Cactus League or Arizona Penal League, which one has the best slumpbusters?

Annoying that the article isn't available outside the USA (weird policy, not like I can buy the paper here). Basically the little bit I could see said it was his 2nd DUI thus a 4 month sentence. One hopes he learns as he could've easily left his kids without a father for life - drinking and driving is dangerous. Alcohol is used far too frequently and can be very deadly - my sister died from her liver being so damaged due to drinking that it couldn't work anymore and left behind 4 kids (she was in her early 50's). Society in general needs to wake up and see that it is far more dangerous than many banned substances. Perhaps a campaign ala the anti-smoking one is needed to get people to understand just how dangerous it is. Sadly the alcohol lobby is very powerful and many support it blindly.

So brave of Grace to take responsibility for two DUIs.

Simon: Tobes, I don't want to have to read you the riot act but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act, like section one, paragraph one: don't leave your boss twisting in the wind and then burst in late, smelling like a pissed seaside donkey.

Toby: Look, alright, I was late for the meeting, Simon, I am sorry, but it's not like I threw up in there, is it?

Simon: No, you're right, I'm being unfair. I should be thanking you for not throwing up. Well done, you're a star. You didn't wet yourself, did you? You're in the right city. You didn't say anything overtly racist. You didn't pull your #### out and start plucking it and shouting "Willy Banjo". No, I'm being really unfair. You'd got so much right, without actually being there in the beginning of one of the most important moments of my career. Thanks, you're a legend.

Alcohol is used far too frequently and can be very deadly -

Same could be said of driving.

Perhaps a campaign ala the anti-smoking one is needed to get people to understand just how dangerous it is. Sadly the alcohol lobby is very powerful and many support it blindly.

I used to do work for the alcohol lobby, and they're not nearly as powerful as the tobacco lobby. The group I worked with pretty much gave up fighting DUI laws, instead focusing on dram shop liability laws. Racheting up DUI penalties has been a great way for legislators to make it seem like they're doing something about the problem without much pushback, and every state now has a .08 BAC thresshold for DUI.

There has been a campaign, pushed by MADD in the 80s and 90s, and it seems to be working. Fatalities from DUIs are down 37% in the last 30 years. Some of that may be safer cars, but there is certainly an awareness now that never even entered people's minds in the 1970s.

I'd like to thank the Chicago Tribune for the quantity of life destroying pop-ups and scripts on their web site.

The group I worked with pretty much gave up fighting DUI laws, instead focusing on dram shop liability laws.

I think John was referring not just to DUI, but the negative health aspects of excess drinking which are considerable.

Half past five, I'm in the pub
Six o'clock go home for grub...

Alcohol is used far too frequently and can be very deadly -

Same could be said of driving.

Yeah, driving is just this crazily dangerous thing we all do, and lots of people die or suffer terribly because of it, and we don't even really reflect on those losses. It's odd.

Racheting up DUI penalties has been a great way for legislators to make it seem like they're doing something about the problem without much pushback, and every state now has a .08 BAC thresshold for DUI.

Yes.
When drunk driving per se laws were first introduced, the limit was .15. But that was because we asked scientists, and not politicians.
I fully expect the limit to drop to .05 within my lifetime: because if it saves the life of just one child... etc., etc.

There has been a campaign, pushed by MADD in the 80s and 90s, and it seems to be working. Fatalities from DUIs are down 37% in the last 30 years. Some of that may be safer cars

Also yes.
I am certain there is greater awareness, and I'm certain that to some extent stricter DUI laws have "worked" - people are scared to drink and drive, in a way they weren't 30 years ago. When I was a kid, I remember "staggering around drunk" was kind of automatically "funny" on sitcoms, in a way it isn't now.
However, I see the drop in fatalities and I don't know how to separate out reduced drunk driving from safer cars and from much improved emergency medical care. I suspect no one else knows how to separate those factors, either. In a way, politicians are like some baseball managers and the bunt: you've got a lever, so you PULL THAT LEVER. PULL IT!

Same could be said of driving.

No. When a car is mishandled, that's an accident. When alcohol dulls your reasoning and degrades your reflexes, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

the alcohol lobby is very powerful and many support it blindly.

In more than one sense, indeed.

George Carlin: Men drive like maniacs, women drive like idiots. Its the maniacs vs. the idiots.

When a car is mishandled, that's an accident. When alcohol dulls your reasoning and degrades your reflexes, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

These aren't analogous. When alcohol degrades your reflexes and you drive a car, you're mishandling your alcohol.

Cars are machines that go real fast. When a car going real fast hits something else, that's a part of what cars do.

No. When a car is mishandled, that's an accident. When alcohol dulls your reasoning and degrades your reflexes, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

Not true. I drink alcohol to become smarter, funnier and more attractive.

Seriously, though, based on my parents descriptions I think drunkeness in our society has toned down a bit from when they were young adults. College alcohol culture is another story, however.

Seriously, though, based on my parents descriptions I think drunkeness in our society has toned down a bit from when they were young adults.

This is true.

Yeah, driving is just this crazily dangerous thing we all do, and lots of people die or suffer terribly because of it, and we don't even really reflect on those losses. It's odd.

The problem is that we don't treat the many other things that degrade driving ability nearly as serious as we do alcohol.

0.08 may well be too strict, but I believe 100% that someone texting while driving is way more dangerous that someone with a 0.1 BAC. At least the drunk is usually looking where he's going.

The first penalty for texting while driving should be as high as the third for DUI. There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

based on my parents descriptions I think drunkeness in our society has toned down a bit from when they were young adults.

I'm 54, and in my experience the drinking culture (at least in California) has toned down quite a bit over the past few decades.

For a long time I worked at Hewlett-Packard. Back in the day, in the HP Sales & Service offices (where the culture was, to be sure, more macho than at the labs and manufacturing sites), at 5:00 pm every day the General Manager would roll out the bar cart. Hard booze on the rocks, on the house. Before driving home, of course.

And if you didn't come around and have a belt or two with the boss and your co-workers at least most of the time, it was clear that there was an issue with your teamwork.

That was the norm until as recently as the 1980s. It's changed dramatically since then.

There has been a campaign, pushed by MADD in the 80s and 90s

MADD has been the single most influential do-gooder organization in my lifetime.

Anecdote warning: In 1972, I worked for a "functional" alcholic. Joe would stop at the "tappy" on the way in, go to lunch and have several beers, often bring back a quart. Sometimes if I was doing a delivery, he'd have me stop to bring one back for him (and me, if I wanted). Even at 20/21, I coudn't drink a quart of beer and then be worth much. He'd yell at me if I came back from a delivery too quickly, because his deliveries would always take longer, since he stopped for one or two.

One day he shows up at 10:30 AM blind, stinking drunk. Stumbling, virtually incoherent. The VP told him never to come in drunk again and told him to drive home and sober up. And Joe drove home in that condition and nobody thought twice. He was about 50, with 5 kids 14 and under.

at 5:00 pm every day the General Manager would roll out the bar cart. Hard booze on the rocks, on the house. Before driving home, of course.

If you stick to one or two, shouldn't be a problem. And of course, how wonderfully civilized when work actually ended at 5PM, with no expectation of checking your blackberry to all hours.

The first penalty for texting while driving should be as high as the third for DUI. There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

This assumes the desired result is improved public safety.

how wonderfully civilized when work actually ended at 5PM, with no expectation of checking your blackberry to all hours.

Amen to that. The world before mobile electronic communication was indeed more civilized in many regards.

This assumes the desired result is improved public safety.

Well, yes.

There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

Wouldn't put talking on the phone on the same level as the other two. Is talking on the phone more dangerous than talking to another passenger in the car? (let's start by assuming use of speakerphone)

College alcohol culture is another story, however.

Sort of, but speaking as a current student, I don't think the culture of excessive drinking is as ubiquitous among college students as you're implying. The partiers are certainly very visible because they're often so obnoxious, but it's one of those power-law/Pareto principle things (20% of the people do 80% of the drinking). At least half of a student body will effectively never touch alcohol, and most of the rest will drink to excess only on rare occasion, if at all. It's the remainder who give college students such a bad rap.

Wouldn't put talking on the phone on the same level as the other two. Is talking on the phone more dangerous than talking to another passenger in the car? (let's start by assuming use of speakerphone)

No, but dialing, and fumbling in your pocket for the phone, and looking to see who called is.

Same thing with eating and drinking. It's not inherently dangerous to have a sip of coffee, until you spill the coffee on yourself.

Sort of, but speaking as a current student, I don't think the culture of excessive drinking is as ubiquitous among college students as you're implying. The partiers are certainly very visible because they're often so obnoxious, but it's one of those power-law/Pareto principle things (20% of the people do 80% of the drinking). At least half of a student body will effectively never touch alcohol, and most of the rest will drink to excess only on rare occasion, if at all. It's the remainder who give college students such a bad rap.

If that's the current norm it differs from my experience at Indiana University about ten years ago. Of course, my experience may not have been representative of the norm 10 years ago, either.

If that's the current norm it differs from my experience at Indiana University about ten years ago. Of course, my experience may not have been representative of the norm 10 years ago, either.

There's always the risk that you're an outlier :-)

m 54, and in my experience the drinking culture (at least in California) has toned down quite a bit over the past few decades.

For a long time I worked at Hewlett-Packard. Back in the day, in the HP Sales & Service offices (where the culture was, to be sure, more macho than at the labs and manufacturing sites), at 5:00 pm every day the General Manager would roll out the bar cart. Hard booze on the rocks, on the house. Before driving home, of course.

And if you didn't come around and have a belt or two with the boss and your co-workers at least most of the time, it was clear that there was an issue with your teamwork.

That was the norm until as recently as the 1980s. It's changed dramatically since then.

Not just California. When I first started working, my dad's firm still embraced the two-or-three-martini lunch, and certainly when I went out with co-workers for lunch having a beer or two was nothing. Of course, downtown you're walking or cabbing, but having a few drinks after work before driving home wasn't uncommon, either. As my dad was (and is) a recovering alcoholic, he generally did not go along for the lunches or whatever, and yep, his peers often thought he was standoff-ish and not a team player.

Nowadays my experience is that there's never drinking at lunch, and if there is drinking after work, it's kept to just a beer or two, or else rides or cabs are arranged.

Wouldn't put talking on the phone on the same level as the other two. Is talking on the phone more dangerous than talking to another passenger in the car? (let's start by assuming use of speakerphone)

There's some evidence that it is. This paper comes to mind. There's some other papers as well, but it probably needs more study. Intuitively, it makes sense that speaking to someone who's in the car with you that's also observing the road might have non-verbal cues that bring your attention back to the road more frequently. I'm not totally sold on this yet, but it could easily be a real effect.

0.08 may well be too strict

What makes you think so?

I believe 100% that someone texting while driving is way more dangerous that someone with a 0.1 BAC.

I'm fairly sure this can be quantified, there's no need to just believe one thing or the other. I'll see what I can find if I have time. Really though, there's no rational justification for either behavior.

I'm fairly sure this can be quantified, there's no need to just believe one thing or the other. I'll see what I can find if I have time. Really though, there's no rational justification for either behavior.

Do we need to quantify? Someone who's not looking at the road is clearly a worse driver than anyone (however impaired) who is looking. Not to mention taking one (or two) hands off the wheel to text.

True, but people get to a 0.1 BAC w/o realizing; no one texts w/o realizing.

Really, texting while driving is so insanely gratuitous that the penalty for first offense should be incredibly harsh. I'd say $5000 fine, loss of license for 1 year, and you're banned from owning or possessing a mobile device for 5 years.

Wouldn't put talking on the phone on the same level as the other two. Is talking on the phone more dangerous than talking to another passenger in the car? (let's start by assuming use of speakerphone)

Depending on the person it could be more dangerous in the car. My brother has a bad habit of always looking at you when he's talking to you...even if you're in the very back of a van he's driving. If there's a convoy-style road-trip we always used to joke that you can tell when he's having a conversation because the lead car will drift onto the shoulder.

You can look at your phone when stopped, and then start paying full attention again when moving. You can't will yourself sober for parts of drives.

Nowadays my experience is that there's never drinking at lunch, and if there is drinking after work, it's kept to just a beer or two, or else rides or cabs are arranged.

Agreed. In the 1980s, it was common practice for work departments to have a once-a-week informal day out to lunch (not paid for by the company, just everyone splitting the check), and it was the norm for most people to have a beer or a glass of wine. Nowdays no one ever drinks at a work lunch.

And, in Silicon Valley, the norm was for a regularly-scheduled Beer Bust after work (at HP they were monthly, at many of the younger firms, such as Tandem Computers where I worked for a while, they were every Friday). At HP they stopped having them after an employee got drunk, and crashed his (company!) car on highway 280 and killed himself (around 1990, IIRC). The concept of legal liability dawned for the first time.

It's not inherently dangerous to have a sip of coffee, until you spill the coffee on yourself.

I had a friend who was laid up for 6 weeks with a burnt dick, courtesy of DWC (Driving While Caffeinating). This was after a long night of social drinking. He put the cup between his legs, then had to slam on the brakes. He showed me, after about a week, and it sent the shivers down my spine like nothing I had ever seen.

You can look at your phone when stopped, and then start paying full attention again when moving. You can't will yourself sober for parts of drives.

The people I see going 75 MPH on the highway (or worse, going 50 in the left lane causing everyone to pass them on the right), looking at or holding their phones to their ears aren't doing that.

And why must you look at your phone?

The first penalty for texting while driving should be as high as the third for DUI. There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

Murphy's umpteenth corollary says, never open a can of worms unless you're going fishing.

Let me know when truckers get told they cannot sip coffee while rolling, so I can be a long way away. Also, we'd have to make auto manufacturers eliminate cupholders, as they're unnecessary when the vehicle is parked. I agree about driving while drowsy, though without requiring all drivers to keep trucker-type logbooks, enforcement would be problematic. And would "talking on the phone" be extended to include CB, or work-related 2-way radio?

True, but people get to a 0.1 BAC w/o realizing; no one texts w/o realizing.

Who in the world are these people that are drinking without knowing it?

Really, texting while driving is so insanely gratuitous that the penalty for first offense should be incredibly harsh. I'd say $5000 fine, loss of license for 1 year, and you're banned from owning or possessing a mobile device for 5 years.

I agree. I see no reason that the same shouldn't be true for DWI though. Both are spectacularly unjustifiable and put others in grave danger for no real marginal benefit to anyone.

My experience was similar to pops but at a different college. What I went through still seems to be very common amongst college kids. What school do you do go?

You can look at your phone when stopped, and then start paying full attention again when moving. You can't will yourself sober for parts of drives.

So, you're the ####### that sat at a green for 15 seconds in front of me this morning, then sped through the yellow, preventing anyone else from making it through that cycle.

Maybe you shouldn't go to jail but I should get to kick you, hard, in the nuts four or five times.

So, you're the ####### that sat at a green for 15 seconds in front of me this morning, then sped through the yellow, preventing anyone else from making it through that cycle.

Maybe you shouldn't go to jail but I should get to kick you, hard, in the nuts four or five times.

No!!! Trust me, if I am leader of the caravan at a red light, I am ready and go immediately at the change to green (assuming no jackasses are running the red lights on the cross streets).

In Sweden the legal limit is 0.000. But in practice it's 0.02.

I had a friend who was laid up for 6 weeks with a burnt dick ... He showed me, after about a week

WTF? "Hey man, check this out."

You can look at your phone when stopped, and then start paying full attention again when moving. You can't will yourself sober for parts of drives.

In CA, there's no legal distinction between texting while the car's moving, and when it's stopped at a light or sign.
Sure, that's stupid, but it makes convictions much easier.

There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

What kind of penalties are we talking about though? Large fines probably aren't enough to deter. Jailtime probably would, but our corrections system is overloaded as it is. Revoking driviling priveleges probably makes sense, but we've constructed a society in which it is extremely difficult to function without car outside a few major metro areas.

We need to reduce driving in this country period. Reducing driving, and you reduce so many other problems - fatalaties/injuries from accidents, smog/climate change, reliance on oil. I'm not sure racheting up criminal penalties will have much of a deterrent effect. People need to feel like there are options other than drunk driving that are so easy to use that driving drunk is seen as a stupid and unncessary risk. Right now, because the chance of getting caught or getting into an accident is relatively low, it is not, when compared to the hassle of getting a cab/ride home.

Fatalities from DUIs are down 37% in the last 30 years. Some of that may be safer cars, but there is certainly an awareness now that never even entered people's minds in the 1970s.

The increased use of seat belts (and air bags) probably had a significant impact. Even after the auto manufacturers were required to install seat belts in new cars, most people didn't actually use them. Big change now.

We need to reduce driving in this country period. Reducing driving, and you reduce so many other problems - fatalaties/injuries from accidents, smog/climate change, reliance on oil. I'm not sure racheting up criminal penalties will have much of a deterrent effect.

Yep.
It's sort of like shooting deaths, in that a big part of the issue is mental health, but that's a much harder problem to talk about, so basically, it doesn't happen.

There should also be stiff penalties for eating/drinking (non-alcohol) while driving, driving when you haven't slept, and talking on the phone.

Wouldn't put talking on the phone on the same level as the other two. Is talking on the phone more dangerous than talking to another passenger in the car? (let's start by assuming use of speakerphone)

Not that the law is an accurate measure of much, but don't laws distinguish between hands free dialing/talking, and conventional, hands-on use?

Eating while driving is different. You can simply stop eating if there's traffic. You control it in a way you can't control your behavior when you've been drinking, or when you've been up for 24 hours.

How do people get stopped for texting while driving? How do they get stopped for talking on the phone? Every phone now has a speaker, so you don't need to physcially hold it to your mouth or ear.

College alcohol culture is another story, however.

Sort of, but speaking as a current student, I don't think the culture of excessive drinking is as ubiquitous among college students as you're implying. The partiers are certainly very visible because they're often so obnoxious, but it's one of those power-law/Pareto principle things (20% of the people do 80% of the drinking). At least half of a student body will effectively never touch alcohol, and most of the rest will drink to excess only on rare occasion, if at all. It's the remainder who give college students such a bad rap.

Getting accurate statistics on drunk driving won't be easy, but it would be interesting to find out why there are fewer accidents due to drunk driving. Is 95% of the reduction due to getting a lot of the worst 20% off the roads (at least, for stretches of time if not entirely)? The worst 5%?

Read a study once that said if we took all the money currently spent on cars and gas and car insurance that they could set up a public transit system cross-country that would be every 10-15 minutes going by virtually every house on every street before factoring in how you'd need far smaller capacity roads and the like. Of course, it will never happen, but it was an interesting exercise to show how public transit doesn't need to be a nightmare to set up.

What school do you do go?

I'm at the University of Chicago, which admittedly doesn't have a culture that's very representative of the average college. There may well be much less drinking and many fewer drinkers here. But I do think it's worth bearing in mind that if you're making estimates based on people you know, you're extrapolating from a biased sample. There will always be a fair number of antisocial people in any student body, and almost by definition, you won't know them and might not even be aware that they exist. There are also cases like my hometown school, the University of New Mexico, where about a third of my classmates went. Since it's a public university in a poor state, there are a lot of students who are older than standard college-age, work full-time, or both. Those students are too mature and too busy to waste much time partying. There are an awful lot of universities like this, so I suspect that thr culture of excessive drinking is exclusively observed at schools with socioeconomically upper-middle and upper-class student bodies.

Anyway, I'm sure that there are a lot of schools that have the drinking culture you and Pops experienced. But I do think the stigma associated with drinking has grown noticeably even just in the past decade, and at any rate your schools were probably not as typical as you think.

WTF? "Hey man, check this out."

Yeah, pretty much and morbid curiosity got the better of me. We liked to one up each other; he knew he was going to win on this occasion. I had nothing to compare. And was glad to lose this time!