Gruco said:
Fantastic. I think that's great. Let's spell out your position as clearly as possible then.
1) How much did you have to drink last night before you started sobering up?
2) If you were in the same situation, would you do it again?
3) If no, what would you do differently? If yes, how is this consistent with your belief that what you did was wrong?
1) About eight Corona's, and five shots of Vodka Lime. Spread out from 6 to around 11, when I stopped drinking altogether and started drinking coffee.
2.) Given the details, if everything fell into this exact same scenario, I'd have to say yes. But as I said, I'm 25 years old and this is the first time I've ever got behind the wheel even buzzed. It's something I'm confident is not going to occur again. Saying this does not mean you're not aware of a mistake, however. It means I am never going to allow myself to be put in a situation where I will have to say yes to a person like this again. This experience allowed me to learn from this, so that I can continue to strictly follow my no drunk driving policy.
3.) My belief is that there was no right decisions here. I had to choose between two wrong decisions, and I felt one was slightly less wrong. But wrong is wrong. I should not have been driving drunk. I should not have promised to get this guy home, if I wasn't going to do it myself in the first place. If I had to do it again, what I would do is make sure we had a CAB ordered early in the night, and that we had the money to go before the party started, and so that we wouldn't have to risk the CAB being late or whatever or no one having the cash to pay up. And make sure to not use this specific friend of mine as a designated driver, since he is obviously not trustworthy.
Gruco said:
4) Do you think that EviLore made the right decision when he gave
a six month ban "In lieu of a suspended license"to this poster (same one as earlier; and to be clear I'm only asking your opinion whether that 1:1 exchange is appropriate, as I know you mentioned that the bragging was a big factor)
Evilore is his own person, and I have no reason to disagree with any of his bans. Nor any of my fellow mods bans. Mods are free to, using their own discretion, decide when something is or is not worth a ban based on the established rules and guidelines for the forum.
My personal philosophy is to judge each situation by person. Has a person repeat offended? What is the person's intent? Did he mean to be offensive? Is he apologetic if he made a mistake? Etc etc. The list goes on. I look at all aspects before deciding if something is worth a ban, and how long that ban should be. There is never going to be one unified theory of banning, and mods and admins often discuss if a ban is right or wrong.
Gruco said:
5) On a scale of 1-10, ten being the most dangerous, 1 being least dangerous, how would you rank your driving drunk after having coffee and sobering up for and hour?
6) How would you have rated your performance driving had you not sobered up and hour and drank coffee, on the same scale?
Not sure this is possible to qualify. No matter what, it is not recommended to drive and I never do when drunk. But, in this specific case (it being my only experience of driving while inebriated), I'd say I would have rated my performance a 5 or a 4 without coffee, a 6 or 7 with.
It's a really tough question though because I know how I performed in retrospect, which was actually really good: I was extremely slow, the car (which didn't have snow tires, unfortunately) slipped all over the place in the snow, but I managed to correct my course each time. And I made it home safe, passed various cops once I got to 611 and none of them stopped me. I think my performance was pretty good so it's hard to know what the true rating would have been if something else had happened.
Gruco said:
7) Why was it important for you to volunteer this information (re: coffee and sobering up) to people whose opinions you don't care about, if all that matters is that you will never drive drunk again?
7) In the absence of information, people will create all sorts of fanciful scenarios. GAF is an elaborate echo chamber. I choose to answer people in extreme detail so that we don't have these lingering questions, and to respect each individual by responding to them with the same time they give my posts.
Which is also why when I see people not reading and making up shit, I get increasingly condescending. If you don't make the time to read, why should I, right?
Gruco said:
8) Do you believe that drunk drivers deserve to get their licences suspended regardless of whether or not they get caught?
yes.
Gruco said:
9) How do you determine whether or not someone is "highly strung" or "reactionary" when they criticize drunk driving?
When a person makes absurd hyperbolic statements in order to make a sweeping point about things the individual in question didn't even endorse or claim, one can safely assume they are being reactionary and highly strung.
