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It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. Over here, drinking and driving is an extreme

It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. Over here, drinking and driving is an extremely shameful and embarrassing thing to do. I would say it's on par with hitting a child. You just don't do it, not to save 20 bucks, or to save you from walking an hour.

kneel 10y ago
>It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. Drinking and driving is still very taboo in the US. It's just that most areas of the country require an automobile to get around and most people have a car. One more thing, no one should be surprised that people drink and drive anywhere. People make all sorts of terrible decisions when they're intoxicated, they're drunk after all.
- metafunctor 10y ago
  Not quite as taboo as many other countries [1], unfortunately. You give two excuses to drink and drive. Both are indefensible. The first excuse is "need a car to get around, have car". I live in a sparsely populated area as well, and everyone uses a car to get around. When we go out drinking, we plan ahead. The most common options are designated drivers, taxis, sleeping over, walking, or cycling. The second excuse is "can't expect to make good decisions while drunk". That's a bit intellectually dishonest. The decision to think about how to get back later, knowing you're going to be drinking, is a bad decision made while entirely sober. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States#International_Comparisons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_St...
  - m-j-fox 10y ago
    Walking and cycling are going to get you killed at the same rate if not higher as driving. I guess you're not as likely to kill someone else.
    - Griffinsauce 10y ago
      You guess? That is the whole thing with drunk driving. You endanger others. With a conscious choice I might add, when you go somewhere and drunk driving is the only way home.
    - jlarocco 10y ago
      The point of DUI being illegal isn't to protect drunk drivers; it's to protect everybody else (and everything) nearby.
    - lsc 10y ago
      Yup. I think that as a culture, we need to think more about the risks we take with other people's lives. I think this is best demonstrated by the minimum liability insurance required to operate a car. In California, right now, you can drive a car with only $35K in liability insurance... which is crazy. Sure, that will cover most cars, but it won't even cover a moderate injury. Very few people have the assets required to pay for a serious injury, and therefore, the victim is usually under-compensated. Right now, cars are essentially being subsidized by the people who are getting hurt who get under compensated, because few people have enough liability insurance (or assets) to cover the cost of really hurting someone. If the injuries per mile were better factored into the cost of driving (which could be done by increasing the liability insurance minimum) driving would be a lot more expensive; quite possibly, once you factor in injuries, other, safer forms of transport would start looking practical.
      - mschuster91 10y ago
        > In California, right now, you can drive a car with only $35K in liability insurance... which is crazy. Sure, that will cover most cars, but it won't even cover a moderate injury. Very few people have the assets required to pay for a serious injury, and therefore, the victim is usually under-compensated. In Germany, there are regulations for this. The mandatory insurance has a minimum coverage of 7.5M € for injuries, 1.12M € for property damages and 50 k€ for other accident related costs. And yet our car insurances are affordable AND the insurers make really nice profits.
      - 10y ago
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    A lot of people simply don't care. They feel they can make it, they're skilled enough. It's actually similar to speeding, which incidentally is responsible for more traffic deaths and accidents - drivers don't give a fuck, they're smarter than the system. The only way I know of actually beating some reason into people thinking like that is through heavy and sure penalties. Lots of alcohol spot-checks. Automatic ticketing for speeding measured via average, not instantaneous speed. DUI, you lose license. Speed, you're half-way to losing one. Politically untenable perhaps, but I could see it making a dent in deaths on the roads.
    - rmc 10y ago
      Exactly, it's more socially acceptable in the USA.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Cycling while drunk is illegal in some places.
- ng12 10y ago
  > is still very taboo in the US Depends on where you are. In rural America it's borderline socially acceptable (unfortunately).
  - douche 10y ago
    In many places in rural America, it's borderline socially acceptable to drive while drinking. See "Road sodas"...
    - ams6110 10y ago
      Yep, this happens all the time. I think it's even legal in some states, as long as you are not over the BAC limit.
- jwr 10y ago
  How is it a taboo? I notice that in almost every US TV show I watch, people drink and drive. Or drink and if you think, you know there is no other way for them to get home except in the car they arrived in. It's very visible once you notice it once.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kneel 10y ago
    >How is it a taboo? I notice that in almost every US TV show I watch, people drink and drive. It's also quite common to see fictional murders on television but that doesn't make it any less taboo.
- manarth 10y ago
  > no one should be surprised that people drink and drive anywhere. > People make all sorts of terrible decisions when they're intoxicated Many people make a Ulysses pact: if they're going out drinking, they make the decision whilst sober to leave the car at home, removing any temptation to use it to get home later when they're drunk.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    >Ulysses pact I knew a guy in college who often got totally hammered when he went out. He would always give his bus money home to one of his companions he was out with to hold onto so that he wouldn't accidentally spend it or lose it.
- dx034 10y ago
  I think it's not taboo, the (social, not legal) definition is just a different one. In most countries, having more than one beer and driving is considered drunk driving. In the US, as long as you're not wasted people assume it's ok to drive home (there's no alternative anyway). Having 4-5 beer over a few hours and driving home is completely normal in most parts of the US. In most European countries, that's socially unacceptable.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    Went to school in a college town in the US. I always based it on how much alcohol your body should can process, roughly a beer an hour. So if I started drinking at a party four hours ago and had five beers, I figured I was sober enough to go home. I usually did most of my drinking at the beginning of the night anyway (intentionally so this would be a viable strategy), so I was mostly sobering up at the end. But there were still plenty of nights where I slept on the host's couch or floor until morning, and a few times where I made poor decisions because I really, really didn't want to have to find other transportation (mostly just getting in the car with people who I couldn't determine if they were sober enough to drive). Taxis really are awful in small towns.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  It isn't taboo in the US. Though, less socially acceptable than it used to be. It depends on the social circle you are in though if you know very frequently drunk drivers vs responsible drivers. Most people I met in adulthood don't think twice drinking and driving but most people I meet in childhood will tend to discourage it. I don't really know why other than maybe different peer influence? When people see me call a cab they openly say "I just drive home drunk." Like it's nothing. Similarly I've had cab drivers commend me for not driving drunk. "Oh, you called a cab, that's good most people would just drive drunk." I have co-workers who spend most Friday afternoons (12-5) at the bar and drive right home after like it's nothing. These people don't think driving drunk is a problem. Personally, I can't understand why you'd go out and drink if you had no way to get home. It doesn't come unexpectedly out of nowhere. If there's no transportation you are still making a choice in the matter. I don't buy excuses, when you choose to go out and choose to start drinking while you are out without a designated driver you are making both choices and making them sober. If it was that taboo, people simply would either stay home or have a designated driver. It's really not that difficult. In fact, I know people who will all meet at the bar and instead of car pooling with a rotating DD they will just all travel in their own cars independently and all drive home drunk.
  - magic_beans 10y ago
    I know many people who wouldn't consider themselves "drunk drivers" because they have a high tolerance for alcohol and are still fine after 3 drinks. I think this is probably true for a lot of people, especially in rural areas.
vincnetas 10y ago
Where are you from?
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
It isn't that, the cab rides are never just $20, and often there are no cabs at all. The USA just has crappy non car transportation options. And it isn't just an hour walk in many places, but a few hours walk on dark streets with no side walks. When I was living in the Deep South, I sometimes had to take people home 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere.
- wapz 10y ago
  > 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere That's the reason there are no cabs and I don't blame cab drivers. They don't get paid to sit around 40 minutes to find a passenger. I'm surprised that finding an uber in one of those places is not difficult either. Outside of the US, a lot of the population is very condensed (well the US is to some degree) making cabs and public transportation much more efficient/effective IMO.
  - Griffinsauce 10y ago
    Sounds like a perfect case for autonomous cars. They don't have to be paid to wait.
    - ojilles 10y ago
      They do, right? Needs to be depreciated.
    - posguy 10y ago
      Gas, wear and tear & depreciation aren't free though, these are always going to be higher cost areas to serve.
      - developer2 10y ago
        Except that you are not paying for "gas, wear and tear & depreciation" when you call a taxi. You're not even paying for the human driver. You are paying for the monopoly. Even if calling a driverless car cost more for remote areas, it would (or at least could) still cost a fraction of the cost of a taxi. $30 instead of $120 for a long distance drive is totally reasonable.
wingerlang 10y ago
> It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. You should see Thailand. Many districts in Bangkok have their own dedicated pool of motorbike-taxis often located at specific points. The group of them outside my previous apartment frequently shared whiskey or beer with me after dropping me off.
- qume 10y ago
  Our Uber driver in Tennessee came into the bar with us and had a few beers.
jack9 10y ago
Just south of the US border, drinking and driving is the norm. Edit: Whoops, guess I hit a nerve with an uncomfortable truth. The lax enforcement in mexico, is just something industrialized people rarely think about...until you get there. But hey, argue about it on the internet and tell that to the drive-up neighborhood beer and fish taco stands from ensenada to tiajuana. I never go farther south, but I'm sure it's the same.
- qume 10y ago
  erm, i've lived in the US for a few years and mexico about double that, and can say in Mexico it's similar to New Zealand, UK, etc where it's not really acceptable. But yea the border towns are probably like the worst parts of the US, which is the worst country I've come across when it comes to drunk driving.
- pm90 10y ago
  How is it even possible to drive on the roads during weekends? I imagine if there's lax enforcement, there will be a LOT more drunk driving related accidents??
- dx034 10y ago
  North of the border as well. Spend a Friday evening at the West Coast around LA, very few people driving home from bars or restaurants will be sober.
acjohnson55 10y ago
You should see British Virgin Islands.
minikites 10y ago
An interesting analogy because a lot of people in the USA also think it's good to hit (spank) children.
MrFantastic 10y ago
I don't drive drunk, it's not worth the risk; BUT millions of people drive drunk every day and 99.999% get home safely so in their minds it seems safe enough. It's not as if the instant your BAC goes over .08 you are driving like bumper cars.
- Mo3 10y ago
  I live in Bavaria. Everyone drives over the limit if home is not too far away. Noone ever gets caught. I on the other hand have lost my license for smoking weed 2 days earlier. Sigh..
  - magic_beans 10y ago
    Is it common to smoke in public places?
    - Mo3 10y ago
      No. You go to jail. Drinking in public places is however legal and appreciated.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I disagree with that number. You're saying that 1 in 100,000 people don't get home safely while drink driving. That's 10 times lower than the yearly death rate from simply driving. And 1/3 road deaths are caused by drink driving.
  - MrFantastic 10y ago
    My number is wrong, I just made it up. I think that actually number is more like 99.95% for a person with a .08. My point is that if you didn't care about moral hazard, the odds are overwhelming that you will make it home safe even if you drive drunk. I'm not condoning, just explaining drunk driving logic. That 1/3 road deaths is artificially inflated because if you had 1 drink and well under the legal limit it still counts as alcohol related fatality.
tbihl 10y ago
As other people have pointed out, it's largely a byproduct of our development patterns, and it's also somewhat regional. Where I grew up, it was pretty common for people have driven drunk before they ever reached drinking age.
overcast 10y ago
It's extremely shameful, and embarrassing here. No one looks up to you for that shit. Unfortunately we don't make it very easy for drunks to get home, so they do stupid things.
- magic_beans 10y ago
  Where do you live? It's "shameful" in the US to, but it still happens.
  - overcast 10y ago
    New York
- metafunctor 10y ago
  If you drive to a place you know you'll be drinking at, you're doing stupid things while sober.
deadbunny 10y ago
Yeah, In my younger days I'd walk home 5 miles every Saturday from my local club, usually about 1.5-2 hours depending just how drunk I was. No one even thought of driving drunk, it's just something that you don't do.
JamesBarney 10y ago
I've noticed how taboo it is differs dramatically by city. In the South with is sprawling roads and lack public transportation its more acceptable but in large cities in the North it's much more taboo.
kyleblarson 10y ago
Up until very recently it was still legal to drink WHILE driving in Montana: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700061870/No-more-Montana-drinking-driving.html http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700061870/No-more-Montana...
differentView 10y ago
> Over here We don't know where you are, you need to tell us where "here" is.
derefr 10y ago
The [rural] US is much, much more spread out than most countries. This means that people in the rural US think of driving as a necessary and basic component of life; driving is just "how you get places", if there are places you need to get. So drinking and driving, though shameful, is necessarily normalized (not wholly, but somewhat) by people who are drunk, and yet need to go places. That, and by the fact that in a lot of the very rural areas, drunk driving has a rather low fatality rate, given that there are no other cars on the road and no obstacles to crash into. If you run off the road, you just drive into some corn or wheat or alfalfa, or at worst hit somebody's cows. (These are the same places you'll see people e.g. allowing their young children to drive trucks or motorcycles—even by themselves, at night. There's just nothing much that can go wrong.) (I think this is all also true of rural Russia, which is a large part of where the American stereotype of Russians as constantly drinking comes from.)
- lazyasciiart 10y ago
  It's a common misconception that rural roads are safer than urban, but it's just not true. The fatality rate is higher on rural roads (both in total and per mile driven) and rural roads are massively over represented in road accident stats for the percentage of the population that lives in them. Shitty google AMP link to a pdf: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812181&ved=0ahUKEwjrsYLU_5HTAhUYzmMKHTumCHQQFggaMAA&usg=AFQjCNFZKwiEuTHnV4JdTiIUp6ndAJgeVg&sig2=389rcN9Wkpq-wVP1WtdJ0g https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- belovedeagle 10y ago
  Exactly this, but it should be made clear that this has nothing to do with the general safety of rural roads. In general there are dangers encountered when driving (especially at night) on rural roads which aren't encountered in urban environments, although the converse is also true. People always compare the US to Western Europe when this topic comes up, but that's simply an invalid comparison. For this topic, the US should be compared to Russia or possibly Canada. These countries have rural areas which are neither completely deserted (where drunk driving would be irrelevant even if it were likely to happen) nor support a large enough population to have reasonable transportation alternatives. I wish the US would recognize this fact and have two sets of drunk driving laws - one for urban areas (matching Western European conventions) and one for rural (matching current conventions). Unfortunately, this is probably impossible since it could be seen as permitting drunk driving.
blktiger 10y ago
I know of someone who got ticketed driving drunk and had their license suspended. They acted like they were the _victim_. I'm sorry, but there is just no excuse for driving drunk and if you get caught you deserve worse than just loosing your license.
magic_beans 10y ago
What country are you in? I'd wager a bet that many people still do it, just like many people in your country probably hit their children.
andrewfong 10y ago
It may be wrong to drink and drive, but it happens pretty regularly (especially the "I've only had one beer" variety). From a policy (not a moral) perspective though, encouraging ride-sharing makes total sense here. It's a bit like teaching kids about birth control vs. abstinence. I don't condone minors having sex but a lot of them are going to regardless of what I think, so might as well make sure they're protected.
ddebernardy 10y ago
> Over here, drinking and driving is an extremely shameful and embarrassing thing to do. Over here (Hungary), drinking and driving is basically illegal. As in 0mg, zip. It makes things a lot simpler IMO.
kikimaru 10y ago
I was recently in Madagascar - it's not uncommon to be driving while sipping a beer, or driving home at 3am after drinking since 9pm. I theorize that they must just sweat it all out. Eating while drinking helps, too.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kneel 10y ago

>It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. Drinking and driving is still very taboo in the US. It's just that most areas of the country require an automobile to get around and most people have a car. One more thing, no one should be surprised that people drink and drive anywhere. People make all sorts of terrible decisions when they're intoxicated, they're drunk after all.

metafunctor 10y ago
Not quite as taboo as many other countries [1], unfortunately. You give two excuses to drink and drive. Both are indefensible. The first excuse is "need a car to get around, have car". I live in a sparsely populated area as well, and everyone uses a car to get around. When we go out drinking, we plan ahead. The most common options are designated drivers, taxis, sleeping over, walking, or cycling. The second excuse is "can't expect to make good decisions while drunk". That's a bit intellectually dishonest. The decision to think about how to get back later, knowing you're going to be drinking, is a bad decision made while entirely sober. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States#International_Comparisons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_St...
- m-j-fox 10y ago
  Walking and cycling are going to get you killed at the same rate if not higher as driving. I guess you're not as likely to kill someone else.
  - Griffinsauce 10y ago
    You guess? That is the whole thing with drunk driving. You endanger others. With a conscious choice I might add, when you go somewhere and drunk driving is the only way home.
  - jlarocco 10y ago
    The point of DUI being illegal isn't to protect drunk drivers; it's to protect everybody else (and everything) nearby.
  - lsc 10y ago
    Yup. I think that as a culture, we need to think more about the risks we take with other people's lives. I think this is best demonstrated by the minimum liability insurance required to operate a car. In California, right now, you can drive a car with only $35K in liability insurance... which is crazy. Sure, that will cover most cars, but it won't even cover a moderate injury. Very few people have the assets required to pay for a serious injury, and therefore, the victim is usually under-compensated. Right now, cars are essentially being subsidized by the people who are getting hurt who get under compensated, because few people have enough liability insurance (or assets) to cover the cost of really hurting someone. If the injuries per mile were better factored into the cost of driving (which could be done by increasing the liability insurance minimum) driving would be a lot more expensive; quite possibly, once you factor in injuries, other, safer forms of transport would start looking practical.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      > In California, right now, you can drive a car with only $35K in liability insurance... which is crazy. Sure, that will cover most cars, but it won't even cover a moderate injury. Very few people have the assets required to pay for a serious injury, and therefore, the victim is usually under-compensated. In Germany, there are regulations for this. The mandatory insurance has a minimum coverage of 7.5M € for injuries, 1.12M € for property damages and 50 k€ for other accident related costs. And yet our car insurances are affordable AND the insurers make really nice profits.
    - 10y ago
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  A lot of people simply don't care. They feel they can make it, they're skilled enough. It's actually similar to speeding, which incidentally is responsible for more traffic deaths and accidents - drivers don't give a fuck, they're smarter than the system. The only way I know of actually beating some reason into people thinking like that is through heavy and sure penalties. Lots of alcohol spot-checks. Automatic ticketing for speeding measured via average, not instantaneous speed. DUI, you lose license. Speed, you're half-way to losing one. Politically untenable perhaps, but I could see it making a dent in deaths on the roads.
  - rmc 10y ago
    Exactly, it's more socially acceptable in the USA.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Cycling while drunk is illegal in some places.
ng12 10y ago
> is still very taboo in the US Depends on where you are. In rural America it's borderline socially acceptable (unfortunately).
- douche 10y ago
  In many places in rural America, it's borderline socially acceptable to drive while drinking. See "Road sodas"...
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Yep, this happens all the time. I think it's even legal in some states, as long as you are not over the BAC limit.
jwr 10y ago
How is it a taboo? I notice that in almost every US TV show I watch, people drink and drive. Or drink and if you think, you know there is no other way for them to get home except in the car they arrived in. It's very visible once you notice it once.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kneel 10y ago
  >How is it a taboo? I notice that in almost every US TV show I watch, people drink and drive. It's also quite common to see fictional murders on television but that doesn't make it any less taboo.
manarth 10y ago
> no one should be surprised that people drink and drive anywhere. > People make all sorts of terrible decisions when they're intoxicated Many people make a Ulysses pact: if they're going out drinking, they make the decision whilst sober to leave the car at home, removing any temptation to use it to get home later when they're drunk.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  >Ulysses pact I knew a guy in college who often got totally hammered when he went out. He would always give his bus money home to one of his companions he was out with to hold onto so that he wouldn't accidentally spend it or lose it.
dx034 10y ago
I think it's not taboo, the (social, not legal) definition is just a different one. In most countries, having more than one beer and driving is considered drunk driving. In the US, as long as you're not wasted people assume it's ok to drive home (there's no alternative anyway). Having 4-5 beer over a few hours and driving home is completely normal in most parts of the US. In most European countries, that's socially unacceptable.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Went to school in a college town in the US. I always based it on how much alcohol your body should can process, roughly a beer an hour. So if I started drinking at a party four hours ago and had five beers, I figured I was sober enough to go home. I usually did most of my drinking at the beginning of the night anyway (intentionally so this would be a viable strategy), so I was mostly sobering up at the end. But there were still plenty of nights where I slept on the host's couch or floor until morning, and a few times where I made poor decisions because I really, really didn't want to have to find other transportation (mostly just getting in the car with people who I couldn't determine if they were sober enough to drive). Taxis really are awful in small towns.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
It isn't taboo in the US. Though, less socially acceptable than it used to be. It depends on the social circle you are in though if you know very frequently drunk drivers vs responsible drivers. Most people I met in adulthood don't think twice drinking and driving but most people I meet in childhood will tend to discourage it. I don't really know why other than maybe different peer influence? When people see me call a cab they openly say "I just drive home drunk." Like it's nothing. Similarly I've had cab drivers commend me for not driving drunk. "Oh, you called a cab, that's good most people would just drive drunk." I have co-workers who spend most Friday afternoons (12-5) at the bar and drive right home after like it's nothing. These people don't think driving drunk is a problem. Personally, I can't understand why you'd go out and drink if you had no way to get home. It doesn't come unexpectedly out of nowhere. If there's no transportation you are still making a choice in the matter. I don't buy excuses, when you choose to go out and choose to start drinking while you are out without a designated driver you are making both choices and making them sober. If it was that taboo, people simply would either stay home or have a designated driver. It's really not that difficult. In fact, I know people who will all meet at the bar and instead of car pooling with a rotating DD they will just all travel in their own cars independently and all drive home drunk.
- magic_beans 10y ago
  I know many people who wouldn't consider themselves "drunk drivers" because they have a high tolerance for alcohol and are still fine after 3 drinks. I think this is probably true for a lot of people, especially in rural areas.

vincnetas 10y ago

Where are you from?

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

It isn't that, the cab rides are never just $20, and often there are no cabs at all. The USA just has crappy non car transportation options. And it isn't just an hour walk in many places, but a few hours walk on dark streets with no side walks. When I was living in the Deep South, I sometimes had to take people home 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere.

wapz 10y ago
> 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere That's the reason there are no cabs and I don't blame cab drivers. They don't get paid to sit around 40 minutes to find a passenger. I'm surprised that finding an uber in one of those places is not difficult either. Outside of the US, a lot of the population is very condensed (well the US is to some degree) making cabs and public transportation much more efficient/effective IMO.
- Griffinsauce 10y ago
  Sounds like a perfect case for autonomous cars. They don't have to be paid to wait.
  - ojilles 10y ago
    They do, right? Needs to be depreciated.
  - posguy 10y ago
    Gas, wear and tear & depreciation aren't free though, these are always going to be higher cost areas to serve.
    - developer2 10y ago
      Except that you are not paying for "gas, wear and tear & depreciation" when you call a taxi. You're not even paying for the human driver. You are paying for the monopoly. Even if calling a driverless car cost more for remote areas, it would (or at least could) still cost a fraction of the cost of a taxi. $30 instead of $120 for a long distance drive is totally reasonable.

wingerlang 10y ago

> It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind. You should see Thailand. Many districts in Bangkok have their own dedicated pool of motorbike-taxis often located at specific points. The group of them outside my previous apartment frequently shared whiskey or beer with me after dropping me off.

qume 10y ago
Our Uber driver in Tennessee came into the bar with us and had a few beers.

jack9 10y ago

Just south of the US border, drinking and driving is the norm. Edit: Whoops, guess I hit a nerve with an uncomfortable truth. The lax enforcement in mexico, is just something industrialized people rarely think about...until you get there. But hey, argue about it on the internet and tell that to the drive-up neighborhood beer and fish taco stands from ensenada to tiajuana. I never go farther south, but I'm sure it's the same.

qume 10y ago
erm, i've lived in the US for a few years and mexico about double that, and can say in Mexico it's similar to New Zealand, UK, etc where it's not really acceptable. But yea the border towns are probably like the worst parts of the US, which is the worst country I've come across when it comes to drunk driving.
pm90 10y ago
How is it even possible to drive on the roads during weekends? I imagine if there's lax enforcement, there will be a LOT more drunk driving related accidents??
dx034 10y ago
North of the border as well. Spend a Friday evening at the West Coast around LA, very few people driving home from bars or restaurants will be sober.

acjohnson55 10y ago

You should see British Virgin Islands.

minikites 10y ago

An interesting analogy because a lot of people in the USA also think it's good to hit (spank) children.

MrFantastic 10y ago

I don't drive drunk, it's not worth the risk; BUT millions of people drive drunk every day and 99.999% get home safely so in their minds it seems safe enough. It's not as if the instant your BAC goes over .08 you are driving like bumper cars.

Mo3 10y ago
I live in Bavaria. Everyone drives over the limit if home is not too far away. Noone ever gets caught. I on the other hand have lost my license for smoking weed 2 days earlier. Sigh..
- magic_beans 10y ago
  Is it common to smoke in public places?
  - Mo3 10y ago
    No. You go to jail. Drinking in public places is however legal and appreciated.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
toomanybeersies 10y ago
I disagree with that number. You're saying that 1 in 100,000 people don't get home safely while drink driving. That's 10 times lower than the yearly death rate from simply driving. And 1/3 road deaths are caused by drink driving.
- MrFantastic 10y ago
  My number is wrong, I just made it up. I think that actually number is more like 99.95% for a person with a .08. My point is that if you didn't care about moral hazard, the odds are overwhelming that you will make it home safe even if you drive drunk. I'm not condoning, just explaining drunk driving logic. That 1/3 road deaths is artificially inflated because if you had 1 drink and well under the legal limit it still counts as alcohol related fatality.

tbihl 10y ago

As other people have pointed out, it's largely a byproduct of our development patterns, and it's also somewhat regional. Where I grew up, it was pretty common for people have driven drunk before they ever reached drinking age.

overcast 10y ago

It's extremely shameful, and embarrassing here. No one looks up to you for that shit. Unfortunately we don't make it very easy for drunks to get home, so they do stupid things.

magic_beans 10y ago
Where do you live? It's "shameful" in the US to, but it still happens.
- overcast 10y ago
  New York
metafunctor 10y ago
If you drive to a place you know you'll be drinking at, you're doing stupid things while sober.

deadbunny 10y ago

Yeah, In my younger days I'd walk home 5 miles every Saturday from my local club, usually about 1.5-2 hours depending just how drunk I was. No one even thought of driving drunk, it's just something that you don't do.

JamesBarney 10y ago

I've noticed how taboo it is differs dramatically by city. In the South with is sprawling roads and lack public transportation its more acceptable but in large cities in the North it's much more taboo.

kyleblarson 10y ago

Up until very recently it was still legal to drink WHILE driving in Montana: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700061870/No-more-Montana-drinking-driving.html http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700061870/No-more-Montana...

differentView 10y ago

> Over here We don't know where you are, you need to tell us where "here" is.

derefr 10y ago

The [rural] US is much, much more spread out than most countries. This means that people in the rural US think of driving as a necessary and basic component of life; driving is just "how you get places", if there are places you need to get. So drinking and driving, though shameful, is necessarily normalized (not wholly, but somewhat) by people who are drunk, and yet need to go places. That, and by the fact that in a lot of the very rural areas, drunk driving has a rather low fatality rate, given that there are no other cars on the road and no obstacles to crash into. If you run off the road, you just drive into some corn or wheat or alfalfa, or at worst hit somebody's cows. (These are the same places you'll see people e.g. allowing their young children to drive trucks or motorcycles—even by themselves, at night. There's just nothing much that can go wrong.) (I think this is all also true of rural Russia, which is a large part of where the American stereotype of Russians as constantly drinking comes from.)

lazyasciiart 10y ago
It's a common misconception that rural roads are safer than urban, but it's just not true. The fatality rate is higher on rural roads (both in total and per mile driven) and rural roads are massively over represented in road accident stats for the percentage of the population that lives in them. Shitty google AMP link to a pdf: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812181&ved=0ahUKEwjrsYLU_5HTAhUYzmMKHTumCHQQFggaMAA&usg=AFQjCNFZKwiEuTHnV4JdTiIUp6ndAJgeVg&sig2=389rcN9Wkpq-wVP1WtdJ0g https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
belovedeagle 10y ago
Exactly this, but it should be made clear that this has nothing to do with the general safety of rural roads. In general there are dangers encountered when driving (especially at night) on rural roads which aren't encountered in urban environments, although the converse is also true. People always compare the US to Western Europe when this topic comes up, but that's simply an invalid comparison. For this topic, the US should be compared to Russia or possibly Canada. These countries have rural areas which are neither completely deserted (where drunk driving would be irrelevant even if it were likely to happen) nor support a large enough population to have reasonable transportation alternatives. I wish the US would recognize this fact and have two sets of drunk driving laws - one for urban areas (matching Western European conventions) and one for rural (matching current conventions). Unfortunately, this is probably impossible since it could be seen as permitting drunk driving.

blktiger 10y ago

I know of someone who got ticketed driving drunk and had their license suspended. They acted like they were the _victim_. I'm sorry, but there is just no excuse for driving drunk and if you get caught you deserve worse than just loosing your license.

magic_beans 10y ago

What country are you in? I'd wager a bet that many people still do it, just like many people in your country probably hit their children.

andrewfong 10y ago

It may be wrong to drink and drive, but it happens pretty regularly (especially the "I've only had one beer" variety). From a policy (not a moral) perspective though, encouraging ride-sharing makes total sense here. It's a bit like teaching kids about birth control vs. abstinence. I don't condone minors having sex but a lot of them are going to regardless of what I think, so might as well make sure they're protected.

ddebernardy 10y ago

> Over here, drinking and driving is an extremely shameful and embarrassing thing to do. Over here (Hungary), drinking and driving is basically illegal. As in 0mg, zip. It makes things a lot simpler IMO.

kikimaru 10y ago

I was recently in Madagascar - it's not uncommon to be driving while sipping a beer, or driving home at 3am after drinking since 9pm. I theorize that they must just sweat it all out. Eating while drinking helps, too.

deleted 10y ago

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