Topic: I Got Pulled Over Last Night

[nickclone]

I went out with my mom to a friend's party, got nice and toasted and went to bed by 9:30 pm. At 2:30 am my mom wakes me up and tells me my friend Nicole is here and wants to go out, so I quickly get dressed and we go out.

She was pretty drunk and she was driving around trying to find gas until she says screw it and we head back towards where the party is. So she's driving and a car behind us is an SUV and it blinding her so she pulls over to the side and the car pulls in behind her and blue lights start flashing. The cop pulls her over and I had a great story planned, but she went with her own crappy story. I could tell the guy wanted to let us go, he asked me if I had anything to drink tonight and I said no (lie!). He gave me a breathalyzer and I blew a .130 even though I had quit drinking about 5 hours earlier. He tested her and she blew a .170, he asked me where I lived and I literally pointed out my house. He told me that if I could get someone to pick us up and drive her car (who wasn't drunk) we could go, but we had to hurry or she would go to jail, have her car towed and probably lose her license.

So my ancient parents took forever to get in the car and drive the five feet to where we were. At that time the cop was calling in his position and he told us that if another cop showed up it would be impossible to let us go. So my parents finally show up, my dad drives her car back to our house and we end up walking to the party...where everyone is asleep. Her boyfriend drives me back home and she'll be here sometime today to pick up her car. The end.

[scottws]

Interesting story.  That's cool and strange that your mom woke you up to tell you Nicole was there.  My mom would have given her an earful about waking her up at 2:30am and told her to go home.

[nickclone]

I thought she would too, but when it comes to safety she's pretty cool about that kind of stuff. My dad on the other hand...

[ren]

You quit drinking 5 hours earlier and blew a .130? Did you feel drunk at all?

[gpw11]

That doesn't seem all that unreasonable.  Well, it does, but I'm pretty sure there has been morning when I've woken up drunk enough to probably blow close to that high.

Then again, it's not like I have a Breathalyzer kicking around my house so it's all guesswork as to how many drinks/ personal level of drunkenness relates to BAC.

[ren]

It's just that the way Nick told the story it seemed like he was relatively sober. That and the fact he blew almost double the legal limit and the cop was sympathetic makes me think he didn't appear drunk.

[nickclone]

I actually didn't feel drunk at all, I felt tired, but thats because I was rustled out of bed at an ungodly hour.

[gpw11]

Yeah, like I said -  I have no idea how BAC translates into drunkness, and I don't think anyone actually does.  They needed a golden standard that applied across the board and so they grabbed the best one they had.  People get worked for having 4 beers all the time, yet I was let off with a warning after blowing yellow on a night I had like 12-13 drinks because "I seemed fine and probably just misjudged".

In the end, I've decided the best bet to protect yourself and avoid the trouble is that I'll cut off after 3-4.  And by cut off I mean make sure I get so drunk I can't physically get into my car.

[scottws]

Yeah, a local station did a story here where they had various people of different genders, body sizes, ages, and races drink a various amounts of alcohol.  Then they took a breathalizer test and were told to guess what they blew based on how they felt.

It wasn't a true scientific experiment, but it was interesting because there were people who said they felt pretty tipsy that blew under the legal limit and then a few people who weren't given that much to drink and felt fine blew over the limit.