www.wigantoday.net/wigannews/Drink-driver39s-warni...p
The guy drank 8 tins of cider before setting off on a 400 mile round trip during which he drank another 16 tins - it just completely takes my breath away !
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He deserves everyting he gets
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Yes, the very thought of all that tinned cider is quite sick-making. Some people will drink anything. But perhaps it was all the poor fellow could get in the middle of the night. I hope his stomach recovers.
Edited by Lud on 19/09/2008 at 15:27
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(..) tinned cider is quite sick-making
Some people dring "white" cider. You can get enough to get thoroughly sozzled for about 3 quid, but - yuck!
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Hm, 24 tins of cider, in (say) 8 hours. Controlling his van well enough to stay on the road.
The weakest cider I know of available in 440ml tins is Woodpecker, 3.5% ABV. 24 tins is nearly 19 pints.
Either I've made a mistake in the calculations, the cider was low-alcohol cider, the blerk weighed about 2 tons, or someone's fibbing. I tend towards the latter thinking.
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Wow a £300 fine and a 2 year ban for drinking 19 pints and having an accident while falling asleep at over 30mph over the speed limit. That is a really harsh message isn't it?
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Although it seems unlikely that he could function after consuming so much, looking at the picture in that link, he's quite a big guy. Plus, from the description in the article, he was a habitual drink driver who drank more and more and more until he could no longer get away with it. He may have been drinking cheap and nasty 4% tosh, but I guess he was quite a heavyweight by that point!
Regarding the fine, yes I was surprised at how lenient the fine was. However, he has lost his job, his family and faces his home being repossessed, so it's not as if he's got away with it scot free.
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I know a guy a few years ago who went out on business for a day with his boss. At lunch, the boss called at an off license for 4 cans of lager. After the last meeting on their way home, the boss (passenger) opened a can of lager & started drinking, he then offered a can to his employee the driver who refused the offer. The employee since discovered it is illegal to drive with a passenger consuming alcohol but what a position to be put in by your boss. The employee parted company with that firm shortly afterwards.
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it is illegal to drive with a passenger consuming alcohol...>>
Can anyone tell me what law is being broken?
I have a friend who likes to do this - not in my car - and I would like to tell him it's against the law.
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The employee since discovered it is illegal to drive with a passenger consuming alcohol
As far as I know it's actually legal (in the UK) for even the driver to drink alcohol, let alone the passenger!
There may be issues with not being in full control, but no more than say smoking or operating a hands-free phone.
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it is illegal to drive with a passenger consuming alcohol
Is it, by gosh. I shall have to be careful, especially if I'm having the odd sip, too!
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it is illegal to drive with a passenger consuming alcohol
I think this is minibuses, isn't it, rather than cars?
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In some state in the US it's legal to drink alcohol and drive (but obviously not to be over the limit). Whereas in some it is illegal to have alcohol even visible in the car when driving, e.g. even an unopened tin of lager. You'd probably be okay with Carlsberg because who drinks that ;-)
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It's illegal, or used to be, in much of the US to carry a drink can or bottle that isn't decently concealed. In my day, therefore, people in cars and out of them spent a lot of time pouring alcoholic liquors down their throats from brown paper bags. Bit of a nuisance actually, but needs must when the devil drives...
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>In some state in the US it's legal to drink alcohol and drive..
When I lived in Texas, the law was a bit weird and efforts had been made to tighten it up.
It was illegal to drink alcohol while driving but an officer had to be able to identify the brand of alcohol being drunk before he could stop you, effectively meaning that he had to see the label or logo on the can or bottle.
Hard liquor drinkers would simply wrap the bottle in a paper bag while beer drinkers always used a coozie anyway.
I think it now illegal to have any alcohol in the passenger compartment.
Kevin...
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Wow a £300 fine and a 2 year ban for drinking 19 pints and having an accident while falling asleep at over 30mph over the speed limit. That is a really harsh message isn't it?
"Neil Wallace has lost his job, his income, his car and his family and now faces homelessness ? all because of an "act of stupidity" which was lucky not to have ended in death."
I'm not sure whether I'd have tacked a prison sentence on there or not.
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Act of stupidity? If he'd had half a pint over the limit that would have been stupid. Drinking 19 is a blatant two-finger salute to the law.
FWIW I got pulled for DD in 1992, "routine" check when I was on my BMW motorbike. There was no suggestion whatsoever that I was not in control, and I was told by the bobby who did the tests at the station, that if I'd drunk two pints of "ordinary" bitter instead of the "best" I'd probably have got away with a caution.
Year's ban, 200 quid fine. Not proud of it, but it did teach me a lesson. That was 16 years ago; I think this bloke got offf VERY light indeed!
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Not sure whether this hit the news in your part of the world, but some young gentlemen from U.K. decided to hire a camper in N.Z., and video'd themselves drinking and driving over a few hundred kilometres. The driver was filmed consuming, and lacking directional control of said vehicle. They were reported, and stopped. Failed the breath test miserably. The video was shown as evidence in court earlier this week, so was available in the public domain. Looked very lucky on the TV news. Banned and fined, but, of course, the ban can apply only here. They are now believed to be in Australia.
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Either I've made a mistake in the calculations the cider was low-alcohol cider the blerk weighed about 2 tons or someone's fibbing. I tend towards the latter thinking.
I'm quite prepared to believe it. It's surprising how apparently inured serious drinkers can become with practice. And in the case of an erstwhile neighbour of mine, they can still appear less affected by several bottles of wine than I am after 3 pints of ordinary.
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I was once on a bus in Manchester with the driver drinking something out of a container in a brown paper bag... didn't stay on the bus for long!
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i never drink and drive. Let the Taxi take the strain anyone who does should be flogged.
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As the TV show reminds us, "Let's be careful out there." A week ago, one of my coworkers went bar-hopping on a Sunday afternoon, going from one place to another on his brand new, $13,000 Harley-Davidson motorbike. On his way home, he came around a sharp bend too quickly (speed limit 45 at that point) and crashed.
Holy buckets, Batman! He could have killed himself, instead he suffered some scrapes and bruises, (wasn't wearing a helmet) and the bike was damaged to the point it had to be towed away for repairs. Had there been any police around he would have been busted for drink driving, no doubt at all--he said he'd had enough to drink that he didn't remember leaving the last watering hole. I'm not entirely sure he learned his lesson from it either.
Now, I'm no teetotaler, not by a long shot (breaks into chorus of "I Am A Cider Drinker") but golly gee folks, if you're gonna do stuff like that please refrain from Demon Rum before getting behind the wheel. That's some head-shakingly dumb behaviour. Yowsa!
Edited by Pebble on 21/09/2008 at 01:17
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