It should be 0.00 percent. Anyone who disagrees is a potential homocidal maniac whose driver’s license should be permanently revoked.

According to Newsweek, the Hawaii state senate has just passed a bill that would lower the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent. The bill now moves to the state’s lower house for consideration.

Meanwhile, there’s a similar bill in committee in Washington State. Utah lowered the limit back in 2018, and remains the only state having done so. If the Hawaii and Washington bills pass, it could become a trend that spreads to other states.

To which I have to ask: Won’t someone please think of the poor drunk drivers?

Have Hawaii, Washington, and especially Utah no compassion? What are their state troopers called, the No Fun Police?

Do we need to hold a telethon for our inebriated driving brethren?

“For less than the price of one pint of Guinness, you can help these poor souls get intoxicated and behind the wheel of a giant automobile.”

Imagine if these bills were to pass. There’d be hardly any wiggle room whatsoever for those planning on “just having a few drinks” and then jetting down the road at 100 M.P.H.

Where is the humanity, I ask?

Look, it’s not like you need to be totally focused while controlling a 2,000 pound machine whizzing across the highway. People have shown that they are fully capable of checking their smart phones, jamming to tunes, arguing with a partner, being sleep-deprived, and eating and drinking, all while operating their vehicles, with no problems whatsoever. What’s a few martinis at lunch? You say that’s distracted driving. No, that’s multitasking, baby. We live in a hip new world where humans have adapted to splitting their attention toward fifty different things at the same time.

At best, driving is something you really only need to be paying attention to, oh, maybe 30% of the time. Have you even driven a newer Tesla? They practically drive themselves anyway. If anything, that’s an excuse to increase the blood alcohol content level.

Years ago, I had to go to traffic court in a little town called Gloucester City in New Jersey for a speeding ticket. Gloucester City, those not in the know, sits right by the Walt Whitman Bridge, which spans over the Delaware River from NJ into Philadelphia. The speed limit on the Walt Whitman is 45 M.P.H. Except NOBODY ever goes 45 M.P.H. More like anywhere from 55–75 M.P.H. Which means the Walt Whitman Bridge is a nice income generator for Gloucester City, as police pull people over all the time and hand them huge tickets. Mine was just under $300 for going 20 over. It’s basically a giant speed trap for the shitty little town of Gloucester City.

Anyway, putting aside my opinions of Gloucester City’s revenue collection schemes, while standing in line at traffic court so I could ask them to drop the points from my license, I got to witness a master beat the pants off some yuppie doofus wearing dress suspenders like Paul Allen from American Psycho. “Paul Allen’s” crime? Driving under the influence. Suspender Boy lost his license for a year, and got hit with a $10,000 fine, all while having to suffer the indignity of pleading his case in front of a hundred spectators. Afterward, I saw him standing outside the courthouse waiting for the bus, sleeves rolled up, smoking a cigarette, gel-soaked hair swept to one side. Paul Allen may have been some big shot business dude (he worked in sales, is all I remember him saying), but he’d be taking public trans for at least a year. It almost made me feel better about driving the shitbox I had at the time — a 1990 Toyota Corolla. Hey, at least I didn’t have to wait for the bus.

(BTW, I did get them to drop the points on my license, and I didn’t even have to ask. They did it almost automatically, but kept the fine intact, which just goes to prove the Walt Whitman is that crappy little town’s sugar daddy).

Not too long after my Gloucester City experience, a coworker of mine lost a family member due to a drunk driver. Not just any drunk driver, too. a police sergeant. While off duty, the cop was leaving some town fair drunk off his ass, where he proceeded to crash into a young kid on the side of the road. Last I heard, he wasn’t even charged with manslaughter. My coworker, a nice older lady, was obviously distraught and apoplectic. I remember feeling physically sick after hearing the news, and in shock over the fact that some asshole who had killed a kid was probably going to get away with a slap on the wrist.

Excuse me, but does drinking alcohol before you get behind the wheel of a car imbue you with some kind of magic power to avoid justice?

Does it make the loss of that child any less tragic for the family? Does it make the driver any less responsible because he had a few too many Bud Lights? People have known for THOUSANDS of years that alcohol impairs basic motor skills. I bet you there were chariot riders in ancient Rome that crashed because they were drunk on Caesar’s Finest Merlot, aged XIII years. Nowadays we have all the scientific research in the world that explicity shows you what alcohol does to the brain and body that make driving a car while sloshed dangerous as hell. This is old news.

Another coworker of mine years ago got a DUI during a vacation. He got fired over it because our company had a strict driving policy and he was no longer insurable. So he lost a $100k+ job because he had a few too many sips before driving from his hotel to a grocery store down the street. That’s got to be the most expensive bottle of beer anyone’s ever drank. Moron.

Lastly, my youngest half-brother was killed because of alcohol. He got into an argument with his girlfriend, got drunk, and then decided to go for a walk on the highway. A semi truck came along and crashed into him.

Fuck alcohol and fuck drunk drivers.

But despite the thousands of booze-related accidents and deaths every year in the United States, people seem disturbingly okay with keeping the BAC limit right where it is. Even though, according to the Hawaii Alcohol Policy Alliance, quoting a study from 2000:

Drivers with a blood alcohol level between 0.05 and 0.079 percent are around seven times more likely to be killed in a crash than if they had not had any alcohol.

That means they’re also seven times more likely to kill someone else in an accident they cause due to alcohol.

Would you go on a date with someone if they were seven times more likely to kill you than the average person? Would you invest in something that was seven times more likely to crash and go to zero (Bitcoiners don’t answer this)? Would you walk into a room if the chances of a trap door opening underneath you into a spike pit was seven times higher than your own cozy bedroom? Of course not.

Well guess what? You drive on the road everyday with drivers who are SEVEN times more likely to crash and/or kill you because of their socially “acceptable” and legal level of intoxication.

So imagine my surprise when, despite that 2000 study, this was the result of a poll posted in that Newsweek article:

::shocked Pikachu::

The point of my Gloucester City speed ticket story is to show that no driver is perfect. I’ve had my share of tickets, like most people. But I’ve never gotten behind the wheel of a vehicle intoxicated on anything. Personally, I don’t drink anymore, except very rarely, as I wrote about in my article, “Why I Don’t Drink Alcohol.” Check it out. The last time I drank alcohol was the day after the Eagles won the Super Bowl in February 2018. I had one beer downtown to celebrate the accomplishment, and I wasn’t the one driving. My football team has to win the big one to get me consider to imbibe. That’s how rarely I drink.

No one’s perfect on the road. But when you drink even a little bit you exponentially increase your chances of causing a wreck. Why do that?

We live in an age where there’s this thing called a smartphone. And on this smartphone are buttons you can push that will summon a thing called Uber. Then bam! Some middle-aged dude will show up in front of you in a black Toyota playing reggae music to drive you wherever you want to go. You can save health and lives by simply gesturing with your fingers on a touch screen in fewer moves than a wizard conjuring a magic spell. It’s that easy. Or you can ride with a sober friend. Or walk. Or fucking crawl home on the sidewalk.

There’s really no excuse for getting hammered and turning your Honda CRV into a 90 M.P.H. death machine on the highway.

Going back to Mr. Paul Allen. His sentence for the DUI was severe. But in my book it didn’t go far enough. I think everyone convicted of a DUI or DWI should be forced to ride a tricycle for transportation. As in those little kid’s Hot Wheels tricycles. Like the one Danny rode around on in The Shining. I’m totally okay with my tax dollars going toward building separate roads or pathways for them to ride on, too. Because I’m not okay with these goddamn psychopaths staying on the road while I’m on it, even if they only had “a couple of drinks.”