IgG4: Man, is there anything safe to do when you're drunk these days?

Being a Congressman.

IgG4: Man, is there anything safe to do when you're drunk these days?

Driving, apparently. It's 8 times safer than walking.

/i know, i know

Who cares what happens to the drunk person. What matters is what happens to the innocent bystanders. Same with guns versus knives.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: IgG4: Man, is there anything safe to do when you're drunk these days?

Being a Congressman.

Well, maybe safe for your person. Your career? Up for debate.

I just read this in SuperFreakonomics.

It doesn't mean you should drive home. You should probably take a cab.

Just think of the blisters you'll get on your feet!

Andromeda: ... and I can kill just as many people by stumbling around drunk than I can when swerving two tons of metal when drunk, right?

Bingo.

Impaired driving isn't illegal because it's dangerous to the driver.

Walking along the road at any time is dangerous as hell, lots of people die that way each year.

Gyrfalcon: Anything you do on foot is more dangerous than anything you do while inside two tons of steel.

Driving a car drunk is probably 8 times more dangerous than, say, driving an Abrams tank while drunk. Can anyone confirm this?

Clearly 4 wheels are safer than no wheels. So, logically, 18 wheels are safer than 4 wheels. What's the proper conversion rate for wheels to caterpillar treads?

Good thing I'll be taking my motorcycle downtown New Years' Eve.

When comparing the dangers of walking vs. driving, isn't it more appropriate to do it by the number of hours spent doing the activity rather than miles covered?

cowgirl toffee: But you don't understand... my walking skills are better when I'm drunk.

Me too! That's when I break out my fancy walk.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: IgG4: Man, is there anything safe to do when you're drunk these days?

Being a Congressman.

Be careful...booze loosens the inhibitions and you might get Barney Franked. ;)

/ and thank you for putting the Eat 'n Park classic commercial on your blog. Great memories! ...I'm also from _{(very close to)} PGH

Walk drunk?

If I'm not crawling, it was a lousy party.

Arkanaut: cowgirl toffee: But you don't understand... my walking skills are better when I'm drunk.

Me too! That's when I break out my fancy walk.

We used to call that a seizure or a fit. I think they call it "Dubstep" now.

Bring a designated animal. (new window)

Elzar: Ran 4.5 miles on Christmas eve with a good Ninkasi induced buzz going - sub-8min mile even...

/ getting a kick...

Ugh.

I had a buddy like you. He'd drink a pint of rot-gut and go running. He'd get done, hawk a loogie, then light up a cigarette, and start drinking beer. Unbelievable. He was a Marine, believe it or not.

Notabunny: Arkanaut: cowgirl toffee: But you don't understand... my walking skills are better when I'm drunk.

Me too! That's when I break out my fancy walk.

We used to call that a seizure or a fit. I think they call it "Dubstep" now.

I just tell people that I'm practicing my drunken boxing -- you know, like Jackie Chan! Cuz I'm old school like that.

zato_ichi: Elzar: Ran 4.5 miles on Christmas eve with a good Ninkasi induced buzz going - sub-8min mile even...

/ getting a kick...

Ugh.

I had a buddy like you. He'd drink a pint of rot-gut and go running. He'd get done, hawk a loogie, then light up a cigarette, and start drinking beer. Unbelievable. He was a Marine, believe it or not.

i always take my smokes and a bit of vodka when i go for a jog.
(true story)

tarheel07: Gyrfalcon: Anything you do on foot is more dangerous than anything you do while inside two tons of steel.

Driving a car drunk is probably 8 times more dangerous than, say, driving an Abrams tank while drunk. Can anyone confirm this?

Clearly 4 wheels are safer than no wheels. So, logically, 18 wheels are safer than 4 wheels. What's the proper conversion rate for wheels to caterpillar treads?

22 feet of tread per every 7 wheels.

I have scars on my knee from drunk sleep walking. When I tie one on I have to make sure the floor is clear.

A friend of mine on her first trip to Vegas made the following observation after getting back to the hotel room:

"Man, the sidewalk kept coming up and hitting me!"

So I can see how this might be true.

Wha...what do youuuu. *hick* mean? How will I....foo...foooooo fool around with Don Rickles wife?

/obscure?

As someone who has been told of his drunken attempts to win footraces versus the cars driving down the street, I'll have to agree. It's a damn good thing I'm indestructible.

Man, I can't drive drunk, now I can't walk drunk. I can't take a cab because I spent all my money at the bar, and the government that claims to care so much about preventing drunk driving stops the buses before the bars close. Guess I'll have to ride a llama from now on or something.

tarheel07: Gyrfalcon: Anything you do on foot is more dangerous than anything you do while inside two tons of steel.

Driving a car drunk is probably 8 times more dangerous than, say, driving an Abrams tank while drunk. Can anyone confirm this?

Clearly 4 wheels are safer than no wheels. So, logically, 18 wheels are safer than 4 wheels. What's the proper conversion rate for wheels to caterpillar treads?

So a drunk human is safer than a drunk human centipede?

JPINFV: So a drunk human is safer than a drunk human centipede?

Would you want this thing coming after you drunk??

Don't use alcohol. It's a ghetto drug.

Sheesh. get a DUI here in AZ just LEANING IN YOUR CAR WHILE IT'S PARKED just to turn down the stereo.
Get a DUI ANYWHERE if you want to sleep it off (BUT OH NOES you had KEYS on you)
Here in AZ, (Phoenix specifically) the DAMN SIDEWALK IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE 40+ SPEED LIMIT ON THE ROAD.
Freaked the hell out of me going to another bar.

It's safer trying to drive, as long as you're careful and not an alcoholic/drunkie

Make it mandatory buses/trains run all night. OH, but they won't get their MONEY for DUI's.
Not condoning anything, BUT go to ANY bar and "HELLO" PEOPLE DRINK THERE!!!

People are going to drink, period. And, they have to get there somehow.
No real fix to this problem, but come on, someone sleeping a bender off but "HE HAD KEYS ON HIM"
is NOT a way to stop them from driving. It just makes them WANT to drive.

I just got put on anti inflamatories today. Just realized I won't be able to get hammered on new years because I don't need my stomach bleeding :(

The only time I ever got human brains on my hands it was due to a drunk walker and a drunk driver coming to a logical conclusion together. It was St. Patrick's Day outside Maynooth back in the 90s, and my mother and I found him by the roadside with his trousers around his ankles and his brains leaking out of a 5-inch gash in his shaved head. We moved him out of the middle of the road and waited with him for the ambulance to arrive. He was still snoring when they loaded him into the ambo, but he didn't make it through the night. The driver, a nurse, was found the next day (car with smashed in windscreen and blood), so it was too late to check her BAC.

The boy's family invited us to the funeral.

/If you're going to get shiatfaced, fluthered, blottoed, langered or sloshed, make yourself an exit strategy in advance. It's better to be sober from time to time than end up responsible for anything like I witnessed that day.

Gyrfalcon: Anything you do on foot is more dangerous than anything you do while inside two tons of steel.

Driving a car drunk is probably 8 times more dangerous than, say, driving an Abrams tank while drunk. Can anyone confirm this?

Frankly, closer to 80x in an Abrams drunk. Hell, from the servicemen I know, they were not only safe, took that hill, but managed to take two more hills past it under heavy fire. They have shiny medals on the way. Driving an Abrams (Bradley actually) while drunk is rewarding.

Great. When are they starting the sidewalk DUI checkpoints? Because you know that nothing unsafe can be allowed to happen.

Maybe they can check our traveling papers and whether we have proof of health insurance while they're at it.

JPINFV: tarheel07: Gyrfalcon: Anything you do on foot is more dangerous than anything you do while inside two tons of steel.

Driving a car drunk is probably 8 times more dangerous than, say, driving an Abrams tank while drunk. Can anyone confirm this?

Clearly 4 wheels are safer than no wheels. So, logically, 18 wheels are safer than 4 wheels. What's the proper conversion rate for wheels to caterpillar treads?

So a drunk human is safer than a drunk human centipede?

Kyeru, shall i darink the fine singeleru barru mart scotch, or roku-pack of skunky ord birru?

AaronB1138: Frankly, closer to 80x in an Abrams drunk. Hell, from the servicemen I know, they were not only safe, took that hill, but managed to take two more hills past it under heavy fire. They have shiny medals on the way. Driving an Abrams (Bradley actually) while drunk is rewarding.

Second World War? I think the most important thing that I learned from college history is that everybody that fought that war was hammered.

Don't Troll Me Bro!: Superfreakonomics (new window) is a fun read. I haven't read Freakonomics yet, but I've heard it's very well done as well.

Atomic Spunk: When comparing the dangers of walking vs. driving, isn't it more appropriate to do it by the number of hours spent doing the activity rather than miles covered?

In this case it is better to use distance as the metric. Whether you are walking, running, biking, crawling or driving you have one thing that will be consistent, that being distance you need to go. In some cases, like the risk of a certain sporting activity, the only direct way to compare them is to find the probability of injury during any given hour of each activity.

Biking drunk has to be the most dangerous by far. Hell, biking sober is dangerous.

even a small amount of alcohol is likely to impair your reaction times, so you can be unsafe to drive while still appearing to be OK.

I would guess the comparison here is between what people call 'drunk driving' (which in reality is 'illegal driving' - driving whilst being over the limit and impaired) and 'drunk walking', where a person is obviously staggeringly off-his-head on booze

GAT_00: Superfreakonomics has been out for a while now.

You beat me to it.

These people often fall asleep on the street, and get run over. The moral of the story is, don't get tired when you get drunk.

That's some real loose use of stats. Let me try Using their numbers, 6800 drunk drivers and 1400 drunk walkers die. They used the one factor that would push it toward their desired conclusion - milage traveled. A better factor would be time on the road. At a leisurely pace, a 1 mile walk would take around 24 minutes. That same time frame seems reasonable to assign to drivers (I can rectally extract numbers like they did). So for a given amount of time exposed to a road, you're nearly 5 times likely to die as a driver.

In my twenties, I bonked my head on a street sign while walking home extremely intoxicated. Good times!