Michael Turner: Idiot

If you have more than one drink/beer, you shouldn't drive. Technically, you can be popped for DUI even after one drink, if the cop decides you're impaired, but I'm choosing to be lenient.

 

I agree, and that's why I advocate a massive PR campaign stressing the same - either by law enforcement or an advocacy group like MADD. People can convince themselves they are under .08. They can't convince themselves that they haven't had a sip. You have to alter the social more, to re-calibrate the stigmatized behavior, and it can be done. Even drinking and driving in general was once, in the not-too-distant past, considered to be akin to jaywalking. Watch "North by Northwest" some time. Cary Grant's DUI is played for maximum comic effect.

Of course, at this point, you start to bring in the economic impact that such a paradigm shift in behavior would have on the bar and restaurant industry ...

 

I think someone needs to scare the shit out of people.

1. It will cost you several thousand dollars.
2. You will go to jail for the night.
3. Your name will most likely be published in a newspaper
4. You have to put this on every job application you ever fill out.
5. YOU COULD FUCKING KILL SOMEONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

We've been trying to scare people sober for decades. DUI/DWI arrests have flattened out, but will likely never go away entirely.

www.flickr.com/photos/trialsanderrors/2804370678/

 

Then our ads have gotten progressively worse over the years. Because the ones I'm seeing on TV these days are lame as hell.

Guy is out having a good time. Comes across a checkpoint. Looks worried. Cut to him in the back of the cop car with a sad look on his face. Endut. Hoch hech.

Yeah, that shit's scarier than The Exorcist.

 

I agree with everything else, but DUI is most places is a misdemeanor, and one that expires from your record after a period of time. Most job applications ask if you've ever been convicted of a felony.

Your first point is the biggest one. For anyone who thinks a couple of cab rides is too expensive, a DUI will cost you in the neighborhood of $1,000 just in fines, and if you need a lawyer for any reason, you're talking $4,000-5,000 extra. Plus you'll have to go to substance abuse training and likely driving school to get rid of all of the points on your license.

Pay the damn $20 for the cab ride.

 

They definitely emphasize the short-term consequence - "Man, it would suck to get in trouble!" - rather than the long-term ones. I guess the idea is that people can figure out the rest of the story. But you're right: Drive it home. (No pun intended.)

 

I don't think this part is true. A criminal conviction is a criminal conviction. Some states have an expungement process, but this isn't something that just goes away into the ether, like an eight-year-old late credit card payment. I have speeding tickets from when I was a teen-ager that are still on my driving record.

 

I'm sorry, but that's just way over the top. I took my daughter to the Rangers game Friday night. In the second inning, I had one of their standard-issue (20 oz. draft) light beers. That was all I had had to drink to that point (and I didn't have anything else that night). Had I chugged that beer down and got into my car immediately (and had the alcohol gone straight into my bloodstream), my blood alcohol content would have been slightly under .02. Suppose in the sixth inning I had had another (I didn't and wouldn't, but suppose I did). That's 40 ounces of draft light beer, so we're talking approx. 3.5 beers over a 3.5/4-hour timeframe. At no point in the evening would my blood alcohol content have been near 0.02, which is the minimum point at which very, very subtle impairment begins to appear. Even had I had that second beer, by the time I turned on the ignition to go home, my BAC would have been all but zero.

I will say that one thing I've learned over the years -- as a result of using these BAC estimators -- is just how impaired someone at 0.08 really is. When I was first of legal drinking age, the limit was 0.10. For me to hit 0.10, I'd have to pour down about 10 light beers in two hours and I would be absolutely torn up. I can't imagine that being the threshold. Even 0.08 is ridiculous. For me to hit that at a baseball game, I'd have to drink six of those 20-ounce light beers and I just can't imagine drinking that much.

 

If that's a risk you're willing to take, go for it.

 

easy print ad: Two enormous guys with tats all over their face and prison unis. Underneath: These guys love it when you drink and drive.

 

Sorry, I was confused. I think it goes off your DRIVING record after 10 years, from what I was told in Arizona. But it never leaves your criminal record.

And maybe that's changed in the last 12 years. The whole thing is confusing.