YAB's The More You Know

I was listening to an interesting conversation on the radio this morning, and in the interest of you all not living in the DC area or being in my car on the way to work, I thought it would be of great public service if YAB provided you with this public safety information. Hopefully, hilarity will ensue.

The Junkies got into it this morning about drinking and driving. It should be noted that none of the quartet were advocating said practice; simply, they were merely exploring the various penalties and limits such an offense can take, and giving their listeners a forum to call in with funny “I got arrested” stories. It should be noted here that no one on the YAB staff has ever been arrested, although there was one night my junior year where the police tried very, very hard to make that happen.

Serving as a designated driver, I was driving a few friends back from an off-campus party. I was stone-cold sober, while my passengers were less so. However, thanks to a busted headlight, that gave the campus authorities good reason to pull me over. I won’t try and transcribe the dialogue that took place between myself and Officer Jerkpants, as the conversation lasted a good twenty minutes. But I will try and relay the logic via this made-up vignette:

Officer: Well, Mr. T, do you have any advice for the kids out there watching?
Mr. T: I sure do, FOOL! Drink your milk! Stay in school! Don’t do drugs! Get 8 hours of sleep!!!
Officer: So let me get this straight. You want them to get 8 hours of drugs, don’t do sleep, drink your school, AND stay in milk???
Mr. T: That’s a load of Jibber-Jabber, FOOL!
Officer: Excuse me?

Basically, the officer tried to pull the “Repeat the story as if it were Opposite Day, and see if Drunky McGee agrees with me.” Sharp as a Stephen Colbert one-liner, I wasn’t going to be beaten that night. (With or without copious gold jewelry around my neck.)

Anyway, that was a tangent of Harfordian proportions. Here are some facts about drinking and driving that you all should know. You can thank us later.

• DWI and DUI actually mean the same thing. Based on the jurisdiction in which you're getting hammered and then laying the hammer down, it’s just what they call the law there. With other crimes, it’s much easier because of homogeneity. Murder is murder in all 50 states, not murder in some and mwrder in others. Also, in case you were wondering, DAI is the airport code for Darjeeling Airport in India, DOI is the United States Department of the Interior, DPI is dots per inch, and DMI is the Dirginia Military Institute.
• The blood alcohol content that qualifies you to be legally intoxicated is .08%. (Although, we think it should be called illegally intoxicated, no?) This percentage varies globally, however. There are zero, and I mean zero, tolerance BAC levels in nations such as Croatia, Kuwait, Panama, Malawi, and Utah. However, according to Wikipedia, your best chance of being smashed and still allowed to operating a multi-ton motor vehicle is in Sweden. You’ve got all the way up to .1% before you need to come up with excuses why that lamppost decided to attack your Volvo.
• As the Junkies were debating this morning, any vehicle, motorized or not, can get you a DUI. Just because your not behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, and instead, say behind the handlebars of a ten-speed, you are not off the hook. Cycling while intoxicated can vary from state to state, but there is an increasing sentiment that it should be a crime, because bikes can travel at high speeds and run into vehicles and people, endangering the innocent. But riddle me this: what if a drunk decides to go for a run – at TOP SPEED? Certainly, they can be considered a high-speed threat? With decision skills impaired, no one can quite explain the behavior?
  

We ask you this – should there be a law for Sprinting While Intoxicated?