Beer Baron wrote: I have a better idea. How about a program that provides breathalyzers to bars and gives bartenders the authority to confiscate a person's keys overnight if they fail a test. Or heck, how about just provide the breathalyzers in bars for them to advise people that they are unsafe to drive.
Or just have the cops drive everyone home in those paddy wagons they have parked just around the corner from all the popular bars!
One of the bars on my campus here in Denmark has a breathalyzer, but I think it is more for show boating as no one has a car and most people at this bar live on campus. To say the Danes like to drink is a bit of an understatement.
Every time we have ever had a brethalyzer when we were drinking (whether the real deal or the cheapo $10 ones) it always turns into a drinking game.
The law is reasonable as it stands. The problem isn't marginally impaired drivers, it's repeat offenders that are perpetually plastered. Lock them up and sell their vehicle. Stop writing wacky laws that don't get enforced 99% of the time anyway.
fritzsch wrote: One of the bars on my campus here in Denmark has a breathalyzer, but I think it is more for show boating as no one has a car and most people at this bar live on campus. To say the Danes like to drink is a bit of an understatement.
Saw one of those wall ones in Germany. It was crap.
I was thinking more like providing a hand held one to the bartender to be able to request a patron test on.
Snorting or genrally abusing prescription pills like Xanax, Loritabs, Opanion, et al, are destroying lives, driving or not, far more then anyone drinking and driving. Wasting considerable efforts to bring back Prohibition.
random question...
if weed were legal everywhere, would more people choose to get blazed rather than drunk?
Wouldn't that reduce the # of drunk drivers on the road?
...and add some slower driving overly paranoid ones? 
mtn wrote: Every time we have ever had a brethalyzer when we were drinking (whether the real deal or the cheapo $10 ones) it *always* turns into a drinking game.
Yeah!! Last Lemons race one of our team members blew a .20 ... the next morning, after having "slept it off." They went back to bed.
I kept playing with it and never got above a .10 but I was trying not to have a hangover the next day. Hangovers and racing don't mix.
1988RedT2 wrote: The problem isn't marginally impaired drivers, it's repeat offenders that are perpetually plastered.
This.
dculberson wrote:mtn wrote: Every time we have ever had a brethalyzer when we were drinking (whether the real deal or the cheapo $10 ones) it *always* turns into a drinking game.Yeah!! Last Lemons race one of our team members blew a .20 ... *the next morning,* after having "slept it off." They went back to bed. I kept playing with it and never got above a .10 but I was trying not to have a hangover the next day. Hangovers and racing don't mix.
Which is why one should always chug a couple beers before getting in the car. You know, to get rid of the hangover. That, and I'm very self-conscious about my driving.
In all seriousness: I'd been meaning to post a thread anyway. Be careful out there. For some reason, the guys at the liquor store really like me (maybe because I warrant a full time employee just for me.) I'll hang out with them every now end then and shoot the E36 M3 while they smoke cigarettes. The amount of people who stumble in there DRUUUUUUUUNK at 6:00 on a Friday or Saturday evening is sickening. Swear on my life, a couple weeks ago, we're standing outside, and dude says "Look at this motherberkeleyer...."
He has two beer bottles in his hand. One is empty. The other one is accidentally emptied as he stumbles over the curb trying to get to the door. I'm sure the dude inside refused to sell him more. They're pretty hard core about that. There were probably a bunch of "right" things I could've done at that point, but I chose to get in my car and get the berkeley away from there before dude got back on the road. In my experience, saying "hey dude, why don't you let me give you a ride home" ends up with a fight and the cops called.
Anyway. Be careful. I see a lot of berkeleyed up E36 M3 on an 80 mile round-trip commute. Most of it is in the evening.
As a diabetic, this scares the E36 M3 out of me.
Appleseed wrote: As a diabetic, this scares the E36 M3 out of me.
It shouldn't, common sense is out there, cops smell your breath first and if not just get a blood test.
aussiesmg wrote: ...common sense is out there...
mtn wrote: Now lowering it in general? I guess I'm not against it, maybe down to whatever the BAC is for a 150 lb man immediately after having one 5% alcohol 12 oz beer--we'll call it X.
really not realistic .... when I was a bartender many many yrs ago, the Asheville Police Department conducted a public service/awareness booth/table set up in our bar.
no radios, no way of contacting outside officers. they were there so people could get an idea of how alcohol affected them.
I was used as there standard for comparison purposes, when I came off duty, I sat down and did a breathalyzer, and blew a 0.00.
then had my "coming off shift" beer (not anywhere near 5%) and immediately blew again. guess what ... it was way over .2 ... falling down drunk ...
after a 10 min. wait I tried again and was down to a .02 (this to the best of my memory... keeping in mind this was in 1980) this part of the "test" was to point out to people that their claim that they had just finished A beer wasn't a very good defense.
I then proceeded to consume my normal amt. of evening beers. re-testing after each, and then waiting 10 min. and testing again.
eventually my numbers tended to even out ... that is the % immediately after a beer got closer and closer to being the same thing, this to point out to everyone that if you were pulled over as soon as you left the bar, you would have quite a bit of time between being pulled over and the time it would take for the officer to make the determination that you should be transported to the station, given time to call your witness/lawyer .... before you had to blow ...
it took longer and longer for my BAL to drop the more alcohol I consumed ...(gee imagine that)
back then they didn't have the roadside breathalyzers, and I don't know if those are the definitive tests that are used at your trial or not.
all of this to point out that the level of BA immediately after consuming a drink isn't a valid number
and to someone else's comment, yeah, someone that's accustomed to a large intake of alcohol and has a load on will not appear as drunk as someone who doesn't drink and has 1 or 2 drinks even though their BAL will be hugely different
xflowgolf wrote: ...if weed were legal everywhere, would more people choose to get blazed rather than drunk?
It might help a little bit but it's not like people are having trouble finding weed now and alcoholics will still drink. Weed does not quench that "thirst".
Woody wrote: I have a friend who happens to be more of a fan of drinking than of driving. He was busted once about 15 years ago and I don't think he's ever driven after drinking again. But at the time, he paid his fine, dealt with the suspended license and took the classes. I remember him making an very interesting point. Statistically, most people continue to drive while they're under suspension. Therefore, their car insurance probably doesn't cover them if they're in an accident. If the limits are lowered, there would effectively be more uninsured drivers on the road at the same sobriety levels. I'm not arguing for or against but just think about that...
this ......
in the days that I drank ( a lot ) and drove ... if I had been stopped and lost my license, I would have keep driving.. just hoping I wouldn't get stopped again (that would involve jail time) ...
now my drivers license means A LOT MORE to me than it did then ... I can't enter any a-x or TT without a valid state drivers license ... I'm not going to have it taken away for something so stupid as drunk driving
wbjones wrote:mtn wrote: Now lowering it in general? I guess I'm not against it, maybe down to whatever the BAC is for a 150 lb man immediately after having one 5% alcohol 12 oz beer--we'll call it X.really not realistic .... when I was a bartender many many yrs ago, the Asheville Police Department conducted a public service/awareness booth/table set up in our bar. *snip*
Ok, 10 minutes afterwards. That is the point you were making, right? That immediately after finishing the beer isn't a good time?
I drive better half in the bag than 50% of the fools out there anyway. I also have years of practice drunk driving as a teenager in a small town. If you have to put a hand over one eye to be able to follow only one road, its time to slow down.
It actually takes a pretty fair amount of beer to get over .08. We calculated out one day, based on our body weight and stuff, that if we drank no more than one beer every half hour, we stayed under the limit.
There may have been some beer involved in that math, too, so don't take that as gospel.
bravenrace wrote: As someone who also enjoys both beer and driving, I am painfully aware that many people have a hard enough time driving safely when sober, so as long as this ruling would also include no cell phone usage while driving, I would "consider" supporting it. I would have to know a lot more than I do about the intricacies of the issue to know for sure.
Both have happened in Ontario. Our limit has been effectively lowered to 0.05 and using a cell phone while driving is now illegal unless using hands free.
I am a bit biased but anything that takes drunk drivers off the road is fine by me. My high school girlfriend and my father-in-law were killed by drunk drivers and I lost the sight in one eye when I was t-boned by one who ran a stop sign.
Dr. Hess wrote: If we banned automobiles from public roads we would save 50K lives a year. Do it. For the children.
Just to continue the saga...
But since far fewer are killed in motorcycle accidents (today before cars are banned) let us keep them! Bikes FTW!!!!
Once everyone is on motorcycles and scooters we can ban them also and start farming our little plots of land and barter for things since we'll have no $. Neanderthal here we come...
aussiesmg wrote:Appleseed wrote: As a diabetic, this scares the E36 M3 out of me.It shouldn't, common sense is out there, cops smell your breath first and if not just get a blood test.
Just like regular people, 99% of cops are sensible. Its that 1% E36 M3head that I fear.
Look how well zero tolerance rules work in other situations. I can't see how a .0001 BAC rule could go poorly.
It's bad news for the mouthwash industry.
mtn wrote:wbjones wrote:Ok, 10 minutes afterwards. That is the point you were making, right? That immediately after finishing the beer isn't a good time?mtn wrote: Now lowering it in general? I guess I'm not against it, maybe down to whatever the BAC is for a 150 lb man immediately after having one 5% alcohol 12 oz beer--we'll call it X.really not realistic .... when I was a bartender many many yrs ago, the Asheville Police Department conducted a public service/awareness booth/table set up in our bar. *snip*
after one beer ... 10 min later you won't reg. high enough to be noticed .... hint: read my entire post .. after 10 min. my BAL was at a level of statistical noise ... the info gathered at that test showed that someone that only had a few (if that was the actual fact) wouldn't blow a high enough number to be a reason to hold them ...
so no 10 min and 1 beer would be almost as useless as you're original proposal
that study showed, 1 beer per hr wouldn't get you in trouble, 2 - 3 would... depending on your size, and how many hours you kept drinking ... more than 3 per hr ... you're taking your chances
""
aussiesmg wrote:Appleseed wrote: As a diabetic, this scares the E36 M3 out of me.It shouldn't, common sense is out there, cops smell your breath first and if not just get a blood test.
Like getting pulled over and given a field sobriety test because the cop can smell alcohol in the car?..................Because you just picked your wife up from a night with the girls?
This has disaster written all over it.
If me drinking 2 beers over an hour lunch could now possibly end with a life and job crushing DUI conviction, guess who won't be going out to dinner or brunch anymore.
Yay for the nanny state! I bet there are people in this thread who still think over the last 20 years that gun violence has increased!!!
/flounder.
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