Drunk Driving

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: 53
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 09:03 AM

Makes me sick.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Marion
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 02:45 PM

I was surprised to see Banjer's statement: "Many times I have been at some social function and have been asked if I would like a drink. When I say yes and then ask if they have a soft drink or non-alcoholic beverage I'm either ignored, looked down their nose at or in some other manner made to feel that I just commited a cardinal sin."

I don't drink either, but I haven't gotten any BS about it since first year college. We must be in different sections of Western society.


Wesley said: "Will you be more inclined in the future to remind patrons in a bar situation to be careful about drinking and driving ? What responsibility do we have as performers to talk about this on stage ?"

Interesting question. I'm planning my career in such a way to avoid bar singing. This is mostly because of the smoke, and secondarily because of a lack of desire to sing Candle in the Wind to people ignoring me. But another reason is the idea that the musician's job is to help the bar sell as many drinks as possible - I would have some ethical issues with this role.

Marion

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Raedwulf
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 05:08 PM

DW - My interest is piqued! What on earth do you do & what are your 'several bits of lethal machinery'?!

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 05:33 PM

alanabit, according to this website, there were 5.3 million people either incarcerated or under supervision of the criminal justice system in the States in 2001: please click here

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: alanabit
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 05:56 PM

Thanks Kat. It beggars belief that things are worse than I thought. Can you really be approaching a figure of nearly one per cent of your population in prison in The Land of the Free? I would so much rather have been totally wrong.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Banjer
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 06:52 PM

Marion, it just seems like if someone offers a drink and you specifiy a soft drink they get the impression that you are different, not of the 'in crowd' as it were. I personally have no problem with this, let them think what tehy will. ANother thought is that they are thoughtless enough to assume everyone that attends their wingding will want to imbibe and they have made no provisions for those that don't and consequently are annouyed that they now have to scrqamble for an alternative. I just mostly avoid such gatherings.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: GUEST,not doin that no more
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 08:27 PM

I occasionally wake up in a cold sweat when I think about some of the jackass stuff I did when I was young, but none makes me shudder like the -- fairly rare -- times I got behind the wheel with a skinful. And I'm not thinking about the risks I put myself to. One of the less charming things about youth is the way your indifference to tomorrow seems to extend to EVERYBODY ELSE'S tomorrow, too. Not malevolent, just completely oblivious.

That said, this thread seems to confirm the obvious: drunk driving's a pisspoor idea. So's doping. So we have the same old solutions: ever more drastic punishment. A sense of retribution's about all there is to recommend it. We've got to get more creative about our responses to a lot of things.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: michaelr
Date: 23 Oct 02 - 09:25 PM

Raedwulf -- since you asked relatively nicely this time, imagine the following situation:

I'm at the pub for my local Irish session. I'm there three hours, during which time I drink two pints of beer. This will put me at or over the legal limit of .08% alcohol in my bloodstream.

Still, it's only two pints. When I get in my car to drive home, I contend that I'm as safe and capable as if I had had two Shirley Temples. You would find no sign or symptom of intoxication.

You may or may not believe that, but I know it's a fact. Someone else might be slurring their words or weave in traffic after two pints, making them a hazard to others. I am not.

The point I was making is that the .08 limit is so low as to be silly. Might as well be 0.00, and maybe it should be.

I do not advocate driving while impaired!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: michaelr
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:31 PM

Almost a whole day, and no further insults?

Maybe he lost interest.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Troll
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:03 AM

If I am offered a drink, I ask for Diet Pepsi or club soda with a twist. If they say "Sure You don't want a beer or a mixed drink?", I simply state flatly that I cannot drink alcohol. First, it reacts with my medication, and second, I have been dry for over 20 years and I intend to stay that way.
That almost always ends the problem. I have been in sessions all over the British Isles and Ireland and have never had a moments trouble from anyone.
I stand my round when my turn comes.
I don't think that we will ever see the laws that we really need to stop the carnage on the highways because the American public is too enamored of its "right" to drive and too "Me" centered to see that a drunk driver has deliberately placed himself in a state of impairment with no thought of anyone but him/herself. Yet we let them keep driving because they could lose their job and their family (who are innocent of wrongdoing) would suffer.
And the BS excuses go on.

troll

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Troll
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:13 AM

I meant to add this:
First offense. One year suspension of drivers license and six months in jail. Sentences to be served consecutively.
Second offence. Five years suspension and three years jail time. Third offense. Permanent revocation of license and five years.
Fourth offense. Life imprisonment as an habitual criminal. No parole.
If a death results in either car from a DUI accident, Life with a chance of parole after 25 years unless it was a fourth offense.
And throw out the judges who won't go along.

Jed, I'm glad you're OK.

troll

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: alanabit
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:12 AM

While I agree that drunk driving is deserving of imprisonment, that can never be the acid test of whether a punishment can be instituted. I think that far too many people are already in prison in the UK - and as for the US - I'll stay out of that one for the rest of the thread! Of course, the attraction of this approach is that it does leave the rest of us at threat from one less drunken driver for the duration of the sentence. I still maintain that making drunk drivers clean up after bad accidents and confronting them more directly with the consequences of drunk driving would be more likely to prove effective in dissuading them from future offences. They do not often think of themselves as criminals. They need to be disabused of this wrong idea.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Gareth
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 07:28 PM

Don't drink and Drive. As an insurance proffesional I had to deal with the consequences too often.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 07:37 PM

Oh, wow, Troll! I completely agree with your ideas about drunk-driving sentences. :)

I've had two cars wrecked by drunks, so far. Luckily, I was only in the less major of the two wrecks, and escaped with a little whiplash.

I'm still going to kick your ass for that, Lech Malinowski. >:)

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Leadfingers
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 08:08 PM

I can remember when people would be quite surprised if you said 'No thanks i'm driving.And say Another half wont do any harm.Now,say you're driving and the response is total acceptance.SOME people have been actually been educated by the 'dont drink and drive'campaign

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 09:27 PM

Driving when your blood sugar gets low is pretty dangeous too, to add to that list Dtg gave.

And the point of that, I take it, isn't that it means that drunk driving is relatively OK, but that driving is a dangerous activity, and assuming that you're safe just because you haven't been drinking is just stupid and irresponsible.

I think there are a whole lot of people who psychologically are just not fit to drive, and driving tests should weed them out. Typically they think they are great drivers, and technically they may well be. Good enough, often enough, to escape from the accidernts they cause.

One of the most effective anti-drinking-when-driving advert I remember was on our TV in England. A couple driving home from a party or wherever, and the driver is driving safe as can be. Then some maniac in a car cuts across them and there's a crash, and this arrogant little sod leaps out angry and sneering, and clearly totally sober - and he leans in, and sniffs the breath of the driver whose car he ran into. "You've been drinking, haven't you?" he says, and laughs and the police car drives up...

The point being, even if you are careful as careful and genuinely safe, and above the limit, if anything happens, you are going to be the one in deep trouble.

(But isn't it a pity that in the USA you haven't got a rule that anybody whose been caught driving over the limit is be barred from being elected President?)

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 26 Oct 02 - 12:35 AM

I was very pleased to find that some of the "cowboy" bars around Austin, Texas not only encouraged someone in the group being a designated driver but actually let that designee have all the soft drinks they wanted, FREE!

I totally quit from 1958 until 1975 (it's a long story) and no one ever reacted negatively when I said "I don't drink." So much for peer pressure, which I never experienced when I was a teenager in highschool either. I drank and smoked on my own hook! We had friends who didn't do either and none of us ever gave them more than a light ribbing the first time and we shut up about it after that.

But we were very lucky, none of my friends were ever injured or killed in a car crash even though a few of us managed to total a car or two with minor cuts and bruises.

Four years ago a good friend was killed in a single car accident after having spent the evening eating and drinking but the ME said he didn't have a "significant" quantity of alcolhol in his blood. He had unfastened his seat belt to reach a laptop computer which was about to hit the floor just as his car went out of control entering a curve and when he hit the tree broadside he recieved massive head trauma and died immediately. Everytime I pass the crash site I beep the horn or wave. I have the feeling that he is still there.

CB

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: alanabit
Date: 26 Oct 02 - 07:32 AM

I couldn't agre more with McGrath's comments about drivers and their mentality. The sort of creep that says,"I drive fast but I'm safe", is usually the same complete asshole who thinks it is OK to follow someone's back bumper at a yard's distance when driving at seventy plus on the motorway. These people should also never have licences - and the driving test does not weed them out.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 26 Oct 02 - 08:51 PM

It's impossible to weed out the tailgaters unless they are caught in the act... and even then it's just a caution usually. I think we just rely on the Darwin awards to get rid of them...

Unfortunately, it's nearly always the innocent ones who get killed.

LTS

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Dani
Date: 26 Oct 02 - 09:16 PM

Have y'all seen this? Not for the faint of heart. It was on NPR, about a campaign in Texas to show the real consequences of drunk driving.

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/oct/texas_dwi/index.html

Glad you're mostly OK, Jed. We missed you at the Getaway.

Dani

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 27 Oct 02 - 01:36 AM

It would be interesting to see a tavern where anyone entering had to surrender their car keys on arrival and then pass a breathalyzer test to retreive them upon leaving.

The test, being independent of the bartender's judgement, would not be appealable. The keys could be retreived the following day.

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: open mike
Date: 27 Oct 02 - 01:04 AM

i had a good friend who died in a single car crash
after drinking. It was 3 years ago...I miss her.
Every October I am reminded that another year
has gone by without her. Her children do not
have a mom. At least they were not in the car.
there are warning bumps in the road near the
intersection. I drive past there every time
i go to town. I call them the kathy memorial
bumps.. I sang at her funeral and was pall gearer.
i can only hope that her passing was a hard
lesson which will remind us al to never drive
drunk. I believe there are bars around here
which provide soft drinks free of charge to
designated drivers. and pedi-cab drivers to
escort people home if they are within pedalling
distance from home...I also am a fire fighter,
so get called whenever a car has crashed...
saw a very sad site on a remote mountain road
of a fatal wreck where the passenger, a girl
about my daughters' ages was thrown out.
not only alcohol-related, but if only she had
bucked her belt she might be alive today..so
very sad, such a waste...

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: JudeL
Date: 27 Oct 02 - 04:21 AM

I'm glad to hear some places are encouraging the consumption of soft drinks by either giving them free to designated drivers or pricing them low. Unfortunately this seems to be quite a rare thing at least in the uk. Where I went last night a pint of real ale was £1.80, I asked for a pint of cola for my friend who was driving - the reply, " we don't do cola in pints" , they charged me £1.60 for a hiball glass of cola. When it only costs the publican about 5 or 6 pence for a pint of a soft drink out of those soda gun things why do they charge such ott prices!

Subject: RE: Drunk Driving
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Oct 02 - 04:40 AM

Because they know they have a captive audience.

I worked in a pub for several years (way back in my dim distant past) and it's a fact that those drinking soft drinks, drink less than those drinking alcohol. If you have someone buying 3 pints of beer, you make more money than the someone buying 1 pint of soft drink,usually over the same amount of time. The more alcohol you consume, the more you want... the more cola or OJ you drink, the more you just need to pee.

If they thought there'd be money to be made in soft drinks, they'd open up a dry pub.

LTS