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Drinking and Riding

KeyMan said:
If you order a beer at the grub stop I will politely walk over to you and ask you to hand me your keys. If you do I'll hand you my business card so that you and I can make the necessary arrangements. If you don't I'll get back on my ride and do the lone wolf thing, after paying my bill of course.
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I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would surrender their keys after a single drink. Many people make a personal decision not ride if they've consumed any alcohol whatsoever, myself being one of them, but I don't really think its appropriate for you to request someone not ride after a single beer. Not saying I condone the behavior, just saying its not your responsibility to tell others how to handle themselves.


HappyHighwayman said:
In all seriousness, I will drink 1-2 beer and still ride assuming I've had sufficient time for the alcohol to work its way out of my system, but typically no more than 1 standard size beer. I will extend it to two if I'll be somewhere for like 2+ hours.
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That's his decision.
 
Drunks maiming and killing people is wrong, the fines are serious as is the jail time. The CHP and other studies have shown cell phone use while driving causes as many wrecks as drunks. Why is the disparity in fines so great between the 2, if the danger to society is the same. Is it because the Mad Mothers don't think they should hang up and drive? There are no cell phone check points on holidays or even avoid the 13 campaigns. We need to crack down on all of the major contributors of mayhem if our roads are to be made safer.
 
i wont drink and "ride" canyons or long distances ect, but if i meet at a pizza parlor or what ever with freinds ill have one, count it one beer.
 
Wack said:
There are no cell phone check points on holidays or even avoid the 13 campaigns. We need to crack down on all of the major contributors of mayhem if our roads are to be made safer.
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All you have to do is hang up your cell phone at a check point, and noone would be the wiser. Driving and talking without a hands free device has already been made illegal, what more can be done? Its not about taking privileges away, its about making people respect the privileges they have before its too late and they do something stupid. I still wish the U.S's size / infrastructure would allow for a far more rigorous process to get a drivers license, like in some European countries...
 
KeyMan said:
If you order a beer at the grub stop I will politely walk over to you and ask you to hand me your keys. If you do I'll hand you my business card so that you and I can make the necessary arrangements. If you don't I'll get back on my ride and do the lone wolf thing, after paying my bill of course.
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Better to just not ride with those that are even mildly impaired...I don't see myself taking away anyone's keys who I don't know and who is having a beer with lunch.

If they are on a ride I'm on (unlikely because I don't ride with people I don't know and who's skills I therefore don't know) I'd simply say good bye and leave.
 
Key007 said:
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would surrender their keys after a single drink. Many people make a personal decision not ride if they've consumed any alcohol whatsoever, myself being one of them, but I don't really think its appropriate for you to request someone not ride after a single beer. Not saying I condone the behavior, just saying its not your responsibility to tell others how to handle themselves.




That's his decision.
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Agreed. That's why I would ask politely and leave it at that.

If I'm sober, which I will be I'm a very good judge of when a person has impaired judgement.

If you (rhetorical) have one beer and decide to get on your ride two hours later I think you'll probably be fine. However, you can not argue the fact that you may find yourself wishing you had not.
 
"Driving and talking without a hands free device has already been made illegal, what more can be done?"

If the danger to society is the same, make the penalty the same. Cell phone bust is $25.00 or $50.00 while first DUI is a few thousand and a weekend in the slam.
 
Do mortality rates due to accidents caused by cell phones equal that of drunk drivers? How can you argue that the danger is the same, and that they thus deserve equal penalties?
 
"Cell phone users have been found to be 5.36 times more likely to get in an accident than undistracted drivers. Other studies have shown the risk is about the same as for drivers with a 0.08 blood-alcohol level.

Dr. Strayer says he expects criticism “suggesting that we are trivializing drunken-driving impairment, but it is anything but the case. We don't think people should drive while drunk, nor should they talk on their cell phone while driving.”

Drews says he and Dr. Strayer compared the impairment of motorists using cell phones to drivers with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level because they wanted to determine if the risk of driving while phoning was comparable to the drunken driving risk considered unacceptable.

“This study does not mean people should start driving drunk,” says Drews. “It means that driving while talking on a cell phone is as bad as or maybe worse than driving drunk, which is completely unacceptable and cannot be tolerated by society.”

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/drivingissues/20060830105036.html
 
While that may be true, but until you provide some numerical data you can't make a true comparison.

Deaths to due drunk driving:
http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html

Some info regarding accidents caused by driving with a cell phone:
http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell/statistics.html


Numbers talk.


Edit: I think that there is much less accurate information circulating regarding the # of deaths caused by cell phones, though, and so I can't fully back the info provided in the second link (Esp. since it clumps many non-alcohol related accidents under "Distracted Driving"). I'm just trying to prepare a retort - though at the same time we're ALL arguing a moot point because I'd love it if everyone stopped using their cell phones altogether while driving just as much as I'd love to see people stop drinking and driving :teeth
 
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I think we're still only seeing the tip of the iceberg...and as most drunks drivers are caught at night and most riders don't regularly ride at night distracted drivers are likely more of a threat to us than drunk drivers.

My apologies for a slight threadjack!

"Data regarding car accidents involving cell phone use and/or texting while driving has been limited in the past, but it's slowly becoming available to the public. The information on this page reflects the most current 2007 and 2008 statistics regarding cell phone usage and text messaging during car accidents.

While the popularity of mobile phones has grown enormously in the past two decades, it's still unclear how greatly cell phone calls and texting contribute to car crashes. What is clear is that talking on the phone and texting behind the wheel both lead to distraction, and driver inattention is the leading cause of car accidents.

# In 2008 almost 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured in crashes related to driver distraction.

# At any given time during daylight hours in 2008, more than 800,000 vehicles were driven by someone using a hand-held cell phone.

# 4 out of every 5 accidents (80%) are attributed to distracted drivers. In contrast, drunk drivers account for roughly 1 out of 3 (33%) of all accidents nationally."

http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell/statistics.html
 
"Back in the day" I used to drink a couple of Beers and ride. Nothing ever happened.
I was very lucky. Very lucky.
I'm six foot two and 250 pounds. One American corparate beer don't do much to me.

But I do not drink and ride or anything else like that anymore.
Why push luck!
 
Key007 said:
Do mortality rates due to accidents caused by cell phones equal that of drunk drivers? How can you argue that the danger is the same, and that they thus deserve equal penalties?
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California Highway Patrol annually publishes the rank of causes for traffic fatalities. Drunk or stoned drivers has been #1 for as long as the statistics have been kept, and there is no close second. I recall that in accidents where life is lost, around half involve at least one impaired driver.

That was my gripe back when the whiners claimed that "55 mph saves lives" because the stats don't show such a change to have a significant effect on traffic fatalities. Strong enforcement on DUI does and the numbers show it. When they crank up enforcement, deaths go down.
 
KeyMan said:
If you order a beer at the grub stop I will politely walk over to you and ask you to hand me your keys. If you do I'll hand you my business card so that you and I can make the necessary arrangements. If you don't I'll get back on my ride and do the lone wolf thing, after paying my bill of course.
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What do you do if they take allergy medicine? Heart medicine? Pain killers?

Do you take keys for that or just when they have a beer?


Just curious, not trying to be a smart-ass. It's just that if you went on a group ride with a bunch of dudes that were 50 and over, you'd be pulling everyones keys after seeing the handfulls of pills those fellas have to swill just to get out of bed.
 
Brown81 said:
It's just that if you went on a group ride with a bunch of dudes that were 50 and over, you'd be pulling everyones keys after seeing the handfulls of pills those fellas have to swill just to get out of bed.
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Hey now, at 53 I'd have to disagree...but over 70...perhaps...but you'll have to check with Louemc on that one! :laughing
 
I take my blood pressure meds before riding...
 
Key007 said:
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would surrender their keys after a single drink. Many people make a personal decision not ride if they've consumed any alcohol whatsoever, myself being one of them, but I don't really think its appropriate for you to request someone not ride after a single beer. Not saying I condone the behavior, just saying its not your responsibility to tell others how to handle themselves.




That's his decision.
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You try to paint it like choosing to ride drunk is a purely personal decision. It is not. If you were only a risk to yourself and no one else (in every sense of the word- including the financial burden to the taxpayers when you kill yourself and don't have insurance, or the burden to drivers when you kill yourself and take out of the insurance pool from everyone else) then I'd say cool, ride drunk if you like, no skin off my back.

Thing is, if somebody is out there driving or riding drunk, there is a greater chance there in fact will be skin off my back, or my arms, or my legs that night. In fact, hopefully skin off my back is all I'd loose.

Choosing to ride OR drive drunk is not a purely personal decision.
 
^ Well I'm talking about going up to someone after a single beer, and that's going back to a "does 1 beer constitute drunk?" type argument -- though I agree with everything in your post regardless.
 
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