anyone here ever drive drunk? c'mon... admit it! (you morons!)

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Basically, if some unexpected event occurs on the road, a sober person can react in time and do something to avoid a fatal crash.

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Obviously this is not true, as sober people die in avoidable car crashes everyday.

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A drunk person cannot. Period.

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And this is also not true, as it is imagineable that drunk people avoid would be fatal car crashes everyday, it just doesn't make the newspaper. Not every person that drives drunk dies or kills someone, as evidenced by this thread.


It should be obvious that the variance in the skill level of driving is so vast, that there must be some great drivers who can drive better drunk than some horrible drivers who are driving while sober.


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There is no arguing that fact.

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Well, I apparently just did argue this FACT.

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But not to any good purpose. So one has to wonder why you bothered at all. The most likely reason would be to justify your own bad behavior.

Regardless of anything noted above, driving drunk does indeed increase the chances of accidents. That alone is plenty of justification for not doing it. Especially since the result of accidents can be so severe as to be life-destroying or even deadly.

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Most people at the higher levels of the corporate world drive regularly at levels that would be considered illegal.

Indy

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This is probably pretty true, and some high-stress professions have incredible rates of alcoholism. Lawyers, for instance, are famous for boozing it up. I used to be in a union in a law office for the administrative staff there, and in the contract renegotiations, the lawyers wanted to get in on a joint medical plan with the employees, but it would have skyrocketed the employees' plan costs, partly because the stats on lawyers drinking problems were through the roof.

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s we'll just disagree on this point. I don't think any amount of driving skill can make up for the loss of reaction time alcohol causes. If your brain doesn't register that something dangerous is happening in time, you can't react in time to that danger, and it doesn't really matter how good you are.


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You seem to have trouble with the concepts of invincibility and being uniquely great. Some people are truly rockin', and they're way above us. They don't do the stupid stuff, are basically awesome, and nothing bad ever happens to them or ever will. The sooner you understand this, the more sense you'll be able to make of their quick dismissals of anything and everything, and, importantly, the quicker and more thoroughly you'll be able to understand OOT.

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Driving drunk is a way overstigmatized crime, IMO. Driving stupidly is way understigmatized, however. I'm not justifying driving drunk, I'm just saying that if you do it, you can take good precautionary measures to avoid getting into accidents:

1) Never drive remotely close to another car or vehicle, and use as many untraveled roads as possible on your way back home.

This is the key mistake people make, just as they do in normal driving (tailgating, driving next to cars, etc). If people followed proper following distances at all times there would be NO accidents, period.


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Not possible on freeways, or on many streets. Others choose the distance as much as you do. The proper distance between cars can be enormous, and on many roads the cars are too closer together for this ever to happen.

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2) Follow the speed limit, or go below it if you have to.


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Couldn't hurt, but the judgment to do that, as well as the concentration to keep doing it, both go down when drunk.

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3) When approaching or exiting a stop light or stop sign, use more caution than you normally would. Refrain from turning right on a red light unless the coast is absolutely clear.


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Common sense whether drunk or not, but it doesn't mean drunk driving became a better idea.

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4) Never drive drunk if you are feeling the least bit tired. Driving while tired is vastly more dangerous than driving drunk!


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Plain old wrong.

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That is all. If everyone follows these simple rules of the road, we will all be safer.

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Not even close. They'll be in a lot more danger if they think that by try to follow some simple commonsensical rules, the dangers of drunk driving are significantly ameliorated.

This sort of argument would be perhaps better steered toward what levels of being drunk are safe, not how to drive drunk more safely. Driving drunk is inherently unsafe. And using a drunk brain to follow rules and pay attention is definitely not playing to its strengths.

[mason55]

I almost got a DUI last night driving from one apartment in my complex to another. I was just being a jackass, squealing my tires, fishtailing, etc. I parked the car and was walking back to my apartment. As I was walking, a state trooper came out of nowhere and asked if I was the one making all the noise.

I told the worst lie of my life. I said "No, I'm walking back from a friends apartment. His address is forty... two... something or other. I can't remember. He lives over there though." Then I pointed at a grocery store. Somehow she let me go. I would never drive that drunk on a public street though.

Read the first few replies but it seems i am way in the minority in this one. Between me and my friends in
HS one of us drove and that person was always drunk. Not stumbling down drunk, but over the limit. This was in Alaska, seems to be a pretty accepted practice up here. I think one reason with us that it wasn't a huge issue is that there are tons of backroads up here and maybe 10 percent of the time we would see 1 car, and 0 percent of the time we saw a cop.

In college (colorado) never drove drunk once or even was in the car with someone who was drunk. Wed take a cab if no one ended up being sober.

Now that im back up here I don't really drive drunk anymore but thats mostly cause I am not really out drinkin.

I definantly would not have driven drunk in a more populated area and I actually tended to be fairly carefull drove slow and realized that I had been drinkin. I completly aggree that drinking and driving is wrong and in one way condoing it, but i also thinkin different people act differen't ways after drinkin, I knew plenty of people who were out of control drunks and never would have gotten in a car with them.

[ThaHero]

Some replies in this post made me look at things differently.

I'm not saying I won't drive after one or two drinks. I probably will.

But those nights I'm piss drunk, I'm gonna try not to drive anymore.

Guess this is a meaningless post...I dunno.

[Notorious G.O.B.]

Thank you, I commend you for your decision.

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Yeah, it's the opposite of meaningless, if you follow through.

Few of us are blameless, so almost all of us could do better. Doing a little better beats doing nothing or making excuses.

[Jake (The Snake)]

This attitude and all the others in this thread with the whole "Gee golly, I guess what I've been doing is wrong" really clears up for me why there are so many people killed each year drunk driving. I know 3 people from the last 5 years myself.

Wtf guys? Just don't bring your car when you go drinking, it's not that hard. I can't believe drunk driving is so acceptable.