Riding in Cars with Beers
April 29, 2016 7:13 AM   Subscribe

 
Go out and see what you can find.
posted by comealongpole at 7:13 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


Wyoming's the interesting line on that graph. Alcohol-related fatalities plummeted between 2008 and 2013, going from being the worst in the nation, to just over the national average.

Is the general nationwide decline in VMT over this period responsible, or did something else happen? Wyoming's got very few people, which certainly adds a lot of uncertainty to their statistics, but it seems like the wild fluctuations are difficult to explain by probability alone.

(On the other hand, cheap gas, the eventual promise of electric cars, and the big lie that full automation is just a few steps away seem to have dulled most of the anti-car swing that we started to see in 2008. This is really a shame, because the US is just an absolute bloodbath when it comes to automotive safety, and we just accept it as a fact of life)
posted by schmod at 7:24 AM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


If you ask someone from Mississippi how long it takes to drive from Jackson, the capital, down to the Gulf Coast they might tell you “about six beers.”

That's not so great.
posted by thelonius at 7:29 AM on April 29, 2016 [18 favorites]


Drunk driving laws are one thing, but open container laws applied to non drivers are just a pain in the ass.

/has been ticketed and seen friends ticketed
posted by jonmc at 7:30 AM on April 29, 2016 [10 favorites]


Well, they still have the same legal BAC limit as anywhere else. They just don't have laws against open containers. More of an interesting cultural holdout than anything else.
posted by eas98 at 7:33 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


"road sodas" ... Pretty ingrained I guess..
posted by k5.user at 7:36 AM on April 29, 2016


Back in my youth in Texas you could drink a beer on the drive home from work legally. I thought it was civilized. After all, drinking and driving is not the same as drunk driving. But there are always people who take it too far. People with cellphones worry me a lot more now.
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:47 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


If you're actively drinking a road soda, couldn't you possibly blow higher than 0.08 anyway, even if your BAC is under? Seems like a risky maneuver, unless you're pretty sure the good ol' boys aren't going to make you blow.

A guy I used to work with spent a winter working at a ski resort in a state where open container was still legal, or at least tolerated, and he used to grab a tallboy every day on the way home as a matter of course. Seems like it might be nice sometimes.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:47 AM on April 29, 2016


If you ask someone from Mississippi how long it takes to drive from Jackson, the capital, down to the Gulf Coast they might tell you “about six beers.”


And about two empty to re-filled Gatorade bottles tossed by the side of the road.
posted by AugustWest at 7:47 AM on April 29, 2016 [13 favorites]


It was legal to drink while driving in Australia around 2000. Is that still the case?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:57 AM on April 29, 2016


Drunk driving laws are one thing, but open container laws applied to non drivers are just a pain in the ass.

If you mean cutting down on police camping out near wine tastings and ticketing people who are bringing home a half consumed bottle of wine and didn't know they need to keep it in the trunk, I would agree.

But I'm perfectly fine saying that passengers shouldn't be drinking in the car. Distracting passengers increases the risk of accidents and drinking passengers are certainly an increased risk factor as far as being distracting.
posted by Candleman at 7:58 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wyoming's the interesting line on that graph. . . or did something else happen?

Wyoming passed its own open container law in 2007. With only a few hundred thousand people, it only takes a few deaths to change the the per 100k line (thus the fluctuation between 2007-2008). I wouldn't be surprised if the economy had something to do with it too, though (for 2008).

Also, you sure can see when the North Dakota boom really took off.
posted by barchan at 8:02 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you're actively drinking a road soda, couldn't you possibly blow higher than 0.08 anyway, even if your BAC is under? Seems like a risky maneuver, unless you're pretty sure the good ol' boys aren't going to make you blow.

I was gonna say... this whole system sounds pretty ideal if your goal with the legal system is selective enforcement.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:03 AM on April 29, 2016 [19 favorites]


If you're actively drinking a road soda, couldn't you possibly blow higher than 0.08 anyway, even if your BAC is under? Seems like a risky maneuver, unless you're pretty sure the good ol' boys aren't going to make you blow.

Conversely, this might make a plausible defense if arrested; i.e., the breathalyzer is inaccurate because of the active drinking.
posted by yesster at 8:13 AM on April 29, 2016


For a long time now, I've campaigned to get my state to change its motto to "Gratias ago Deo Mississippi."

What's it's like in New Orleans these days? When I lived there twenty-some years ago, there was (I was given to understand) a "no primary container law" which was pretty strictly enforced, but the laws against drinking and driving were either non-existent or rarely enforced. It was entirely routine to watch, say, a banker on his way home from the CBD, stop at a Time Saver, buy a fifth, pour it into a closed secondary container, and drive off.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:17 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was gonna say... this whole system sounds pretty ideal if your goal with the legal system is selective enforcement.

I wonder what the racial breakdown looks like.
posted by indubitable at 8:20 AM on April 29, 2016


Then again, if your defense in court is "Of course I blew a 0.12, I'd just finished my 40 mere moments before." don't count on that changing anybody's perception about what you were doing.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:21 AM on April 29, 2016


"What's it's like in New Orleans these days?"

No real change to speak of. People still talk about getting drive-thru daiquiris, one for everyone in the car, and you're fine as long as the driver hasn't unwrapped their straw and / or pushed it through the lid.

Whether or not that's true is debatable, but no one I know has bothered to figure it out. We're not really "driving with open containers" types.
posted by komara at 8:29 AM on April 29, 2016


Drunk driving laws are one thing, but open container laws applied to non drivers are just a pain in the ass.

"Oh, shit, cops. Here, hold my beer."
posted by Etrigan at 8:31 AM on April 29, 2016 [21 favorites]


"Those opposed to a statewide ban on open containers in vehicles have argued that it could exasperate Mississippi’s impaired-driving problem, saying the ban would only encourage more drivers to stop at the bar before getting behind the wheel."
Exasperated? Shit, I'll bet they'd be madder'n hell.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:31 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


What's it's like in New Orleans these days? When I lived there twenty-some years ago, there was (I was given to understand) a "no primary container law" which was pretty strictly enforced, but the laws against drinking and driving were either non-existent or rarely enforced. It was entirely routine to watch, say, a banker on his way home from the CBD, stop at a Time Saver, buy a fifth, pour it into a closed secondary container, and drive off.

This is mind blowing to me in the same way that reading about 19th century medical practices is. I'm just sitting there, reading about how the nation's foremost surgeons are poking around in James A. Garfield's fresh bullet wounds with their unwashed hands, wondering how anyone ever managed to live long enough to reproduce.
posted by indubitable at 8:32 AM on April 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


Live Free and Die
posted by srboisvert at 8:32 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


By "non-drivers" I meant pedestrians and bus and subway riders, wiseasses. :)
posted by jonmc at 8:33 AM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


If you mean cutting down on police camping out near wine tastings and ticketing people who are bringing home a half consumed bottle of wine and didn't know they need to keep it in the trunk, I would agree.

In NYC open container laws are predominantly applied towards people walking down the street, people sitting in the park, people sitting on their own stoop of their own building on a summer evening having a fucking wine cooler, and, of course, the homeless. It has nothing to do with traffic safety and drunk driving prevention and everything to do with "quality of life" harassment.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:35 AM on April 29, 2016 [26 favorites]


The last bit is interesting:

1. MS is missing out on 5 million a year of badly needed federal road-repair money by not passing a ban
2. MS also has a lot of dry counties and other barriers to consumption (so they're not simply on the EVERYBODY DRANK YA'LL train)
3. But the only person to propose a ban was a Democrat and it went nowhere.

Is it about ticketing revenue? Some weird perception that drinking in your car is some sort of way of sticking it to the man?
posted by emjaybee at 8:36 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


If there’s any state where an additional $5 million could make a difference, it’s Mississippi, where the Department of Transportation classifies more than half the roads as either “poor” or “mediocre,” and more than a fifth of the bridges as “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.”
Look at it this way, if you're driving over one of those dang ol' bridges when it collapses it might hurt less if you're drunker than Cooter Brown.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:45 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


On the other hand, cheap gas, the eventual promise of electric cars, and the big lie that full automation is just a few steps away seem to have dulled most of the anti-car swing that we started to see in 2008. This is really a shame, because the US is just an absolute bloodbath when it comes to automotive safety, and we just accept it as a fact of life

"Cheap gas" is not the norm everywhere, and the price per barrel is still pretty high compared to prior decades, Electric cars have been growing in popularity and presence since the turn of this century, and in China, Volvo and BMW are teaming up with Chinese companies to test small fleets of autonomous cars, with one projection being that driverless cars will be on the roads in normal circumstances in a decade.

But that doesn't change that car crash fatalities are glossed over like gun deaths, with 145 gun injuries and 70 gun deaths in the last 72 days, I mean hours (previously), a lower rate than almost 90 motor vehicle per day.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:48 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is it about ticketing revenue? Some weird perception that drinking in your car is some sort of way of sticking it to the man?

A lot of it is inertia (some of the pigheaded variety, as in "They can't tell us to change!"). People grew up with road sodas and dry counties, and by god, if it was good enough for their parents, it's good enough for them. Remember, we're talking about a state that didn't ratify the 13th Amendment until Obama's second term.
posted by Etrigan at 8:48 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


octobersurprise: more than a fifth of the bridges as “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.”

Transportation planner here, and I have come to cringe every time I see those terms cited, because they sound a lot worse than they are (for the most part). For your reading pleasure, A Guide to Important National Bridge Inventory Terms
Functionally Obsolete is a status used to describe a bridge that is no longer by design functionally adequate for its task. Reasons for this status include that the bridge doesn't have enough lanes to accommodate the traffic flow, it may be a drawbridge on a congested highway, or it may not have space for emergency shoulders. Functionally Obsolete does not communicate anything of a structural nature. A Functionally Obsolete bridge may be perfectly safe and structurally sound, but may be the source of traffic jams or may not have a high enough clearance to allow an oversized vehicle.

Structurally Deficient is a status used to describe a bridge that has one or more structural defects that require attention. This status does not indicate the severity of the defect but rather that a defect is present. Please see the Structural Evaluation and the Condition ratings of each bridge Deck, Substructure, and Superstructure for details of the nature and severity of the defect(s).

Structurally deficient has it's own range of ratings
, ranging from "Meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as is" to "Bridge closed."
posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 AM on April 29, 2016 [14 favorites]


Then again, if your defense in court is "Of course I blew a 0.12, I'd just finished my 40 mere moments before." don't count on that changing anybody's perception about what you were doing.'

Just finished serving on a jury for DUI in Washington State so learned quite a bit about this. Here in WA (and in other states, though I'm not sure how universal) the official breath-test machine results that are done at the police station and submitted as trial evidence have rules that require a waiting period to ensure there is no mouth alcohol to influence the results.

The field-use portable test, which may be influenced by mouth alcohol, is only to assist the officer in deciding whether to arrest and its results aren't admissible in a trial.
posted by camcgee at 8:55 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


augustwest: And about two empty to re-filled Gatorade bottles tossed by the side of the road

I don't know when Gatorade started putting out apple juice, but that stuff is delicious.
posted by dr_dank at 9:19 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]


If you ask someone from Mississippi how long it takes to drive from Jackson, the capital, down to the Gulf Coast they might tell you “about six beers.”

That's not so great.


The whole rest of this article may be nothing but unvarnished truth, but I've made that drive umpteen billion times, which means I've talked about that drive a lot, too, with all kinds of people, and I've never heard anyone describe it that way. I'm down with literary license, I'm just saying that is probably not the line you should take away from the article.
posted by solotoro at 9:28 AM on April 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


emjaybee: Is it about ticketing revenue? Some weird perception that drinking in your car is some sort of way of sticking it to the man?

Etrigan: A lot of it is inertia

And fear of current politicians to lose their seat if they try to upset the cultural norms, even if there's a ton of support for such changes, and even the chance that their electorate wouldn't mind it as much as the very vocal alcohol lobbyists, though that group supported the Louisiana ban on passengers drinking alcohol in autos, so maybe there's more hope for change that I had thought.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:32 AM on April 29, 2016


But I'm perfectly fine saying that passengers shouldn't be drinking in the car. Distracting passengers increases the risk of accidents and drinking passengers are certainly an increased risk factor as far as being distracting.

Then why not ban drunk passengers all together?

This concept seems not functionally different from a designated driver in any meaningful way. People who get/have a DD for an event or night out usually get plastered due to some psychologically "lol i don't have to drive i can get as drunk as i want!" sort of thing.
posted by emptythought at 11:28 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


in China, Volvo and BMW are teaming up with Chinese companies to test small fleets of autonomous cars, with one projection being that driverless cars will be on the roads in normal circumstances in a decade.

Claims like that are exactly the sort that I'm taking issue with. There are a lot of kinks that still need to be worked out (many of which are not inherently technological, even once you look past liability issues -- any system that relies on "trustworthy" vehicle-to-vehicle communications may be irreparably flawed).

It's also easy to turn a blind eye to today's problems, because driverless cars are "only 10 years away." The idea that driverless cars will also supplant public transit is also problematic, and is already making it difficult to fund existing/new systems, and I'm also already seeing a lot of pundits talking out of their asses about how they're also going to "fix" sprawl and traffic.
posted by schmod at 11:44 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, you sure can see when the North Dakota boom really took off.

Oh, the tales I could tell.

There was a time when a good percentage of the population considered it their god-given right. Hell, you could always get a plastic cup to carry out your drink in, no questions asked. It was practically a right of passage to get an open container citation as a teenager. But by the 80s, it started tailing off.

With the oil boom (and bust, thanks Saudis) we were inundated with slack-jawed yokels from every state in the union looking for easy money and a place to park a camper or single-wide. Every goddamn one of them figures they can drink and drive. Or drive an eighteen wheel tanker across a RR crossing because they have the acceleration of a Lotus. Idjits. And the bastards brought back meth, which had been painfully exorcised from the landscape in the early 90s. Oh, this oil bidness has just been a picnic, let me tell you.
posted by Ber at 12:45 PM on April 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


I don't know when Gatorade started putting out apple juice, but that stuff is delicious.

I bet you'd be right at home in the Malört thread a few posts down.
posted by TedW at 2:02 PM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


There was a time when a good percentage of the population considered it their god-given right. Hell, you could always get a plastic cup to carry out your drink in, no questions asked. It was practically a right of passage to get an open container citation as a teenager. But by the 80s, it started tailing off.

After not having it happen since the early 1990s, twice this year I have been a passenger in a vehicle where the driver pulls out a sixpack and offers it around. "Oh, the deputies don't pull over anyone in this part of the county" was the rationale both times. It felt like a timewarp back to the old days before MADD where "one for the road" was totally normal.

Having that be actually legal would be even one step weirder.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:24 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


It was legal to drink while driving in Australia around 2000. Is that still the case?
It's not legal to drink alcohol in public anywhere in Australia (including in a car), except where a permit has been issued (eg at sporting events, fairs etc, where a defined area has to be marked out and alcohol can only be consumed in that area). It's not really enforced all that rigorously though, in my experience, as long as people aren't causing trouble.

The blanket .05 BAC limit (0 for young drivers and heavy vehicle drivers) and routine random breath testing has really changed the drink-driving culture from one where it was a point of pride when I was young as to who could drink the most and still make it home. It's very much socially unacceptable these days. For a few years, I had ready access to a breathalyser and it was kind of scary what a .08 level feels like in terms of impairment. People with that much alcohol in them really should not be in control of something as dangerous as a car. Even at .05, a person is noticeably slower to respond to events. Why, yes, my friends and I may have done considerable amounts of drinking during that time purely in the interest of science.
posted by dg at 5:33 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


"It was legal to drink while driving in Australia around 2000. Is that still the case?"

Not in most states (SA is an exception, and I'm not sure about WA or the territories), although it's usually legal for the driver to hold an open container (but it depends on type e.g. some states specify it must have a restricted opening, so a bottle is OK but not a glass…)

(on preview: I'm pretty sure dg's wrong about the blanket "in public", although fwiw Wikipedia agrees - Tasmania, for one, allows drinking in public except for public streets and a short list of public places - but it's true in general. But inside a private motor vehicle isn't a public place, hence the specific laws in most states…)
posted by Pinback at 5:51 PM on April 29, 2016


Yeah, some lazy research on my part there - thanks for the correction.
posted by dg at 6:06 PM on April 29, 2016


"Oh, shit, cops. Here, hold my beer."

In Missouri, or more specifically St. Louis, there are few open container laws, so there is always alcohol at public events, in parks, etc., so long as you follow the local rules of the park (cans only, for example).

And the common refrain for in cars was "n-1" or, you are permitted open containers as long as there are fewer open containers than there are people in the car (and the driver is not like, holding a beer). Although now that I think of it, I never actually looked up the truth of that rumor...
posted by likeatoaster at 8:39 PM on April 29, 2016


It's true! Wikipedia says so.
posted by likeatoaster at 8:41 PM on April 29, 2016


I remember seeing a guy get pulled over in a pick-up truck with monster tires. When he opened the door and staggered out to meet the police officer, about 5-7 empty cans of Coors Light fell out with him.

Judging by the handcuffs and assistance getting into the back of the squad car, it didn't look like he passed his field sobriety test
posted by double block and bleed at 9:10 PM on April 29, 2016


jonmc: "but open container laws applied to non drivers are just a pain in the ass."

Etrigan: ""Oh, shit, cops. Here, hold my beer.""

Legal BAC of 0.005 for any driver in a car with open containers. Lets everyone but the DD have a beer.
posted by Mitheral at 11:11 PM on April 29, 2016


I look at my youthful indiscretions--driving while loaded--with amazement, and no small amount regret. I was very lucky to never have had an accident. I use stupidity as my excuse--a reason, that is, not a validation.

I changed my view long ago. Laws penalizing drunken drivers are one way to approach the issue, but it seems to me that public shaming also is helpful. We no longer laugh at the drunken uncle who staggers out to his car after the family get-together. We either drive him home, call a taxi for him, or put him up for the night. But we never humor him. This is good--not because it makes our drunk of an uncle see the error of his ways--but because our kids get to see how this sort of thing is supposed to play out, and we hope the lesson carries forward. If it keeps Uncle Ralph from killing someone on the way home, we get a phantom bonus point for something that didn't happen.

Cultural heritage: If that's the best you can do, maybe you could give catfish noodling another think. Also, about the Designated Driver: I'm done with that shit, too. Let them fuckers get a cab.
posted by mule98J at 8:52 AM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't just live on the th Gulf Coast, I was born and raised here and so were both sides of family, my background for reference. (I just moved back.)

This Mississippi crapola is mostly a cultural issue. Just because it's illegal/legal does not mean people refrain. Look, people by me have strong negative opinions about Mississippi and Alabama, but that's for other reasons since drive-through package stores are ubiquitous, and we have 3 cops. Is this ideal? No, but neither are snake bites. It would be great if people just stopped drinking and driving, but even if Jesus showed up, this is a bitch please situation. Also, mostly the only people who care are from Michigan or Indiana, not here.
posted by syncope at 9:57 AM on April 30, 2016


It was legal to drink while driving in Australia around 2000. Is that still the case?

Who has been telling you these lies?
Technically, across most of Australia, you can't even drink in public.
posted by Mezentian at 4:51 PM on April 30, 2016


Who has been telling you these lies?

Well I had a pretty distinct memory of driving around Sydney in 2000 with a beer in my hand, as was the local custom. And Wiki says Some states, such as Victoria, permit drinking in vehicles once a full licence is obtained.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:39 PM on May 1, 2016


And this happened last year.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:41 PM on May 1, 2016


I can't find a specific legal citation that driving while drinking is now illegal in Victoria, Australia, but I'm pretty sure it is. Here's a news article from 2011. But I do know a couple of people who still do it.
posted by Diag at 10:08 PM on May 1, 2016


Wow. The things I don't know about my country (though, to be fair, the ACT Justice minister didn't either.
I'm gobsmacked they allowed that for so long.
posted by Mezentian at 4:43 AM on May 2, 2016


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