Certainly so. In NC, there are some counties that are dry. Doesn't mean much, though, when the next county is a half-hour away, as it is in NC with our hundred counties.

Tony, did you wait 30 minutes before you tested? Even though you have alcohol on your breath, it's not in your bloodstream yet (or at least not fully). Sometimes, people will blow a higher BAC an hour after they leave the bar than they did at the bar.

Yup. It's in the instructions.

I'm trying to learn where the line between safety and unnecessary paranoia is drawn.


YMMV, but to me the line is crystal clear: If you can feel it at all, you are impaired and have no business driving.

There is a good reason for the FAA's "12 hours from bottle to throttle" rule for pilots. I know of a pilot who stated definitively that he could feel the loss of reflexes and judgment from a single beer, and would never consider flying under those circumstances. And this was someone who, given the appropriate circumstances, could and did party and drink with the very best.

Just wait 'til I get to be King of the World... there'll be some changes made, you'll see!

tanstaafl.

Okay, so my first real test of the toy happened last night. It's not Tucker-Max-worthy, thank goodness. But it did teach me something interesting about the way the body reacts to alcohol.

Well, the first thing I really learned is this. When you buy a margarita in a restaurant, it's a completely different thing than when you buy one in a bar. In a bar, it turns out they actually put tequila in the drinks (go figure).

Two margaritas at a bar with a friend, and I was absolutely, unequivocally not going anywhere near a motor vehicle under any circumstances. This is in contrast to a restaurant margarita, where after two of them I'm wondering what all the fuss is about.

And I was only blowing a .04.

Off to the next bar across the street, where my BAC was up to .06 as the alcohol slowly absorbed into my system. The thing was, as my BAC was creeping up, the effects of the alcohol were decreasing. I really could only feel the effects of the prior drinks shortly after having drank them. I spent some time there listening to the band and not drinking at all, feeling myself sobering up by the minute.

Eventually I felt completely sober, but the night was young, so I ordered another one. I was blowing an .08 (legally drunk in CA now) but not feeling impaired at all. After drinking that third one, and feeling its effects peak and start to wear off, my BAC was up to .10.

After that, I stopped drinking alcohol and started drinking lots of water to get my BAC to come back down, it only did so gradually. By the time the band finished up and the bar closed I was still blowing a .08. I was feeling OK to drive, but my toy told me otherwise.

I ended up walking around the block for two hours and blowing every few minutes until the toy was reading a consistent .06. At that point, I had felt completely sober and totally unimpaired for over an hour (despite the toy telling me I was still drunk as a skunk) and so that's when I chose to head home. I felt completely fine and was also well under the legal limit, so no scolding.

Remember, the point in time when I felt the most impaired, my BAC was only .04. And yet I felt fine at .08 later on.

I think that's the problem with using BAC to judge your state of impairment. What the BAC seems to be telling you is how drunk you've been recently, but not how drunk you are right now. It's like a delayed "echo" of your alcohol intake and its effects. (Just like you said, Brad.)

Oh, and boy did I have a hangover this morning. I made the mistake of trying to take advil and drink water and tea right away when I woke up. It didn't stay in me for very long. But I felt much better after throwing up the water/tea/advil mix, and shortly thereafter was able to eat a bowl of cereal, take more advil, and get on with my day.

It's been a while since I drove the porcelain bus. Forgot what a pleasant experience that was...

I prefer "pray to the porcelain god".

There's always "Technicolor Yawn".

"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder"

I can't believe you didn't already know that.

Do you know what Vegemite is?

...reading a consistent .06. At that point, I had felt completely sober and totally unimpaired for over an hour ... and so that's when I chose to head home. I felt completely fine ...

It would be very interesting to me to see the results of objective tests of your reasoning skills and motor co-ordination under those circumstances.

Do you think it is possible (I really don't know; I'm not sniping at you here) that an insidious effect of being intoxicated is the incorrect belief that you are not?

I suggest this because I have seen the results of measured, progressive intoxicaton under controlled circumstances, and the results showed incontrovertibly that the people in the test were demonstrably impaired, even though they insisted that they were not.

tanstaafl.

Yup. I've felt fine before but was still obviously drunk to everybody else. It's very hard to judge it since by that point you're drunk

I always feel just fine until I start to spill my martinis and start to fall over. That's usually about 5 martinis, which I'm sure is waaaayyyy over any legal limit.

It seems that would be .18. Be sure to read the 'Mythconceptions' bit at the bottom - it's pretty funny.

-Zeke

... and waited until my BAC was significantly under the legal limit, before driving.

And there's the problem. I'm not trying to single you out nor direct this post directly at you... but this mindset we seem to have in America about "Well, I'm under the legal limit so I must be OK" is, frankly, appalling.

Just because a driver's blood alcohol content is less than some arbitrarily chosen number that is, in the opinion of a great many knowledgeable people, set far too high, does not mean that that driver is not impaired!

How much impaired? A lot? Just a little? From my admittedly hard-core perspective, any impairment is too much.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, I've driven when I was sleepy, and felt orders of magnitude more impaired than I've felt after a drink or two.

I'm pretty sure it's against the law to drive when you're sleepy, too. The difference is that there's not a chemical test for it, so it's hard to prove.

Here is a article that was published a few weeks back concerning the breathalyzers the police use. My lawyer, Marcus Hill, purchased one and found out how unreliable these things are... Interesting read...

http://www.nc-dwi-defense.com/parts/Images/intox.pdf

Sean in NC

edit: no I have not used him for a DWI case...

Out of interest, do you take the same approach to tiredness and driving ?


Believe it or not... I do, at least when it comes to myself.

When I was bringing the ShoWagon back from New Hampshire, there were times I put down more than 1200 miles in a day, and during those times I monitored my driving with an inviolable rule: The second time I inadvertantly touched or crossed a fog line or center line, the next wide spot on the shoulder was where I parked, climbed in the back and got into my sleeping bag.

I'd sleep until the cold woke me up, and 90 seconds after that I'd be rolling again.

For some unfathomable reason, people have told me they don't ever want to go on a long car trip with me...

tanstaafl.