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>Drinking and driving is a common activity for millions of Americans and that is unlikely to change in our lifetimes Driving while genuinely intoxicated is abs

>Drinking and driving is a common activity for millions of Americans and that is unlikely to change in our lifetimes Driving while genuinely intoxicated is absolutely not a "common" activity except for a tiny minority of people who do it habitually. The only way your statement makes any sense is by some puritanical definition of drinking.

Arnt 4y ago
Genuinely intoxicated as opposed to having had one or two small drinks? In that case the headline could be extended to "over half of […] but most had only had one or two small drinks and were not genuinely intoxicated". Less blame for the same amount of harm.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Two bud lights isn't gonna make anyone who wasn't already a danger to society into one. I agree that the headline is probably also using some comically low threshold.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    "If you drink and drive, you're a fool and you were one even before you started drinking". Is that what you're trying to say?
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      You are being willfully obtuse as a pretext to make low effort in-group signaling comments ("look guys, I have a zero tolerance stance on drinking and driving") and it is fooling nobody. You are just as responsible for bad online discourse as any one person who litters in the park is responsible for the state of the park. I am going to restate my prior comment (which was already quite clear) with more verbosity for the benefit of good faith readers. Trivial amounts of alcohol (e.g. two bud lights) affect a person's performance at any given task less than day to day variation from other factors (last night's sleep, how your day is going, etc), it is "below the noise threshold" so to speak. Thats why it's basically impossible to attribute any given degradation of performance to a couple beers but if you were to do a big study with many participants you could see an effect. Hence my point, if you are an unsafe driver after a couple water-beers or any other thing that gives you a BAC that's solidly below the typical legal maximums (.04-08 depending on country or US state) are an unsafe driver sober.
      - Arnt 4y ago
        No, not wilfully, sorry about that. It was during working hours and I wasn't, uh, really focusing on HN. There's no in-group when one posts as late as I usually do, BTW, the readers have moved on. As I read it, your statement implies that people who drink (a bit) and drive should be overrepresented in accidents when sober too, because the bit of alcohol isn't what makes them risky. I pay a bit of attention to this area and have never seen any studies that support this. Granted, I only pay a bit of attention.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
standardUser 4y ago
In rural American (such as where I used to live in Nebraska) driving drunk is commonplace and not taboo. In surveys more than 25% of adults admit to drinking and driving in the last 6 months. There's an estimated 15 million alcoholics in America. And about 1.5 million are arrested every year for a DUI.

Arnt 4y ago

Genuinely intoxicated as opposed to having had one or two small drinks? In that case the headline could be extended to "over half of […] but most had only had one or two small drinks and were not genuinely intoxicated". Less blame for the same amount of harm.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Two bud lights isn't gonna make anyone who wasn't already a danger to society into one. I agree that the headline is probably also using some comically low threshold.
- Arnt 4y ago
  "If you drink and drive, you're a fool and you were one even before you started drinking". Is that what you're trying to say?
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    You are being willfully obtuse as a pretext to make low effort in-group signaling comments ("look guys, I have a zero tolerance stance on drinking and driving") and it is fooling nobody. You are just as responsible for bad online discourse as any one person who litters in the park is responsible for the state of the park. I am going to restate my prior comment (which was already quite clear) with more verbosity for the benefit of good faith readers. Trivial amounts of alcohol (e.g. two bud lights) affect a person's performance at any given task less than day to day variation from other factors (last night's sleep, how your day is going, etc), it is "below the noise threshold" so to speak. Thats why it's basically impossible to attribute any given degradation of performance to a couple beers but if you were to do a big study with many participants you could see an effect. Hence my point, if you are an unsafe driver after a couple water-beers or any other thing that gives you a BAC that's solidly below the typical legal maximums (.04-08 depending on country or US state) are an unsafe driver sober.
    - Arnt 4y ago
      No, not wilfully, sorry about that. It was during working hours and I wasn't, uh, really focusing on HN. There's no in-group when one posts as late as I usually do, BTW, the readers have moved on. As I read it, your statement implies that people who drink (a bit) and drive should be overrepresented in accidents when sober too, because the bit of alcohol isn't what makes them risky. I pay a bit of attention to this area and have never seen any studies that support this. Granted, I only pay a bit of attention.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

standardUser 4y ago

In rural American (such as where I used to live in Nebraska) driving drunk is commonplace and not taboo. In surveys more than 25% of adults admit to drinking and driving in the last 6 months. There's an estimated 15 million alcoholics in America. And about 1.5 million are arrested every year for a DUI.