a massive thing in Britain because of the small, narrow, winding roads. Accidents can happen so easily at the best of times, never mean when you're pissed up. Roads in America are typically just long wide stretches. Corners are like bloody gold-dust over the pond. That's why it's also a lot harder to get a license here as well.

 

Barmy, actually, the condition of roads in the U.S. varies wildly according to where you live. But in general, you're right, they are wider and straighter than European roads contending with many-centuries-old rights of way with little clearance between buildings in villages and cities alike.

OTOH, one of my friends was killed years ago by a drunk driver on a long, straight, wide road. The drunk was passing another car and hit my friend's car head-on - even though my friend and the driver being passed both swerved off the road to avoid the fool. The drunk died, too, but it was almost as if he had homed in on my friend's headlights.

Whew, I hadn't thought of that one in a long time - more than twenty years ago since it happened, well before many SP-ers were even born.

 

i too have had a friend killed by a drunk driver, he was ten times over the limit when he mounted the pavement and hit her at an estimated 90 miles per hour, she died instantly, he served 3 years of an 8 year sentence.

i know what he looks like, so he'd better pray he never meets me

 

Barmy,
as for streets in the UK countryside, I agree, it's hard enough to drive there when you're sober.

I was once run over by a drunk driver. Braking way to late, he sent me flying from the middle of the street to the sidewalk, and dented my bike. I only had a few bruises, didn't even realise what happened. I was darn lucky. I was later called to give testimony in court against him, where he lost his driving license, again. Pitiful guy. He was an alcoholic, and the time he ran me over was just after noon; he was already drunk.

I can somewhat comprehend how alcoholics ends up doing this, and of course it's inexcusable when they do, but youths and their post-party drunk driving accidents are just incomprehensible to me. In Germany it's happening mostly in the countryside where there are longer distances, and where the kids don't have the choice to use public transport at night, and where a taxi would be unaffordable.

[ March 06, 2007, 16:01: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

I've driven drunk... knowing I was drunk and without a license to boot .

 

Oddly, I feel better knowing that I'm not the only one who has driven drunk, more than once, and fully understood that I was drunk and it was illegal and I really shouldn't be doing this.

I live in a college town, a party town. This place lives to get tanked. Flaming drunk. Good thing I know where the check points typically are or else I'd be in deep trouble!

I'm done with that phase of my life. I don't like myself when I get drunk. I still can't tell at what point I'm really gonna feel the booze. So, I just don't want to drink anymore. Maybe once every other month will I drink enough to blow hot, but I have a DD and/or we won't be driving.

Most of the people I know on the other hand are drunks. Drink every weekend. But, thankfully, they do so in their own home where they simply need stumble up stairs and fall on their beds to sleep it off.

 

Glad you are, Von'Meyer. And not liking myself when I'm drunk is exactly why I almost never am - it has literally been years since the last time.

I hear what you're saying about the college town atmosphere, though. It's hard to resist getting drunk when the whole social life of the place is structured around just that activity.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when I was a young police officer, I watched two college students die - not from a wreck or a fall (though another drunk one did fall out of a fourth floor window) but just from alcohol poisioning. Didn't permanently stop me from drinking nor even from getting drunk, but it sure did stop me from drinking beyond the point of starting to feel a buzz.

 

Like a few others here, I've driven after a few drinks. Now the good thing - if you can call it that - is that I live in the middle of the town center. If I ever do drive home from the pub, then it's only two or three minutes in the car. I very rarely drink more than one or two if I know I'm driving. I'm also the only one I drink with who drives, so I'm often the taxi home.

Recently, I've made the decision to drive only when I'm very certain I'm fully able to without endangering myself or anyone else.

A while ago there was an incident (which I don't care give too much background information on) where I was driving home from London after a series of heavy nights. I should not have been driving, and I knew it, so did the three friends in the car. Regardless, everyone assumed everything would be okay.
It was about 2:30 in the morning, and luckily the motorway was almost empty. But still, after about two hours of driving I fell asleep at the wheel doing just under 100mph. Luckily I snapped back awake from a shout by a friend as the car started turning and steered sharply to stop us hitting the barrier.

Now I'm not proud of this, and it was the lowest point I'd ever got to. Had I woken up a second later or had my sleepy friend not noticed my eyes were closed then we almost certainly would have hit the wall and we woud be dead.

Quite rightly, my friends won't let me forget it, and neither should they. It has certainly taught me hard-earned a lesson and I made some significant changes in my life to make sure it doesn't happen again. It was the scariest moment of my life, and not something I care to ever experience again.

 

I'm in option number three--once. I don't have a license, and never had more than a beginner's license. I had thought that a couple hours had passed between my last drink and that I didn't have that much of a buzz before that, but apparently I had more of one than I thought, and it was much less than 2 hours that passed. I could feel that I was off, but we had to get home, and my brother who had a license was in much worse shape than I was. The problem with alcohol is that the afect is not as readily apparent to the drinker or those around it--until they get behind the wheel...

 

Recent news stories have claimed that using a mobile phone while driving is even more dangerous.

 

@Cúchulainn, I think you're right about the danger of mobile phone use while driving. The difference is you can put the phone down. The state of drunkenness is not so easily shed.

I don't answer my cell phone while I'm driving, to the puzzlement of all who call me - when I pull over and call them back and say, "Sorry I didn't answer, I was in traffic" there is always a bewildered pause.

Some studies also show that eating, smoking, sipping water or soda, changing the heat/AC settings, adjusting the radio - all drastically increase the likelihood you'll be in a wreck, at least for the time you're doing those things.

But as Gnarfflinger points out, when you drink and drive you're not doing it with a clear head and so it's harder to appreciate what a risk you're taking.

Maybe I'm just here, because I haven't seen any posts suggesting it's just fine to go out and get drunk and drive around any time you want to. And I suspect even those who routinely drive drunk don't truly think it's a fine thing to do. They're alcoholics and even less in control of their decision making process.

 

I can count on two hands the number of times I've even imbibed any alcohol, and I don't think I've EVER been drunk.

Nonetheless, I WON'T drive under any influence; alcohol of any amount, 'recreational pharmacuticals', perscription medication, excessive tiredness(see below it was 11pm after a long boring psych lecture), emotional distress (one of the worst things you can do after having a flaming row with your parents/kid(s)/spouse/significant other is to storm of and drive away in a huff; you'll likely prang the car up).

I can attest to that; it only took a moment for me to look down and turn on the winshield defroster, but when I glanced back up, that car I thought was driving along ahead of me was acutally STOPPED. My high-school sweetheart died in that accident.

 

Jaded Empath: I am so sorry.