Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Because, for the reasons Bart gave, it's not objective.
Yes, it is. "Objective" means something that can be observed or measured by more than just one person. So "how much you drank" is an objective measure. There's no quibbling about this. "How drunk you feel" is subjective. No one else can directly observe that, they can only get your report on it.
I'm still rather confused about what your point is here. Even if the limit were different, how do you propose that people stick to it?
They were both terrified by how much they could drink (reportedly light-weight female got to six glasses of wine, IIRC, and the male was something like 10 bottles of beer) before they were blowing over, and the driving of both was utterly awful long before they hit the limit. It's not precisely scientific, but it's pretty persuasive in terms of how far above safe our limit is.
Not really. It's a really crap test, actually, as you say, unscientific. 6 standard glasses of wine would have put the woman on 0.11, well over the limit, just by counting measures, if she was really big, like 110kg. If she was average sized, say 75kg, she'd have been pushing 0.17, as in more than twice the legal limit. 10 bottles of beer would make me, a big guy at 100kg, be on 0.21, pushing three times the limit. In fact, if I drank that much alcohol in under an hour, I would almost certainly lapse into unconsciousness and vomiting, from personal experience. I don't even know if I could cram 3 litres of beer into my stomach without being sick. If I did that with water I think I'd probably be impaired just from the pain.
I'm sorry, but those tests sound like totally uncontrolled bullshit. They simulate a very dissimilar situation to what I'm suggesting.
It's vaguely, passably, kinda close to objective, but only inasmuch as it gives someone a very rough idea of how much they can drink without going over 0.08 if they know precisely how much alcohol (as in the actual alcohol content, not including all the water) they are consuming.
The term "standard drink" is a metric measure of the volume of alcohol. It's 15ml. It's objective.
The countries with which we generally compare ourselves because of similar cultures are the ones we need to look at.
Can I ask you again to actually do this comparison, then, using actual accident statistics to back up what you think is so scientifically proven?
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And the Finale….
Where's the fly's loyal sidekick, saying "Get away from him, you FILTH!"?
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
ok, don't have a cow man.
OK, how about a bird, then?
ETA: I'm thinking it's a fantail
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
Why is having some objective measure of alcohol intake such a terrible thing?
I think Matthew is saying that it's not helpful because most people won't use it, and people who are drunk are less likely to be able to use it accurately. Both of those are true, but that doesn't mean that it's of no use. I'd go so far as to say most people who do control their drinking do use it, they do count their drinks to some extent.
Perhaps he also thinks I object to a lower BAC limit. I'm actually undecided, because it's very much a line in the sand kind of thing. Zero is the only hard limit. Anything less and you're accepting some level of drunkeness in drivers. Having driven countless times at some level of drunkeness (but almost never actually over the limit) myself, I'd find such a limit to be quite an imposition. I can't quantify it, though, how much actual utility there is in being able to have one beer in a social setting. Do we really live in a society that thinks that utility, multiplied by the entire driving population, is worthless compared to the one in a thousand people who dies on the road due in part to alcohol?
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Do you know, from repeated testing, what 0.08 feels like to you?
No, hence my suggestion to use objective measures.
between 0.05 and 0.08 most people stop being able to make a wise decision about being capable of driving
If they base it on "how drunk they feel", something I've been suggesting not to do all along, then I have never disagreed with that. In fact, I don't think most people would be accurately able to pick 0.05 either, if they had no idea how much they had drunk, perhaps because someone else was mixing drinks for them. Or sharing a cup, or something.
I actually said all of this immediately under the piece you've snipped and quoted, so I have to counter:
Are you actually as obtuse as you are making out?
with "Do you actually read what people you are arguing with have written?"
Perhaps you're suggesting people can't count or do maths when they're on 0.08. That's bollocks. Which isn't to say that people are safe at 0.08, nor have I ever said that they are. I just dispute that they have no way of knowing their level of intoxication. For starters, they could use a pocket BAC tester, which gives them a digital readout. These things cost $10 and are the size of car remote.
Or they could follow the guideline I gave right from the start of sticking to the drinking pattern that keeps them roughly on 0.05, on which level they will remain safer to drive than 0.08, much safer from getting busted for DIC.
If you make the legal limit 0.05, then this guideline will be screwed, of course.
The evidence is also very, very firmly not in your favour.
Please do give some to show that lower BAC limits means safer roads. I'm curious how the outlier of Russia is accounted for. Ignored, perhaps?
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Sacha,
In a risk averse society, people with coughs shouldn't be driving.
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I once got stopped at a checkpoint outside a restaurant after having drunk a whole bottle of wine. I had judged I was probably OK based on my size, the length of time, and having eaten a large meal, but thought it would be a close run thing. I was really packing when I had to blow in the bag. The resulting reading? 0.00.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
but everyone's drains at roughly the same rate -- about one standard drink an hour.
Is that correct? From the Wiki article on BAC I referenced above, it suggests that the drain rate is not constant across all people, it's proportional. So your BAC drops 0.01% every 40 mins. For an average sized person, this equates to one standard drink, but for smaller people it's less and for larger it's more. So we sober up at roughly the same rate, but the amount you can maintain with isn't the same at all. Someone half my size (which is a lot of people) can't possibly keep pace with me (if I'm maintaining) without progressively getting more and more drunk. link again
For example, in the table on that page you can see that a 40kg woman who drinks 2 standard drinks will be on 0.10. If 80 mins elapse since she began, she'll be back down to 0.08, but if she has one more drink, she's going to be on 0.13, and it's going to take her a further 200 minutes to be back at 0.08. For me, at around 100kg, after I drink 5 standards, after 80 mins I'll be on about 0.07. If I have another right then, I'll be at 0.09, and will be back at 0.08 in about 40 mins.
These numbers are based on very rapid absorption. With food in her, the woman will rise to the 0.10 more slowly and might not even get over 0.08. But if she keeps going, it's going to catch up with her. That third drink effectively takes her 280 mins to process before she's back to 0.08, and I doubt she could eat enough food to hold off processing alcohol for that long.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You would, however, be so drunk that your ability to accurately assess risk is significantly diminished.
Yup, 0.08 is more impaired than stone cold sober, that's for sure. Not sure entirely what you mean by "able to accurately assess risk". When I'm at 0.08, I'm pretty much the same level of drunk as any other time I'm on 0.08, so knowing that I'm on 0.08 is a pretty accurate assessment of how impaired I am.
You might not use "I don't feel that drunk" as a yardstick for deciding if you can get behind the wheel, but the law isn't supposed to be aimed at those who're sensible.
All I'm saying is that people can work out how drunk they are, even when they're drunk, using objective measures. Furthermore, they should be encouraged to do so, to know what their limits are. The limit isn't "how you feel" in the first place. Using that as a measure, and paying no mind to how much you have actually consumed, is the wrong way to do it, and it's better for people to know that.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Yes, although this graphic suggests that it's worth taking care about making assumptions of strong correlation between BAC limits and accident statistics. Russia and Hungary suddenly stop looking quite so sweet. Which is not to say that alcohol isn't a big factor in their high accident rates (Hungary's is especially bad on the per/km traveled stat), just that their 'zero tolerance' may be a form of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The UK seems to be one of the safer countries on the road.
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