NTSB recommends BAC of .05

[Valmy]

We need to change the thinking to "you can not drink any alcohol and drive".  And lowering the limit to 50 is a big part of that.

If that is not the end-game what did you have in mind?  If I can go out and have a drink with dinner and drive home doesn't that ruin your little plan of changing my thinking?

50 sounds perfectly reasonable to me.  It allows you to (depending on body weight and how fast you consume) 2 drinks with your dinner and still be fine.

Well I am fine with it goint to .05 and staying there.  It just sounded like you were saying we needed to get society to just never drink period and drive and this was just another step.

[Valmy]

Haven't read every single post in the last day or so, don't necessarily agree with Beeb's position, but quite impressive the way he dealing with several counterparties simultaneously.

He has gotten used to taking down multiple defense attorney excuses at once!

Well that or maybe him weighing in with his unpopular views in these sorts of areas has given him practice

[DGuller]

Just as it makes sense to punish everyone who gives their four year old child a rifle - whether or not that child uses it to kill a sibling?

Yes.  I'm not saying that the punishment should be the same as the punishment we dish out now for killing.  Let's say that on average, an idiot parent who buys his child a bazooka will kill 0.001 children.  Thus, every idiot parent should be punished for 0.001 murders.  We shouldn't punish the lucky idiots for zero murders, and unlucky idiots for 1 murder.

[Barrister]

Haven't read every single post in the last day or so, don't necessarily agree with Beeb's position, but quite impressive the way he dealing with several counterparties simultaneously.

Arguing about drunk driving is literally what I do for a living every day.   

[derspiess]

Haven't read every single post in the last day or so, don't necessarily agree with Beeb's position, but quite impressive the way he dealing with several counterparties simultaneously.

Arguing about drunk driving is literally what I do for a living every day.   

Well, one would think you'd be better at it then

[OttoVonBismarck]

A story concerning alcohol use and job prospects came to me on the way home. So we had a guy we were getting through the hiring process a subordinate of mine had decided to hire. He came in one day to report a...concerning incident from the weekend that my employee brought to me for advice on what to do. So our prospective hire basically says he was out with friends at a bar (he was a younger guy, mid-20s), and had too much to drink. He got separated from his friends and became disoriented as he was not in the town where he lives and was planning to stay with one of his friends that night. He finally arrives at a home he believes to be that of his friend, but finds the door locked and no one answers it. He breaks the door down because he assumes this is the home where he is supposed to be staying and in his intoxicated state he's under the impression that's the best thing to do.

He then passes out in the home. Except, the house belonged to an older woman who lived by herself but was out of the country for an extended vacation. Eventually the next morning when neighbors see the state of her front door, they call the local police, who arrive to find our prospective employee passed out in the home. He's charged with misdemeanor breaking and entering, and felony destruction of a Historical Landmark (the house was on the national register of historic places or some such, or maybe a local register.)

I was a little surprised to say the least when my employee brought this to me, my employee had talked with the guy and thought about the situation and he was still comfortable with hiring. Plus, from an HR perspective while obviously we can call criminal background and personal judgment type issues into question, for various political reasons policies as written for the civilian employees of the DoD (this was back in my DoD days--and this guy was a highly educated, professional-track guy in a specialized technology field) we couldn't just say no to someone because they were charged with a crime. We still could have stopped his hire at that point, but with my employee going to bat for him I was willing to consider our options. So I have the guy come in to speak with me personally, and he gives me a pretty good explanation that I can sympathize with, in that he simply became too intoxicated and made some bad decisions. So when talk to our people who are doing his security clearance and stuff, and they get back to us in a few days basically saying that anything related to alcohol that isn't a "pattern of behavior" isn't an immediate problem for them, and they'll get back to us. Ended up we hire the guy and years later now he's a pretty high ranking guy overseeing some big research project at the Department of the Navy after some career changes.

But interestingly there was a detail of his adventuresome night he left out of his telling to us, and I only found out maybe two years later when on a whim I decided to check up on his incident in a local newspaper search. I found the police blurb from the night of his arrest and it said something like, "Police arrived at the residence to find the front door broken in. They found the door to one of the downstairs bathrooms blocked, when they pushed it open they found an extremely intoxicated male unconscious on the other side of the door who appeared to be covered in his own feces." I was basically in shock when I read it, it wasn't a material part of his criminal charge so it wasn't like he had lied to us (and I sure as hell wouldn't have shared those details) but I can't imagine having my name in the papers with that story attached to it. Also confirms earlier when I said no one should want to be a LEO, I'm sure that was not that officer's first time dealing with a situation like that.

[Valmy]

Stories like this remind me I really have no idea what it is like to be drunk.  Even in my worst moments I never got anywhere near drunk enough to do that.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's very difficult to get that drunk just from regular drinking. But if you hardcore binge drink your BAC spikes very high and you get very, very intoxicated to the point most people black out. Most people at that point spend the rest of the night in a mixed state of unconsciousness and vomiting but some people retain a degree of function while blacked out and can get into big troubles. It really can't happen with regular drinking, and is something you only see with mostly younger males engaging in the kind of hardcore binge drinking associated with that group. Basically people that use beer bongs to drink 10 beers in 1.5 hours or take shot after shot of liquor or something else that's out of bounds with how you're supposed to enjoy alcohol.

[Barrister]

Stories like this remind me I really have no idea what it is like to be drunk.  Even in my worst moments I never got anywhere near drunk enough to do that.

That's why alcohol can be a real bitch sometimes.  I mean - it tastes good.  It can feel great to be drunk.  But maybe twice I've gotten so blotto drunk I couldn't remember what I was even doing, and that SUCKS.

Mind you what I was doing wasn't in any way bad - I guess I'm a pretty happy drunk.

[Malthus]

Stories like this remind me I really have no idea what it is like to be drunk.  Even in my worst moments I never got anywhere near drunk enough to do that.

Never woken up with the cops harrasing you because you are covered with your own shit in some old lady's house?

You are just no fun. 

Reminds me of the "naked chef" incident my friend told me about.

Basically, my friend goes on a date with this chef dude who proceeds to get righteously hammered - to the point where he basically passes out on her couch. She throws a blanket over him and goes to bed by herself. Next thing she knows, some cops are in her bedroom asking if she's okay.

Waht happened is this: chef dude wakes up, still hammered. Decides to get naked and find my friend. But first, he needed to pee. So he looked for the can ... but was so drunk that he just walked out the door of her apartment instead. Eventually, he wanders out the door of the building, which shuts and locks behind him. He has a pee on the front lawn, but can't get back in ... so he goes to sleep on the "welcome" mat.

Next morning, early, landlord is up and about and finds a naked body on his welcome mat. Police are called. They wake chef dude and take him to the station. Chef dude has no idea what number of apartment he came from. Cops look around for the one with the open door and wander in.

The kicker? His wife came to collect him from the station! [Naturally, he'd made no mention of her existence before to my friend]. 

A second date was not had.   

[Admiral Yi]

It's very difficult to get that drunk just from regular drinking. But if you hardcore binge drink your BAC spikes very high and you get very, very intoxicated to the point most people black out. Most people at that point spend the rest of the night in a mixed state of unconsciousness and vomiting but some people retain a degree of function while blacked out and can get into big troubles. It really can't happen with regular drinking, and is something you only see with mostly younger males engaging in the kind of hardcore binge drinking associated with that group. Basically people that use beer bongs to drink 10 beers in 1.5 hours or take shot after shot of liquor or something else that's out of bounds with how you're supposed to enjoy alcohol.

I was gonna say the only way to get that drunk is to get drunk first then engage in competitive drinking after you're drunk.

[OttoVonBismarck]

That's why alcohol can be a real bitch sometimes.  I mean - it tastes good.  It can feel great to be drunk.  But maybe twice I've gotten so blotto drunk I couldn't remember what I was even doing, and that SUCKS.

Mind you what I was doing wasn't in any way bad - I guess I'm a pretty happy drunk.

Yeah, from what I've seen the collegiate style binge drinking is what will usually bring this out. But there have been a few times in my life when I've had "long days" that start with early morning golf where we're drinking, then lunch where we're drinking, then a cookout where we start drinking heavily where the sheer accumulation of alcohol gets me nice and drunk by the waning hours of day and I've gotten to that point that way. But typically normal drinking I've never had that happen, and even heavy drinking over the course of a day it only very rarely has lead to that--but it can happen.

For many people there is a safety valve in that the more you drink the closer you get to just passing out which removes you from trouble, but sometimes your mind basically passes out but your body keeps going. There's a guy I know about from news stories and such who was like a senior in college from a really wealthy family who got really drunk by bonging beers. He drives home on the interstate, people who saw him going by said it was uncanny because he was perfectly within the lines, no swerving, going normal interstate speeds (not slow and not speeding.) He was basically driving perfectly--except he was going northbound on the southbound interstate lanes. When he collided with another car he killed three people and ended up getting an extremely long prison sentence (I think 45+ years or something.) Anyway, he now is big into educational outreach while in prison, and in his telling of the story he says what's so horrible is he has absolutely no recollection of ever getting in the car. He had every intention when he drove to that party that night to crash with his friends, and the last thing he remembers he was just talking with some of them outside. The next memory he has is being under arrest in the hospital. [His wealthy dad is a real piece of work, the son is basically deeply remorseful for what he did, makes no excuses, thinks he fully got the punishment he deserves etc. The dad in every interview he's ever given makes excuses, claims his son was drugged etc.]

[DGuller]

I was gonna say the only way to get that drunk is to get drunk first then engage in competitive drinking after you're drunk.

And you have to have a shitload of experience drinking, because normal people are just going to get too sick to keep drinking at some point.

[crazy canuck]

I was gonna say the only way to get that drunk is to get drunk first then engage in competitive drinking after you're drunk.

I did that.  Once.

[Malthus]

Drinking simply affects different people differently.

I'm a happy drunk - I get talkative and then sleepy. My wife's sister's husband is a violent, paranoid drunk - you just don't want to be near him when he's been drinking. Similarly, most people simply get sick if they have had too much, and eventually pass out, but others do not.