Submitted by dataminimizer t3_zwkipo in washingtondc

The path next to Rock Creek Parkway was full of debris from car crashes yesterday. Signage was snapped in half from collisions. It looked pretty rough, so I want to ask:

Did you drive drunk home from your Christmas festivities? If you did, how far? Do you plan to also drive drunk on NYE?

If you didn’t drive drunk, how did you get home instead?

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NectarRoyal t1_j1v9qhi wrote

More likely crashes from ice and debris from the high winds.

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sacredxsecret t1_j1v9vs5 wrote

No. My basic rule is that I don't have more than one drink unless I'm at home.

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Aiogher t1_j1va1kc wrote

is there an officer, problem?

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1vdvcj wrote

Down doots here we come.

The problem is a large percentage of people can drive perfectly fine drunk. What ruins it is probably 10%-20% of the population who get their BAC up to .1 or above and think they are now living in imagination land and drive like maniacs. This in turn ruins it for everyone when a far more reasonable BAC for driving for most people is probably closer to .25.

Don't drink and drive even if your in that 80%-90% I spoke about because you can get pulled over for all kinds of reasons outside of your driving and have your life completely ruined.

edit: and no I did not I was with family for Christmas and we mostly eat huge amounts of food with no one really drinking more then a glass of wine or two tops.

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FoggyBottomBreakdown t1_j1vgzcg wrote

Didn’t drive drunk because I didn’t drink! First alcohol free Christmas and it felt great. Looking forward to the same on New Year’s!

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1visxs wrote

>If you think you can “drive perfectly fine drunk”, you are mistaken.

how insightful reddit stranger!

Nah I just don't get swept up in emotion when it comes to policy and am very well aware of myself and several others are when they drive. Like I said I know plenty of people who after a few drinks have no business being behind the wheel of a car. But I know plenty who drive just fine.

Moral busy bodies push stricter and stricter laws despite diminishing returns in results for nothing more then pats on the back and likes on social media.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1vl77s wrote

Its dangerous to operate a 2-6 ton speeding metal box either way.

DD laws have turned into a racket. Its far more about a "gotcha" for some guy with a tail light out then anything else.

But hhheeeyyy anything that gets more minorities into Felon status is generally hard to undo.

−14

dataminimizer OP t1_j1vn0sj wrote

100% agree we should stop organizing our communities around cars. Our cities should be easily walkable and bikeable and transit should be clean, safe, reliable, and regular. As you say, it’s as much a racial justice issue as anything else. Minorities would not be harassed by police and pulled over for pretextual reasons if they weren’t in their vehicles, where Fourth Amendment protections have been seriously eroded.

That said, “Every day, 32 people in the United States die in drunk driving car crashes. That’s one person every 45 minutes”. Drunk driving is worse than sober driving and you shouldn’t ever do it.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1vno8v wrote

>100% agree we should stop organizing our communities around cars. Our cities should be easily walkable and bikeable and transit should be clean, safe, reliable, and regular. As you say, it’s as much a racial justice issue as anything else. Minorities would not be harassed by police and pulled over for pretextual reasons if they weren’t in their vehicles, where Fourth Amendment protections have been seriously eroded.
>
>That said, “Every day, 32 people in the United States die in drunk driving car crashes. That’s one person every 45 minutes”. Drunk driving is worse than sober driving and you shouldn’t ever do it.

oh my god?!?! Every day?!?!? 32 people?!?! In a Nation of a mere 360 million?!?! Where I do sign up for the picket line comrade?!?!? that's nearly .0000001%!!!!

Yah waiving a magic wand and completely redeveloping every major city would be a great solution. Another solution would be to roll back DD laws so if you're pulled over with a BAC above the .08 but there is no obvious sign within your driving its not automatically a DUI.

But again, rolling back the laws so they become sensible won't result in pats on the back or updoots so its very unlikely to happen. Its also very unlikely an entire nation completely redevelops itself. So I guess we just stay with the status quo and tell each other just how much we heckin hate how it plays out this way but guess there's just nothing that can be done.

edit: lmao the number of total daily auto accidents in the USA is 102. Minus the 32 from DD and that's 70 sober deaths a day. Looks like DDing might actually nnooottt be more dangerous then sober driving.

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dataminimizer OP t1_j1vo6mo wrote

If you think 32 people killed a day is no big deal, I wonder if you’d think differently if you had to tell each one’s family that they had been killed, but that it’s okay, since it’s like 0.000001% of the US population.

These are preventable deaths. Please stop drinking and driving. You’re going to hurt or kill someone eventually.

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bubbabubba345 t1_j1vpzhh wrote

What do you mean, how? Designate a DD if going out with friends, otherwise, Uber/Lyft/Taxi/Metro or stay the night if you’re with family somewhere?

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NorseTikiBar t1_j1vr5h4 wrote

What in the ever-loving fuck is this topic.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1vs1hi wrote

>f you think 32 people killed a day is no big deal, I wonder if you’d think differently if you had to tell each one’s family that they had been killed

aaannnddd immediately into "well I'm holier then thou use your emotions not your head! These minorities are being put onto felony status for good reason! Just redevelop every city from bottom up much easier then changing a law!"

Thanks but as stated above, I don't support policy on emotion.

>These are preventable deaths. Please stop drinking and driving. You’re going to hurt or kill someone eventually.

Are they now? When 2x's the number of people die in sober accidents every day? Hell you as an indivdual. If I told you you were going to die in an auto accident in the next 7 days you have a 33% chance of that accident involving a drunk driver and a 66% chance all parties involved are sober.

These aren't "preventable deaths". Smoking deaths are preventable when your looking at 1/600 people dying from them. When talking about 1/100000 people dying that's a rounding error.

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00smarticle t1_j1vynx5 wrote

just a reminder the metro will be running til 2am and free after 8pm on nye

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JerriBlankStare t1_j1vyspw wrote

>If there’s ice and debris and you are a sober and responsible driver, you slow down so you don’t crash.

I take it you've never been in an accident caused by another driver due to icy, snowy conditions. Because it's happened to me before and I was completely sober and in control of my vehicle... until another driver swerved onto a patch of black ice and rammed into me, totaling my car on the spot.

There's only so much control an individual driver has when you're not the only vehicle on the road.

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foreverurgirl t1_j1w38xw wrote

I Uber when I am drinking… I pay for parking in the city I can pay for Ubers when I am drinking.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1w6c2h wrote

https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/how-alcohol-impairs-your-ability-to-drive

1/10th of a second change on average at .08 (please remeber "on average" means literally 50% of people aren't even effected that much). While its fun to say things "1/10th of a second could save lives!" in reality per my other posts there's a reason 66% of car accidents involve all parties being sober.

>Studies dating back to the 1960s have demonstrated the correlation between BAC and accident risk. The relative risk of being in a crash is 1.38 times higher at a BAC of 0.05 than at a BAC of 0.00. At 0.08, the risk is 2.69 times higher. At 0.10, the crash risk climbs to five times higher.

2.69 times are .08, 5 times at .1

https://pl-law.com/what-is-my-probability-of-getting-into-a-car-accident/#:~:text=One%20report%20uncovered%20a%20startling,collision%20once%20every%2017.9%20years.

every 1000 miles you drive you have a 1 in 366 chance on being in an accident. Meaning on any given drive your odds of being in an accident are virtually 0%. So that 2.69 times or 5 times is nearly meaningless.

While all these articles have flowery language around what a heckin great job we've done with drinking and driving and what a heckin big deal 1/10th of a second is I'd still contend that the punishment for DD is way to high for the result of the majority of cases and we'd be far better off (and see less disparate enforcement especially in minority communities) if we added a law something along the lines of "DUI is for someone over .08 and showing visible signs of their driving being effected otherwise if they're over .08 and were pulled over something not related to their visible driving (think a tail light out) then its a sizeable fine".

While I know plenty of people have lost people to drinking and driving plenty of people have lost loved ones to auto accidents in general and making an army of new felons because some people can't hold their liquor won't bring anyone back.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1w9b0b wrote

>The research doesn’t back you up like you think it does

Well when opinion pieces are shoved into the results of a study its hard to convince redditors otherwise.

So we need even stricter DUI penalties from your reading of it then?

Edit: a quick look at your recent post history shows you seem to at some level be in favor of social justice. So seeing how DUIs mint more felons then almost any other outlet how do you rectify the fact that the vast majority of instances of drinking and driving is a victimless crime but meanwhile countless of minorities are felons today because they had 1-2 more drinks then they should of and are now essentially un-hireable?

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Detective-E t1_j1wfnio wrote

I plan to drink until I can't drive on NYE but that's why I live somewhere with a great metro system. It doesn't get much better than this in the US so use it

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churchofnobody t1_j1whp1i wrote

Last year I was on my way home from my parents house and coming down Tilden by the park. I saw a guy laying on the floor with a helmet 20 feet down the road, and a Revel scooter beside him. I pulled over to make sure he was okay, but a few minutes later his friends pulled up in a car and drove him away. I hope they took him to the hospital, he seemed to be in shock, but no major injuries. He did complain about some shoulder pain though.

Be safe y’all. He was definitely intoxicated.

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Flame87 t1_j1wwnvi wrote

It's fun how you attack somebody who follows an anti-car first infrastructure sub trying to open conversation about dangerous driving habits as confrontational but not the guy whose gone ham and rambled like 5 pages about how "cars are bae and fuck you for asking me not to drive drunk."

🤔

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1xf8ai wrote

Well then let me go ahead and tighten up my thesis for yah before you down vote with tears of rage in your eyes someone dares go agaisnt the grain.

Most people, likely around 8 to 9 out of 10, can easily drive at a BAC of .08-.15 without increasing their odds of being in a wreck more so then if everyone driving were to be sober. As things stand now the vast majority of DUIs are used as a checkbox for the police so they can turn a minor traffic violation into a near felony charge (or an actual felony if its a repeat offender). Of course there is a BAC where everyone is unable to drive but we are currently ridiculously far from that.

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BodybuilderTall4634 t1_j1xurdt wrote

Any self-respecting person who drives drunk is not going to admit it on this sub. At best you’d get the “yes I did and I’m proud of it” type, which would just create a stupid argument about drunk driving which we all know is obviously a bad idea, so I’d agree this topic is pointless.

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Flame87 t1_j1xwve3 wrote

I see it as an attempt at a more polite attempt at "I saw all this destroyed shit from drunk drivers could you fucking not"

IMO it served its purpose with the amount of people going to bat for the drunk drivers. Sorry, they'll say "We're not endorsing drunk drivers we just don't want you to talk about it"

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dataminimizer OP t1_j1yss0j wrote

The only conclusion I can draw from this comment is that you must always adhere to speed limits, stop signs, and other traffic laws with religious devotion.

Unless of course you think the traffic laws are the ones that are acceptable to be broken because “you’re not hurting anyone” and the 15 seconds you could save are really important?

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foreverurgirl t1_j1yva84 wrote

I have actually been masturbated at on the train twice… just responding to the above comment. I am not a pearl clutcher, but it is unnerving. I wasn’t going to comment that, but I am responding to the comment that included it.

I am a huge fan of walking when it’s close, but I don’t feel safe on the metro anymore. I used to love taking it- and I have always had a car here. It feels totally lawless at this point.

I have moments where I think- hey this will be easy I’ll take the metro, but then I always end up regretting it.

If we are taking about specifically while drinking, I feel safer with a direct pick up and drop off. Being in a car with a stranger feels kind of unsafe, but less unsafe than walking a distance after a few when I have to ability to take an Uber direct from point a to b.

I understand you specifically don’t prefer to drive, but other people do for reasons of safety and accessibility. Please understand that we also hate many unsafe and aggressive - from what I notice, commuter drivers. They make streets less safe for pedestrians and other drivers.

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dataminimizer OP t1_j1yx4gv wrote

I appreciate your comment, your personal experience, and your rationale, and I’m sorry you feel unsafe on Metro. That’s definitely a problem. I’m not unreasonable and I won’t try to vilify you for choosing an Uber over Metro while on a night out. As long as you’re not drunk driving, whatever you prefer is fine by me!

While I’m generally pro-transit/walking/biking as a means of getting around the city, and have a strong distaste for the way car-dependent thinking and engineering perverts our city, that’s another story. This post was specifically about dangerous drunk and impaired driving.

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foreverurgirl t1_j1z02le wrote

It’s not even like the two incidents I described above. Even when conflict doesn’t spill on to me I have seen tons of fights, people yelling unhinged at other people, seen tons of drinking and drug sales. Metro used to be so clean and safe- or maybe I was younger and naive, but it is so rough now. If it was more visibly policed, at stations and on cars, I think it would help.

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MrDickford t1_j1zca96 wrote

The drunk driver dude sucks but everybody already knows that. He’s sitting at the bottom of the page at -41 now, it’s not even a debate anymore. You should just anyone you’re talking to thinks he’s a piece of shit unless they explicitly say otherwise.

Calling r/fuckcars an “anti-car first infrastructure sub” seems disingenuous. I don’t frequent the sub, but the people who do who have come to this sub have been toxic, aggressive, and seemingly motivated more by personal grievance than by a desire to make cities safer and more navigable. OP is all over the thread passive aggressively questioning anyone who admits to occasionally riding in a car, he clearly just has an axe to grind.

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tiakeuta t1_j1zfrgd wrote

Did you ride a bike on Christmas? I'm not a psychic, but I have a premonition.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1zj2hh wrote

>Denying a plethora of research and statistics is not going against the grain, it’s you being a selfish person who proudly drives drunk.

lmao I don't drive. Period. I take my bike or public transit every where I go.

I just linked you the research and its findings. You can't see past the opinion writings of the reporters who are reporting it and are confusing that with the actual research.

But yeah enjoy making armies of minorities into felons who these laws disproportionately effect you hypocrite.

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TheDeHymenizer t1_j1zoxmi wrote

No worries man I too have a closed mind when confronted with ideas conflicting with my own beliefs and decide to discount the person not the ideas.

Best of luck to yah major tom.

edit: hahaha last word post followed by block. Truly Reddit IQ bud

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