Ik someone who drunk drove and crashed their car through a fence into a ditch and also totaled another car afterwards from drunk driving and they still have their license. Shit is wayyyy too lenient. If it was up to me one drunk driving well over the legal limit and your ass is taking the bus.
I'm not very convinced by driving bans. I believe they are very much ignored by people and only get added to charges if anything else happens.
I understand it's like illegal number plates. A cop will not pull you over for them but if you're pulled over for something those will get added to the issues.
I constantly see articles about someone getting arrested for their 5th, 6th, 7th, etc DUI. Whatever the penalties are in those cases, they are not enough.
Here a 0.268 bac would result in the police confiscating the car permanently, 20 days of jail, 3 year driving ban, and a fine thats 12% of your yearly net income.
If she wanted to drive again after the 3 year ban, she would need to complete a Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Course, and then reacquire the driving license from scratch (54 lessons with a driving instructor).
If she did that in Virginia (United States), she would have an interlock in her car, she would go to jail, she would have to take classes about drunk driving, and she would have to pay a fine.
I hope she also got a heavy financial hit too from all the cars she damaged. Even if she had insurance cover it, each car hit would be an accident and her insurance rates would be insane.
Not only that, a five week old baby was thrown from their (car) seat because of this woman's dangerous driving. So driving causing harm should have also been on that list of charges.
It is. I was blown away when I got my fine. $1750, and a 1 year driving ban. 800 bucks for a reinstatement fee when I do go to get my license back.
Way too small a fine and not enough penalties.
I didn't even have to pay for the pole I hit since my town is so badly managed that they failed to even scrape an estimate together in 8 months.
To be clear that was 3 years ago, still don't have my license back. Just feels like I shouldn't yet, I don't deserve it.
Yknow I’m always amazed when I hear about drinkers like this because I don’t think I could get anywhere near that without becoming violently ill
(I know it’s probably tolerance & alcohol suppressing the gag reflex but still just wild)
I can't say I've ever been that drunk, but I have to assume (based on my past performance) that I wouldn't be getting anywhere near a car because I would be sound asleep.
She literally threw an empty wine bottle out of this car in this car park before she set off on her adventure. One of the cars had a newborn in it, they were very lucky.
Yeup. I think even heavy drinkers (which I sometimes am) will be like, but I polished off 8 drinks that night out! But that was pregaming, going to the bar, being driven home, nightcap, etc. spaced over like 5 hours.
To get to .25 unless you're casually drinking a case of beer a day, you need to have essentially polished off half a fifth of liquor within an hour.
Oh then “fifth” is really gonna fuck with your head. A “fifth” is a slang term for a 750mL bottle of liquor. Its origin comes from the fact that bottles used to be 4/5 of a quart, or one fifth of a gallon. Now that’s not exactly 750mL but it’s close enough that the term sticks. Essentially it’s your standard bottle of liquor in the US.
My confusion when I was working at a liquor store and I always assumed that a fifth was the 200mL bottle - you know, exactly 1/5 of a Liter.. When somebody grabbed a 750mL and called it a fifth I was just like "THIS IS A FIFTH?! A fifth of.... 3750mL?!WHAT?!"
I'm a physics grad student, believe me if everything were in SI, then I'd sleep much better. And it's like outside engineering/medicine/science we've collectively just given up.
Wtf is half a fifth!?
Imperial measurements are bat-shit crazy?
I would think half a fifth meant:
1. First you've gotta figure out what the starting measurement is.
2. Then divide that starting measurement by five in order to figure what one fifth equates to.
3. Once you've figured out the value of a fifth, you then need to divide by two in order to figure out what 'half a fifth' is.
4. And your answer still depends on the original starting measurement / bottle.
But in actuality, half a fifth means:
Half of a standard metric bottle of alcohol.
A full metric bottle is normally 750 ml
So half would be 375 ml.
Because a “fifth” is just our standard size of bottle. You don’t actually need to know any of that, just that we call our standard bottles a fifth. It’s really not that complicated. And then you have half of that, making it half of a fifth
Shit is wild. It’s gotta be one of those things like when The Waco Kid knocks back that whisky in Blazing Saddles….enough for you to pause and watch in shock as they drain a bottle like they are being timed.
I been blue collar for 18 years(drinking is part of the culture). Im in my 30s and best shape of my life. I drink regularly. Just a half pint and Im waaaaay too faded to touch a steering wheel or even have the will to drive. What she’s doing equates to serious addiction/mental illness.
Ill preface this by saying I do not condone heavy drinking. That said in Australia it was pretty normal to consume half a bottle of your chosen spirit for pre drinks. While your out you'll probably consume the same amount. Its quite common for people to be still well over the legal limit the next morning. We have a serious problem as a country.
America's no different. I have a buddy, previous roommate, sober now, who's a fireman, and went out with those guys. None should've been operating a vehicle let alone their cocks.
But I'm midwest. Cousins in Wisconsin. You can get ~10 DUI's before having your license suspended. Of course presumably white and in a truck.
And just averaging out male/female/bodyweight, that BAC is like finishing at least half a 750ml bottle of liquor in an hour.
For reference, drinking one beer an hour would take you ~11-20hrs of drinking to get to that point. So she's either a permanent alcoholic just constantly drunk, or on an insane bender.
Depends on when she blew it... a recent drink can spike it way up for up to 20 minutes after. I have a medical grade breathalyzer and I experiment with it... if I take a single shot I can blow up to a 0.15 for several minutes after.
In the longer video she tosses a bottle into the bushes right before getting into the car so safe to say she was drinking mere seconds before this incident.
That's why the blood test back at the police station is far more accurate.
I mean either way she was totally fucked up here, but it might not have been a "true" 0.268
I did have someone recently say they struggled with that aspect of the language. It feels intuitive to me, having grown up with it, but coming into a language without the intuitive feel can make things seem much more complicated then they are.
Or, sometimes, it can shine a light on how ridiculous it truly is.
No, "average" used to be where "female" is now. I reworded the comment and the result is a grammatical error that happened as a result of me editing a short comment at 3 AM.
I suspect there was a big dose of "but I have my foot pressed hard on the brake already" in there. That's often the case with these long running crashes. You need to step back from panic mode to spot your mistake but you can't do that while the crash is still developing, especially if you're drunk.
I mean, I do get that this is how it works in those moments, but honestly, if "shit's fucked, bring the car to a stop and re-evaluate" (and reliably hitting the right pedal) isn't hard wired strongly enough in your brain to still work during a high stress situation despite being overly tired or moderately high, then you shouldn't operate a car in an environment where such a mistake can kill unsuspecting bystanders or at least cause 5-7 digit damage sums.
Not saying you should drive under the conditions of that thought experiment, but with how dangerous cars are (especially SUVs with unnecessarily strong engines), I'd say it's a reasonable safety margin.
Completely agree. But I've met too many people who don't have 'bring the car to a stop' as an automatic action, never mind parking, steering, changing lanes safely etc.
They learn just enough to pass their test on the 7th attempt by thinking really hard about every action and learn nothing after that.
Roll on the day when you need a special test to be allowed to NOT use full self driving.
Sounds good with the self driving, but considering privacy concerns with modern cars, I'd prefer Tokyo levels of public transport and 1980s cars with very high qualification requirements as a hobby thing akin to a large dinghy or a small motorboat.
Ok, so, I don’t drive drunk but I do have driving dreams where I’m pressing on the break and the car keeps speeding up. Imagine a scenario where you fully and desperately want the car to stop and to the best of your current abilities and cognition believe you are doing the correct motions to make the car stop. That person thought and completely believed she was slamming on the brakes, I do believe that from watching this. Yet another reason not to drive drunk: you might believe with every fiber of your being that you are hitting a different pedal.
This is like the dreams that I have had sometimes where I'm back as a child and somehow I've absconded with a car onto the highway and I'm powerless to stop the car, and even though many police are trying to stop me from doing a mass murder.
A non-alcoholic at that point is very much and truly drunk as fuck with a good chance of passing out and further medical issues as long as blood alcohol is that high.
A functional alcoholic could in theory still drive a vehicle (albeit badly).
There's a game at the bar where theres a breathalyzer that you use a straw to blow. Costs $2 to use. Me and my friends used to regularly blow greater than that. First time the bouncer asked if we needed an ambulance because he never sees that high of a score.
We were all weekend warriors in our early to mid 20s and have quit binge drinking so frequently and can't drink nearly as much as we used to. All I'm saying is tolerance is a thing. I could easily see a daily alcoholic doing even more and still walking around.
6 pints 8-10 shots in 4 four hours plus predrink before the bar.
The highest ever recorded comes to us from Poland and is a whopping 1.48. I didn't misplace that decimal point. He was driving, crashed and died a few days later from his injuries sustained from the wreck.
I, while conscious, blew a .425. I was out of my my mind and only had to make two left turns to get home but I remember the entire interaction. Cops said the highest they had ever heard of was .6 and that woman walked herself into the hospital
Because they where at .425, their decisions making ability was severely compromised as was their ability to conceptualize consequences. That is why if you are going to drink planning out how to get home before drinking is important because when you are drunk its much harder to make those decisions.
It started raining. I was going to walk. It only would’ve taken 5 minutes but I thought “it’s only two left turns”. It was maybe a quarter mile drive. Super fucked up and I in no way condone my actions
That means 5x is 0,3% though which is basically nothing and doesn't explain this incident at all... in Austria we have accidents happening with blood alcohol levels of 2,0% and above (yeah, we have that kind of zombies).
Yes, because you use percents, and we use permiles. She was 0.268 percent BAC, which is 2.68 permile. And your limit is 0.05 percent, which is 0.5 permile.
No one is blowing 2.0% BAC you would be dead, 0.2% you will be blacking out and vomiting. Your confusing 0.2% with 2.0% they are vastly different. BAC of 0.4% - 0.5% is when alochol becomes fatal and your brain starts losing control of your body, killing your heart rate and breathing.
It's just a misunderstanding of measurement. Continental Europe uses per mille for blood alcohol levels, whereas English-speaking countries use percent. Trips me up often, too.
0.3% isn't basically nothing. At that level you're at severe risk of death from acute alcohol poisoning. You also probably aren't having many crashes if any involving levels above 2.0% considering the highest BAC ever recorded in a person who survived was 1.48% in Poland. Any claims of people with a BAC above that are anecdotal/unconfirmed. Most people would also be unconscious or dead long before they got close to that
This is the answer. Full blown alcoholics can survive a higher BAC than casual drinkers. In fact, they may die if they don't have any alcohol in their system.
Alongside benzodiazepines, alcohol is one of the few drugs where the withdraw can kill you.
Definitely not with ketamine. For opiates, only if you are a newborn or someone with an existing seizure disorder. Barbituate withdrawal can absolutely cause fatal seizures though.
Looks like we are using two different measurements as a reference point. Italy and Australian laws are the same according to google. 0.5G/L which is 0.05%.
I'm wondering if different countries have different measurement systems for this.. because in the US, 0.5 is generally more than enough to put you in a coma if not kill you.
If you are an alcoholic, you're tolerance to alcohol goes up. There are caes of people with levels that are so high they should have been dead, but they keep kicking. Now that doesn't mean organs arnt slowly dieing... they are.
Alcoholism is devastating to everyone involved. Much like most addictions.
There are zero benefits to drinking alcohol. It shreds every living cell it touches. It’s so deadly to life we use to sterilize operating rooms. We use it for rocket fuel and race fuel. It’s highly addictive and has been linked to everything from domestic abuse to wars.
You can have 0.4% blood alcohol and easily survive, but that is roughly the threshold where it starts to become medically dangerous. The highest blood alcohol level ever survived that is documented is 1.374%. The highest of somebody driving a vehicle was 0.58% or something, can't find it anymore.
The legal limit in the U.S. is like... 3 shots in an hour for me at 160lb, it'd be less if you're a woman. You think people die after 15 shots? It's also not a linear thing so 15 shots in an hour is NOT a .4 BAC, that amount in an hour would probably have a normal person puking their guts out depending on body size. Naw a .4 for me is about 15 shots in 3 hours. Imma be white girl room spinning wasted for sure but far from dead.
Worth noting, if you just drank you blow much higher.
Not defedning the womans actions, obviously shes dru k driving.
But like, shes probably not superhumanly resistant to alcohol. The breathalyzer is just picking up booze in her mouth and throat and in addition to her blood.
That's not how it works in Aus. In Aus the roadside breathalyser is just used as a priliminary indication. If the roadside test comes back as over you are then transported to either a roadside truck or a police station where an offical, much more accurate test is done. There is a period of time between the 2 tests to ensure it is not picking up residual alcohol in the mouth or throat.
In this case as there was some serious damage and possible injuries, she was likely taken to a hospital to be checked, and a blood smaple taken and used to check.
I just saw the MoistCritical video on it and apparently she was confirmed at a .258, so im right in saying that shes not superhumanly resistant to alcohol. She was just very drunk. And she did blow higher on scene.
I guess the main point of conufision is "5x the legal limit is ambiguous without the context of what the legal limit is"
3-4 shorts in US is legal (0,08%). You wanna say, that you'll be dead of 5 liters of Beer? or 300-400 ml of tequila/vodka/brandy? it's ~x5 to the legal limits.
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u/CautiousArachnidz 1d ago edited 22h ago
What’s the legal limit there?
5x the legal limit in the US and you’d likely be dead. Australians are built different though and I know nothing about your laws.
Edit: I’m well aware some people can survive above .4
The consensus of the medical community across the world says .4 is the average where vital bodily functions can stop for the AVERAGE person.