If you have a mate done for drink driving

Not stupid drunk, slightly over the limit, got caught for unrelated reasons (light out)  Would you take the bad luck mate line or act more reproachful?

Reminds me of being a trainee and being dragged to a drink driving appeal hearing in relation to an employee of a client.  The boss of the client kept having to swap between courts as the defendant in my case had got lashed at a friend's house and the friend had then given him a lift home and also got himself done for drink driving and was having his first hearing in the court next door.

Serious and fatal drink driving accidents are only about a fifth of what they were at the end of the 70s, yet vast resources are put into it and the public are happy to morally police people that do it. Numbers are also lower than speeding, yet it's a bit of a laugh to try and game the policing of that. 

yeah but it is the "moral policing" by the public that have brought those figures down bananaman, you are still very unlikely to be caught  (unless you are really far gone) and penalties have not changed that much since the 70s the difference is that it is no longer socially acceptable. 

One of my best friends got drunk during first lockdown, went to move his car 300 yards from round corner to a spot outside his house, and drove over a drunk woman. Got him in serious trouble. He was a bloody fool, and knows it.

Yes but it's interesting how arbitrary the moralising is. If you could put up a drink driving gatso I expect they'd all be for it. 

Wonder if the SRA would try and strike you off for drink driving? 

It depends. I would have some sympathy with being caught (marginally) over the limit the morning after.  No sympathy at all with being done on the night to be honest. Just don't have the second pint/glass of wine. It's not like it's complicated plus for most normal sized blokes the reality is that two pints or two glasses of wine won't put you over the limit which means they probably drank more than that and then drove. Which is definitely 'moral policing' territory I reckon. 

wasnt morning after, he had had 3 pints and was just over the limit, hes a big bloke and assumed he would be ok (and tbf he is not noticeably impaired after 3 pints talking to him).  They got him because they smelt beer on his breath when they stopped him for a light being out.  1.5 pints my limit and that leaves me well under the limit.  Cant justify him having had 3 pints, but I think he has learnt his lesson.

If he really thought he would be under the limit he is a bit of an idiot tbh.  Pretty much everyone is going to be over the limit after 3 pints of anything but the very weakest session ale. 

People definitely adopt their own 'norms' but then that is what had people chancing the backroads home after a couple of bottles of wine.  If it's an easy drive you know well on a quiet road and you are a regular drinker the chances are you would be OK even at that level 99 times out of a hundred. Until you aren't... 

 

Yes all well and good to pontificate when home is an on hand Uber/Tube away. If it's a 20 mile round trip for a designated driver to round up 4 people for a trip to the rural local it's, in my opinion, more understandable that this happens.

If I had a drink and drove I thought on the rare occasions I drank , I would have two pints thinking that was fine . Several friends were horrified, saying that was certainly over the limit . I have one at most , but usually don’t have a drop.

people in the proper country so to speak of a certain age seem not to have the slightest concern about driving full of alcohol and driving several miles home . Bizarre.

If I had to choose between the utterly arbitrarily dichotomous choices in the OP, I’d choose “hard luck mate”.

I’m not my friends’ moral chastiser. Like most blokes I value easygoing mateship. But to repeat, if one of my mates did something morally egregious but probably one-off; I’d avoid the subject. If he did things sufficiently bad or repeated, I’d consider ending the friendship but it would have to be something much worse than being caught driving over the limit.

"people in the proper country so to speak of a certain age seem not to have the slightest concern about driving full of alcohol and driving several miles home . Bizarre."

Its not that bizarre, their risk reward is different to people in towns (1) it is sometimes hard to find an alternative, no public transport and often no taxis (2) you will be driving on quiet roads you know like the back of your hand with an extremely low probability of police presence.  I am not justifying it but it is not bizarre more rural types drink and drive.

What I find more bizarre given their usually more puritanical attitude to alcohol is how lax the US seem to be about drink driving.   There it seems more akin to speeding.

An incident like this utterly destroyed part of my family 

It was an 8 Pinter but still, I have very little sympathy for drink drivers.

Always make your plans in advance and if they involve driving, stick to diet coke

I live in a rural village with no public transport and only 2 watering holes within 30 mins walk of my house.  So I'm often driving on a night out and if so I don't drink alcohol. I'm not pontificating; when the potential consequences are so severe (ie killing people, or yourself) it doesn't seem worth the risk.  I always have a glass of something when I get home, and look forward to it.  

Hi Laz, sort of. I'm not a tech billionaire type. I have no real talent tbh just I'm quite good with people and willing/able to go without sleep for days whilst working.

No excuse for DD. Over the Christmas period you read untold stories of people being hammered beyond belief on Xmas eve or New Year’s Eve and killing people. Why ? If I know I’m going out for a skinful why would you take the car with a view to driving back home after you’ve had 8 pints and 6 double vodkas . Insanity.

There's no excuse for speeding, but plenty of people wheel them out. Also I expect a texting driver would get more sympathy than a drink driver, even though texting literally removes all perception of the road. I also expect plenty of accidents are people pissing about looking at kids in the back seat, trying to find something they've dropped etc but they seem to omit that when answering the police's questions. 

Probably a hangover from puritan Christian tendencies about the demon drink. 

When I was a trainee one of the Managing Partner’s drinking m8tes (Dave) was found shitfaced asleep at the wheel by the rozzers.

 

The MP d1cked my supervising partner to deal with the no hoper case.

 

I was a first seat trainee about one month in on the job with my fresh LPC smell so only realized later they d1cked me so they could lay blame when Dave got banned.

 

I actually visited the site, took loads of photos, showing it was private land, researched the law and took a very helpful close up photo of the gate closed etc. At this point my supervising partner realized we might have a chance and kicked into gear and called in a favour from prosecuting counsel and the case got dropped. Naturally he claimed all the glory and we all went to the pub and Dave bought us beers.

It's not a hangover from puritanism about the demon drink...

It's a 'hangover' from a lot of people getting killed by p1ssed up drivers in the 70s and 80s.

I do get that in the real world its a bit different if you live in a rural area in a way but (and this is probably a personal thing) I don't really get why having 3 pints is so much better than having 2 (which over a little time will keep you under the limit) that it makes it worth the risk. I get why having 5 (or 8 or 10) can be better but then you are quite definitely drunk and driving when actually p1ssed is just not on. 

 

I have to disagree re the texting.

I recently saw a sign saying "don't text and drive" and thought how utterly insane it is that that even needs to be on a sign.

Anyone idiotic enough to do that should have the book thrown at them and it's 100 times worse than being a bit over the limit for drink. Pure willful negligence 

When I passed my test in the late ‘70’s the social norm was more a case of not ‘being over the limit’ rather than, like now, not basically drinking anything before driving.

Even back then, me and my teenage mates would  have a designated driver, who was expected to drink in moderation.

 

Marshall, I think "not being over the limit" is still pretty much the norm especially in England where the limit is unusually high normalising having a pint or two.

City AM

Many lessons can be learned from drink driving and smoking laws to tackle obesity

Paul Ormerod

Obesity has been a hot topic over the past week. The government announced it would delay its plan to implement restrictions on junk food marketing and volume-based price promotions. These had been presented as key elements in the strategy to reduce obesity.

With a timing which was either impeccable or pure good luck, the Cancer Society published the finding of a worrying research study on obesity. By 2040 no fewer than 21 million adults – almost 40 per cent of the total adult age population – would be obese, according to the research.

Obesity is of course a major risk factor for cancer. It was a key factor in many of the deaths from Covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic. And it has adverse effects on many other areas of personal health – such as diabetes and heart problems.

Obesity brings with it huge human suffering, and it creates considerable monetary costs for treatment, placing a broader burden on the NHS. The government  should see strong incentives to reduce obesity substantially.

It is perhaps not sufficiently appreciated how rapidly this wave of obesity has spread. Last summer, for example, in the run up to the Euro football final played between England and Italy, clips were played on television of the national team’s last great triumph, winning the World Cup in 1966. A striking feature of the Wembley crowd on that day is how slim they all were by modern standards.

The rise of obesity is even more recent than that. It has grown enormously in the course of just a single generation.

We might usefully think about how two other major health related issues have been, if not exactly eliminated, very much reduced over time – namely, drink driving and smoking.

It was around the time of that famous World Cup victory that the then Labour government introduced the first set of drink driving laws. They were massively unpopular and widely ignored.

Gradually, however, the costs of being caught began to sink in. Incentives were created not to do it, in the form of fines, loss of licence and higher insurance premiums. As numbers began to fall, social attitudes began to change. Fewer and fewer people drank heavily and then drove. It gradually became the social norm to remain sober enough to drive safely.

The same pattern can be seen with smoking. The percentage of the adult population who smoke has fallen by over two-thirds in the past fifty years, from 45 per cent in the early 1970s to just 14 per cent now.

A key reason is price. Higher and higher taxes on cigarettes not only led smokers to smoke less, but to increasing numbers giving up altogether.

And, again, as fewer smoked, social norms began to change. Going back to the late 1940s, smoking was seen as a mark of sophistication, and no less than 82 per cent of adults smoked.  Now, on several occasions, smoking is actively frowned upon.

Reducing obesity substantially will also be a task which takes decades. But it will need the same combination of incentives and changes in social norms to achieve a concrete outcome. The longest march, however, begins with just a single step.

The experiences of drink driving and smoking show that the first step is to create monetary incentives to reduce or abandon the particular type of behaviour. Despite the cost of living crisis, the government must learn this lesson.

A lot of this depends on the time frame.  Don’t go to the pub drink three pints in an hour and a half and drive home.  However, rather different if you round to a friend’s house for a Saturday afternoon barbecue and have three pints spread over six plus hours.