Beer and Drunk Driving

One standard drink won't affect most people's ability to operate a vehicle. One 12oz, 5% abv beer. That being said, if you're going to DD, the considerate and responsible thing is to not drink at all. That's just being a good friend.

 

If I go alone I'll typically limit myself to one heavy beer or 2 lighter beers. Doing a flight is always an option too, so long as they're not all heavy hitters. If I'm with a friend, there's typically someone who doesn't drink for the night or has just one drink early on

 

These days, as most of the breweries and bars in my small city are centered around downtown, walk/bus/bike is the most common approach for my core group. Even if I miss the last bus, at most it's about a 3 mile/50 minute walk home.

 

I’m often the designated driver. Sampling is enough on a given evening. When traveling Uber and cabs are definitely a part of our plans.

 

It's primarily a matter of patience, timing, and forethought.
If you pace yourself with a 4.5-5% beer every 1/2 hour and snack on something you're unlikely to become legally intoxicated. This applies to healthy males, women become intoxicated faster.

At a brewery it often depends on how long I'm planning on staying.
When I'm going to be there for the long haul I'll stick with their lower ABV offerings, at roughly 30 minute intervals, and save any high ABV beer for last, if time permits.
When I'm only going to be there for a short time I'll order a higher ABV and drink one until it's time to leave.

I've been doing this long enough to have a pretty good idea if how quickly my body metabolizes alcohol so ABV and number of beers depends upon time

 

"DD" = "Drive Drunk" or "Designatedly Drive" ?

 

My personal rule of thumb when out drinking is to try to pace my beer consumption to roughly 1 drink/hour. Obviously then depending on the ABV of the beer being consumed, 1 hour may or may not be enough time to process that much alcohol.

When drinking lagers, this keeps me relatively sober over the course of the night. When drinking something like Imperial Stouts or DIPAs I typically try to maintain my awareness of how much "over" the 1 drink/hour rate I am at any given time. So if I've had a 9% DIPA and an 11% Imperial Stout over the course of 2 hours, I would be 2 drinks "over" my standard elimination rate. Not great, and I should likely not drive after since my understanding is that the rough rule of thumb is on average a person would achieve a BAC of .08 after consuming 2-3 standard drinks in a single hour.

Obviously this method requires some math and attention span, so I could see this strategy not working as well over the course of a long night out with a lot of alcohol consumed, but when I go out I typically am only having 2-3 drinks which keeps the math fairly simple.

I'm also fortunate that my fiancée does a lot of driving, particularly if she knows I may be going somewhere where I'll want to have a few drinks, so it's nice having her as a designated driver option when necessary.

To your point about tolerance, my above formula completely ignores individual tolerances, but I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing since I think assuming that your body is able to process 1 standard "drink"/hour is the safer route, even if your tolerance may make you think otherwise.

Oh and the final and perhaps the most important rule to follow is to always err on the side of caution. If you're not sure whether you're sober enough to drive, you likely are not. Alcohol unfortunately does not aid in our ability to be discerning.

 

Usually my wife is DD because she’s not much of a drinker. I also have a Class A Commercial Drivers License which puts me at a far lower threshold (.02 as opposed to .08) for alcohol consumption according to DOT regulations. If I were to get pulled over and blow over that threshold, I would have to be “removed from service” within 24 hours. So needless to say, in my career it’s really not worth it to go out and have, say, even a single beer and get in my car to drive home.

 

people become impaired at different limits, so since youre pushing thousands of pounds of steel around at high speeds the only logical choice is to go lower than the limit, keep everyone safe....peace

 

Well, that's basically 2 standard drinks (1 - 12oz serving of a 5% beer is a 'standard' serving) in an hour. Every BAC chart and calculator I just looked at would have as legally intoxicated at that rate. There's variables, of course, but basically a serving an hour is the max to stay under American legal limits.

 

For me it depends on where I'm going, with who and when.
I was at the Mott The Lesser (Tributary Brewing, ME) and had 3 beers there, 2 pours of Mott and one of their others - I did intentionally go low-abv though. I did have a porchetta sandwich while there too. I was a bit fluffy on my way out - I wouldn't have wanted to drive all the way home in that state, so myself and the friend I was with did go for lunch afterwards - a big ol' blowl of ramen. I had another beer (5% farmhouse from another local brewery) there, but by the time we were done, I felt like I would have been OK to drive. I have no idea what a breathalyzer would have shown though. However, I wasn't driving, my friend was, and he's way bigger than I am, plus a lot more tolerance - one downside of going with him somewhere is that I subconciously want to keep up, and I just can't.

 

I am never a bar visitor (unless out for work), and in general never even a brewery visitor (for many reasons). However, for work and other reasons, I may want to have something before a time when I need to drive.

My general rule is "No consumption of alcohol + driving" unless I stick to the guidelines of "It's been equivalent to 1 shot consumed/hour (= 1 blue moon/hour = 1 5oz pour of wine/hour, etc.)" AND I feel fine.

Basically, I want to be way totally for sure absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt sure that I'm fine, sober, and safe for me and everyone else.

 

Oh, also. If I am out for work, I just plan for us to get a cab/uber etc. Unless there is some reason why I would need to drive/be the driver. Especially for work, there's never a good reason not to expense a cab.

 

I know damn well when I shouldn't drive. And I don't. Driving after drinking "a few" is stupid and any potential legal consequences is totally preventable. Just don't do it. Catch a ride.

 

This is absolutely not true. If you change your statement to every hour, you're getting closer.

 

One hour is how long it would take the beer to metabolize out of your system. I'm talking about beers per hour to stay under the legal limit. According to our training back when .10% was the standard the average male could drink three standard beers (mass market AAL) an hour and safely stay under the legal limit. When the standard changed to .08% the advice changed to two an hour.
Alcohol.org BAC calculator
From Oklahoma University