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.

I used to think the same - I've lived in plenty of places with no public transportation. No choice, I'd say, bemoaning the lack of decent public transport.

But then I was in a similar situation off in a small town in Norway. I was at a 80th birthday party in a small town. Most of the attendees were drunk. Everyone already knew someone to take them home, and organized themselves accordingly, some waiting a bit for the sober driver to return empty. A few found someone at the party (my spouse)- and then proceeded to drink. It was nearly surreal to be in the situation.

The truth is that in the states, it is OK to say, "I've only had X beers, so I'm ok to drive." IT is socailly acceptable behavior. And no one really keeps track most times, so if they seem sober enough to us or we know better, we'll let them go. The acceptable BAC level is much lower here - one beer can send you over the limit - and penalties are harsher, so that could be a major factor as well.

IIRC, the legal limit in Norway us basically the measurement error of the BAC tests; basically you should fail if you've had anything at all to drink.

That was one of those things my Norwegian spouse made sure I knew beforehand. It is .02 or something like that, and I believe it is measured slightly differently.

He's also said that I can get penalized - through loss of license and other means - just by being a sober passenger with a drunk driver. It benefits me to make sure the other person is sober.

This makes me very uneasy.

If their field equipment is anything like SCRAM bracelets (same basic technology as a Breathalyzer) they're cutting all sorts of corners (demanding precise readings out of sensors that are running well outside their recommended operating environment with less calibration than recommended) and throwing false positives left and right.

Drunk driving penalties are too stiff to play fast and loose like that.

In Australia, we're breathalyzed and if it's positive we go back to the police station/mobile testing unit for a blood test, so the breathalyzer is really only an early indicator.

> Vidar Refvik, director of police at the Justice Ministry, said police will use the same combination of "breathalyser" and blood tests to enforce the new law as they did the old one. He predicted the lower limit will yield anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 more arrests, a rise of about 15-20 percent.

Seems like Norway would be the same.

can a drunk passenger of a drunk driver be penalized as well?

That I'm not sure of, but I don't think so. Assumedly, the sober person is supposed to have the wherewithal to understand the danger the drunk driver is putting themselves and others. On the other hand, the drunk passenger might well be more drunk than the driver and be too impaired to make that judgement.

Thinking? I'm not thinking it is ok! No no, I'm just saying why people are idiotic enough to do this.

The BAC level now for Utah is .05. It isn't like all of the US states are slouching. Of course, Utah is different from the deep south.

Sorry for that confusion. I quite understood and took it as a "collective thought", for lack of better words. I've heard the excuse from folks quite often and always thought it was a bit ridiculous, especially with the sideline, "but it isn't good to drink alone!". My personal solution was better public transport.

It's actually still .08, not .05 (yet). It will be in about 1.75 years from now if there's no successful repeal before then. Given the LDS majority in the state, good chance it will stand in some form.

This is the least important issue of all time but somehow it is getting the most press. It should just pass and be done with. By the way I get annoyed when people say LDS is the majority here - LDS only makes up 41% of the entire state, and closer to 30% in SLC. The citizens aren't voting on this bill anyway.

For anyone looking into this, the first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Utah#Religion literally says "A majority of the state's residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)."

The lowball estimates of 41% come from things like the following: "Professor Tim Heaton, who studies LDS demographics for church-owned Brigham Young University, says the county numbers probably come from church membership rolls, and that between half and one-third of those people are not active in the faith. If that's true, then, at most, 41.6 percent of Utahns are church-going Mormons." (2005 source http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/ci_2886596 ) It's at least slightly nontrivial to decide on the right definition, but I think church membership is a perfectly fine measurement.

As such, almost every other publication and measurement supports the "obvious" claim that Utah has a Mormon majority of (60+some)% and even Salt Lake County may have a (50+epsilon)% Mormon majority.

Exampe source from 2014: http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842825-155/mormon-populace-picks...

> By the way I get annoyed when people say LDS is the majority here

Are you annoyed that the entire state was founded by LDS pioneers? Without the mormons, Utah would be west colorado wasteland or another desolate, sparsely populated state like Wyoming.

And 41% can be a majority depending on how you break down the remaining 59%

No, why would I be annoyed about the history of the founding of the west? I am very very familiar with it.

I'm only annoyed that people have been stating that same old statistic which hasn't been true for at least a decade.

41% is never a majority. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority

> I'm only annoyed that people have been stating that same old statistic which hasn't been true for at least a decade.

Do you have a source? Wikipedia seems to still support the "same old statistic" in a lot of ways and indicates by all accounts an LDS majority in Utah.

> 41% is never a majority

In my country, 41% of people are red party, 38% are blue party, and 21% are green party. Which party has the majority share of voters?

I think you're confusing 'majority' and 'plurality'.

My mistake, you are correct - plurality is the correct word here.

In my example the party with plurality can capture the majority of the vote, but that doesn't necessarily mean the party itself is a majority.

I really doubt the penalties are harsher in Norway.

I live in one of the few areas of the US that still doesn't have ride sharing services -- upstate New York, where they are banned and still being debated in the state government[0].

I also live in an area where there are 4 colleges and universities in two towns within 10 miles of each other. I went to one of these colleges, and have seen what people do to get to and from the bars first hand. There's one taxi service that I'm aware of, and they charge $30 to go between the two towns, one way. It's a rural area and most roads have speed limits of 55 MPH. Most of the college students are not locals and don't know the roads. Our winters are also harsh and make for dangerous driving conditions even without alcohol. The blotters are full of DUI arrests, accidents, and deaths.

Therefore, unless I have a real need, I don't drive between like 9 PM and 4 AM Friday through Sunday. Why they still haven't passed legislation to allow Uber/Lyft here, other than partisan bickering, I have no idea... I have no doubt that it would help tremendously.

[0] https://ridesharingny.com/

Hey hows Potsdam? Sounds like it hasn't changed in the decade since I was there. Not that I expected it to.

Hahahaha, was it that obvious? I grew up around here and graduated from one of the four schools (gotta stay a little anonymous) in 2009. I'm not sure why I'm still here, really.

It was a little obvious but probably only for someone who lived there.

Fair enough. To answer your question no, not much has changed. There's a knockoff Chipotle restaurant in both towns now which is pretty good. Pretty sure the Tick Tock is closed for good. And...that's probably it.

Makes sense, but if you know that your only way back home is your car and you still pop the cork, you're acting like a bad person in my book ("hitting a child" level indeed).

Please note that I've never driven while drunk, I don't even drink that much, and I've always been the one to take people home who were drunk.

Understanding why people do shit is quite different from condoning shit.

Oh sorry! I meant "you" as in "one". I didn't mean you personally! :-) Quite the contrary, and I didn't read your post as condoning anything.

That's fine, but you're not going to change social mores overnight (perhaps ever). The fact that ride sharing apps are helping is a huge plus in my book.

As a single datapoint, it took about fifty years in the UK.

Maybe the fact that there are no buses and cabs at night is because people are driving home from bars anyway?

Here's the thing: it's not that we have great transportation, what we don't have is bars and restaurants pop up in some random spot next to a road, with a big parking lot in front. If you build a restaurant like that, you kind of already made clear that it's a restaurant for people in cars.

I lived in a college town in the states. The popular bars were generally around campus or in the downtown area - both places known for having too little and/or inconvenient parking. Folks drove nonetheless, however. Only a portion of patrons lived or worked in the area, the rest had to travel. This is really more key, I think, than the lack of parking spaces. A good number of folks have to travel outside of walking range to go to any such establishment.

Most bars in the suburban US don't stand alone; they tend to be accompanied by other restaurants and strip centers. I'll post a few Street View links for the northern suburbs of Dallas:

https://goo.gl/maps/AfQX2VDpYaA2 - The Draft House, Far North Dallas. Note the strip center that contains, among others, a sushi/Thai food place, a pizzeria, and a food mart. (as a side note: I used to go to the Draft House regularly but stopped after management changes ran it into the ground)

https://goo.gl/maps/bmSsv6ZgGyQ2 - The Irishman, Far North Dallas. If you're not careful, you might not even notice it among all the other places there.

https://goo.gl/maps/mGFCmq669xP2 - Katy Trail Ice House Outpost, Plano. This is a huge, huge shopping center.

https://goo.gl/maps/kEdHh41QAJF2 - Lonestar Grill and Sports Cafe, Richardson. In the middle of a strip center with a freestanding Dickey's. If you don't see it, look waaaay in the back, just to the right of the Dickey's.

https://goo.gl/maps/Fy946RDP6Ly - The Hub & Ron's Place, Addison. Next to a UPS store and a whole bunch of other shops. The two bars are connected; the logo for Ron's Place is an R inside a square.

> Most bars in the suburban US don't stand alone

I don't know if that is really true. Or to say, what is your definition of a suburb?

I've seen plenty of bars out in the middle of nowhere, especially in small towns surrounded by rural communities.

Having frequented all of those places sans Lonestar, I can attest to their being plenty of parking in most cases (draft house a bit scary late w/ the clientele, and the hub you may have to park a bit off to the side but not too bad). Sadly, by those links you have described the problem: distances. Even with Uber's cheap cost, it is still prohibitive to hail one for a 20 min drive. HH for most companies in these areas include coworkers who may live 40+ miles from each other.

> 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.

With Uber the driver can sit in his middle-of-nowhere house (or work on his garage, yard, etc.) for those 40 minutes with his driver app on, and get in his car only when the app alerts him that he has a fare. This will take the driver to a central location where there are short waits and frequent fares.

I remember reading a post from an Uber driver in a small town. Basically, instead of idling, he'd just use his house as a waiting area. So instead of just waiting around, he'd be at home, doing other stuff until he got an rider. Then he'd get in his car and drive them where they needed to be.

That only works if trips are originating from nearby. I've been to some shady Louisiana bars out in the middle of nowhere, I'm not sure how even Uber would work out there.

If he lived next to the bars or downtown that would probably be reasonable, but I can't imagine he would bring in too much money (as opposed to living in a large metropolitan area).

It really depends on how close the rural area is to a population center.

Sounds like a perfect case for autonomous cars. They don't have to be paid to wait.

I suspect that the main obstacle for self driving cars, if they do eventually exist, is not going to be finding use cases for them.

Gas, wear and tear & depreciation aren't free though, these are always going to be higher cost areas to serve.

How much wear and tear for a robot that is just sitting still listening to the internet uplink? If only every tenth of all cars currently stored on public parking would be hailable robots you would get very comfortable availability even in the remotest village. Occasional idle rebalancing drives would probably be less common than the idle leg of current “go pick someone up“ or “bring someone somewhere and return" trips.

If robot taxis happen, they won't be just like regular taxis without a driver. The mix between investment, hourly cost and per mile cost would change a lot, making entirely new business models possible and shifting the optimization peaks of existing ones.

Personally, if I would somehow happen upon a dozen robot taxis to turn into a business, I would select elderly people in a rural area as my target audience. Not your typical early adopter and quite some natural churn (short age window between should not drive anymore but still able to take care of themselves), but you get awesome ad targeting if you put out flyers in the doctor's waiting room. Oh, and you need to hire the one taxi driver who currently serves the doctor's appointment market in that area as your support guy who chats all the nice old ladies through the introductory phase over the car's hands free.

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.

$30 for a 8 mile trip when your making $7hr is really hard on the budget. It might be way cheaper, but it is still unfordable for the median person in a rural area.

You may have missed it, but my grandparent's comment - and my reply - were regarding driverless cars. There is no driver making $7/hour in an autonomous driverless car. (Off-topic aside: no taxi driver makes $7/hour). There's a reason an easy trip costs $50-80 in a taxi, and it has nothing to do with human labor or maintenance of the car. A driverless vehicle will not have to make $100+/hour to make up for maintenance costs.

Nor do driverless cars have to make up for "idle time". The only legitimate counter argument as to why a taxi should earn as much as they do is that they sit around not making any money for 10-60 minutes at a time. However, that goes away with driverless cars, and any excuse to charge exorbitant prices the way taxis do completely vanishes.

No, the $7hr was in reference to what you make as a service sector employee in Idaho or Montana.

The real question is why work for so little money? The federal minimum wage is $7.25, tipped employees can make less per hour but only if the tips exceed the minimum wage for that time, but that isn't the real wage floor consider Walmart[0] has a minimum wage of $10.00 nationally and the average time between hire and promotion(with raise) is 3 months with an average fulltime compensation of $13.38 an hour. Construction labor, house cleaning, call centers and even dishwashing in non chain restaurants tends to pay similarly, I really don't know why anyone would make the minimum wage for any extended period of time, nor how employers offering it manage to find anyone given the competition.

[0]http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2016/01/20/more-than-on...

Go to Idaho or Montana then, you'd be surprised what people will work for when there are no alternatives.

I think the issue is I and my peers never really received any education about how to make it in the world (outside of simply "go to college"). If you are working a minimum wage or low paying job you really have two jobs the second being constantly searching for and applying to better opportunities.

Also I suspect another issue is the cliffs for government benefits. If you work between 45 - 60 hours a week for $12 - $13 an hour like I did a few years ago you aren't exactly well off yet programs like Obamacare will fine you for not buying health insurance that you can't really afford. Similarly free clinics will turn you away and I wasn't able to find a single aid program that you would qualify for except about $20 a month in food stamps. I figured out the costs once and there are a great many situations where a rational actor would simply work less or for less money and do better economically.

Yep, wages don't amount to everything. I don't know how Walmart is nowadays, but a few years ago I had a few friends working at one being stiffed an hour or two underneath the weekly "full time" amount so they didn't need to keep up with certain benefits. And making them work unpaid overtime and bullying them into not reporting it or clocking in.

People bring up legal recourse for these situations, but realistically, it's very scary when you're in that scenario and have to actually deal with getting underpaid or not getting paid for a while but having your dignity.

About the tipped wages mentioned a couple comments up, from my experience working delivery, that's a great way to get yourself fired. Because I guarantee you all the employees won't go in together on saying it, you're basically telling the management "I don't get tipped as much as everyone else" which is great grounds for poor performance, it's a catch-22.

See: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

IMO that's the strongest argument for replacing welfare programs by a negative income tax, or universal basic income.

Most people in welfare have to borrow money or work igaly true Too make ends meat from user5

They do, right? Needs to be depreciated.

I lived in Beijing for 9 years and never had to worry about a DUI since I didn't even own a car. Some bad nights (no taxis available) I walked home for an hour or so, no big deal.

Population densities in the US suck, and everything is oriented around personal cars. Totally different things.

Still no excuse.

People downvoting me obviously haven't had anyone close killed by a drunk driver. Disgusting. Simple solution if you can't get home without driving: don't drink.

Your comment just isn't very constructive. Everyone knows that driving drunk is moral reprehensible. That's not the point. I'm sorry for your loss but I could just as easily say something along the lines of "Driving in general is not an excuse. People downvoting me obviously haven't had anyone close killed by a distracted driver. Simple solution: don't be distracted and drive." You're not wrong, but as long as we continue to have an attitude of "drunk driving is just wrong so we shouldn't do anything because people who drive drunk are simply bad people" we will never create a proper solution and people will continue to die needlessly. It's not an excuse, but understanding people's impetuses (that are more common than you probably believe) will help us in creating solutions and getting rid of this problem once and for all.

The post I replied to sounded like it tried to justify it, like there was no other choice than to drive drunk. I also don't agree with you at all. You speak like it's some kind of technical problem that needs to be disrupted. If you drink and drive you're messed up and have big issues. Of course we should try to find ways to reduce it but you can never blame the system.

I'm not saying you don't have big issues if you drive drunk but that statement is obvious and does nothing to solve the problem. No one is going to start accepting drunk drivers as good people. But maybe we can understand why people drive drunk and can fix that underlying cause. After all, all I want is for fewer people to drive drunk.

What you mention are circumstances and excuses that doesn't change anything. The point of the parent post was that in some countries (mine is Norway) you just don't do it, full stop.

Very hypothetically, if someone else got you drunk in the middle of nowhere without your knowledge and there are no taxis available, and it's freezing outside so that you can't sleep under a bush, then not letting you stay the night at whatever house you were in would be similar to murder I guess. A drunk person driving is just off the table and everyone understands it.

>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.

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_St...

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.

Exactly, it's more socially acceptable in the USA.

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.

I think that's also something that's different in the US: individualism.

I wouldn't normally call e.g. Germany a "collectivist" society but in comparison to the attitudes I frequently hear about from Americans (especially in politics) Germans apparently genuinely care more about their fellow citizens.

Not being as likely to kill someone else is the entire point. Heck, drunk cycling is only slightly better than drunk driving because you're less likely to run someone over (but might still cause an accident when a driver has to do something dangerous to avoid you).

>Heck, drunk cycling is only slightly better than drunk driving because you're less likely to run someone over (but might still cause an accident when a driver has to do something dangerous to avoid you).

Drunk cyclists killed 1 person between 2007-2011 in Poland. Drunk pedestrians killed 3 persons. http://ibikekrakow.com/2012/03/28/ile-osob-zabili-pijani-row...

Drunk drivers killed hundreds.

50% of people caught for DUI are riding bicycles. And until recently, they were getting exactly the same prison sentences as drunk truck drivers. Almost half of people imprisoned for DUI were riding bicycles.

I think drunk cycling is completely harmless, and should be legal. If someone is too drunk, he can't keep balance on bicycle anymore and problem automatically fixes itself.

There is a lot of moral panic about drunk driving, but at BAC under 0.5 permille (vast majority of people caught) it's completely harmless or even safer than riding sober. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/WHO_BAC_... Only truly drunk people in cars should be punished.

It's not about being able to balance on a bike, it's about reaction time, coordination, and judgement.

In some way it's self-correcting, drunk cyclist can't ride fast. If he's super drunk, he becomes more of a pedestrian than cyclist. I agree it's not the best argument.

I like numbers, and numbers say drunk bicyclists are not a problem.

Drunk cyclist is hundreds times less danger than drunk driver, and should get hundreds times less punishment.

I'm not saying necessarily that this is due to a lack of care about fellow citizens, but the closest i've come to being hit as a pedestrian was in germany. single lane windy road in the heart of town, porsche flying by at 60+kmph.

I get that different cultures have different jay-walking habbits, even within the US cities are vastly different, but if i really cared about well-being of others i wouldn't drive like that in a city. I think the theory in other comments that drunk driving is seen culturally as immature and stupid is a better explanation.

> different in the US: individualism

It's funny, but in the US it's common for college freshmen to have two choices of lodging: either in a fraternity (Animal House, the movie ;-) or in a dorm room, two people per room (hence the 'Roommate from Hell' stories that grace the internet).

Not big on leaving individuals alone.

Just because you share a room with someone doesn't mean you do the same social activities as them. First roommate in college we kinda did, second roommate we barely did anything together other than be present in the same room (there was a point where we were playing Tony Hawk together regularly).

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.

> 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.

The minimum insurance won't cover that much vehicle damage, it's mostly bodily injury coverage ($5000 property).

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.

You're being downvoted, but you make a good point. Here's some more commentary in support of your statement.

http://freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/the-perils-of-drunk-walki...

It's a damn shame the US has decided to build streets that are safer to drive on drunk than walk on.

Cycling while intoxicated can also get you a DUI, though in practice it's probably rare.

Even walking can be risky. If you are seen falling down or even staggering a bit you can get a public intoxication charge.

The point of DUI being illegal isn't to protect drunk drivers; it's to protect everybody else (and everything) nearby.

Cycling while drunk is illegal in some places.

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.

>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.

  > 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.

>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.

> is still very taboo in the US

Depends on where you are. In rural America it's borderline socially acceptable (unfortunately).

In many places in rural America, it's borderline socially acceptable to drive while drinking. See "Road sodas"...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

As it should. 1 drink is enough to impair your ability to drive.

EDIT: I'm probably wrong, someone else in the comments posted data showing risk only increases after .03 BAC.

> I think that actually number is more like 99.95% for a person with a .08.

But it isn't the .08 drunk drivers killing people, it is the .16+ BAC drunk drivers killing people.

I find the fact that people believe this to be really quite frightening.

Sure, you feel great after a few drinks, that is kinda the point. But you are still impaired. Driving is not an activity where confidence helps. Reaction time matters and that goes down from your first drink.

I don't see how that is artificial. It is well known that your abilities are impacted long before you reach the legal limit.

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..

Is it common to smoke in public places?

No. You go to jail. Drinking in public places is however legal and appreciated.

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.

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.

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??

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.

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.)

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.

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:/...

> 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.

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

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.

If you drive to a place you know you'll be drinking at, you're doing stupid things while sober.

Where do you live? It's "shameful" in the US to, but it still happens.

New York

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.

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.

> Over here

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

You should see British Virgin Islands.

Where are you from?

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