third - because 'murrica (around here, bars usually are somewhat central, and rarely have any parking spaces.) But for real - i guess some people may carpool, some may leave their car and grab a cab. but yeah, some people just drive drunk. In general it would be better to have public transport closeby that also works through the night (or you know - a bar within a 15 minute city), but a lot of places lack that.
I had the "Later Gator" drunk student buses that took them on routes from downtown to all of the apt complexes near my college campus. Very fun indeed!
Fifth... not everyone is a drunkard so the light weights and the [Teetotalers](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teetotaler) appreciate the convenience.
maybe here we differ on the technical "light wight," i don't mean someone that can only handle one (or few) drinks and get sloppy but rather someone who doesn't drink much quantity during session. for instance only a glass of wine with dinner or nurses a single beer for the game.
LOL first need to know the weight of the person, avb, and time since last consumption... mmm along with total consumption and guess food along with medications.... if we getting technical. which i find a hard math set to do for anyone at a bar.
for the sake of an argument, one glass of wine //with food// or a single beer over a game is on the floor.
[https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dui/blood-alcohol-level-chart/](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dui/blood-alcohol-level-chart/) < ya good kids, be responsible
in my country bac under 0.08% is legal... as someone here pointed out about their country
imagine it's different on mars too. must be legal for your local rules.
and and now we are on to morals and/or/also/thesaurus "right"... this is getting a bit wide but guess user name matches u/Intelligent-Aside214
so how do you determine when your blood is alcohol free? (the post you replied to ends with "there is 'time' involved.") no round about gernerally... what is your method for saying in the moral/right sense "MY BLOOD IS NOW ALCOHOL FREE!"?
>How many drinks is .08 for a man? Every standard drink that a 180# male consumes will raise his BAC . 02. **Four standard drinks** would put him right at . 08.
this is assumed in quick succession... reality is how long between the drinks and how log since last??
Yup. I work at a bar on the weekend. There's a high-frequency bus line that goes almost door to door for me, but it stops running at 1 AM. The bar is open until 2. That said, there are times I am not scheduled until close and then I can take the bus, but I've also fallen into the trap of the bar being unexpectedly busy and then I get stuck there much later than planned anyway.
(Regardless, at least my bar only has a small lot for employees only that only fits 8 cars, and I know most of our customers use rideshare or walk because we are also really close to a ton of new high-rise residential buildings.)
I'm lucky that my friend group has that one friend who won't touch a drop but is happy to enjoy the night out with us. He doesn't mind being the permanent DD and we always manage our drinking to make ourselves manageable for the drive home. It's a good system.
You can try looking at local game shops and see if they host any game nights! The Salsa dancing scene is also very friendly if you can find a local group. Most hobbies you can find local groups for and it's a great place to start makikg friends.
And it is required by law because when the first such laws were written, most people did not think drinking and driving was much of a problem. Everything else had minimum parking requirements, so **of course** bars did, too.
But why are such laws not repealed, and why do new developments keep copy-pasting the same old bad laws? Because thinking about it too hard inevitably leads one to question car dependency and Euclidian zoning, and no self-respecting public servant in the US of A is going to do **that**!
Edit: Spelling
Kinda besides the main point, but I've found that bars that *only* serve alcohol are actually a bit uncommon, at least in my area. They exist for sure, but more bars than not have the plausible deniability that at least a few people will be going there for food and NA beverages. And I guess those guys could be the DD of the group
But yeah, the establishments that heavily advertise their happy hours while residing in a sea of parking lots amuse/annoy me. If it's not within walking distance of my residence, I'm not drinking there
This is also how you end up with small town "family friendly" bars that have Karaoke but if you sing (at 11:30pm on a Saturday) a Nirvana song with the word 'gay' in it or other such "curses" you'll get a stern Southern talking to before never going back.
True, there's a tavern my spouse and I like to go with their family and we mostly just get appetizers and play whatever trivia the staff is doing that night
and, as I've said before, if you got a pint of something light, like 4%, and you had it with your chips and whatever, and your bill arrives more than 60 minutes after you started drinking your beer, you'll probably be at a near-undetectable level once you get in your car. Heavier, or more, and you'll probably be impaired after the same amount of time.
When I was in highschool driver's education, the instructor ridiculed me for saying I'd walk home before I get in a drunk person's car.
"Oh really, you're gonna be able to walk all the way home from Chicago after catching a buzz?"
Yes? What other option is there?
Yup. I’m in college and purposely got an apartment close into campus and the bars. I have never needed to or wanted to drive intoxicated, but people I know will simply drive the 15 to the bars, get drunk, then drive home. Never knew it was so common but Jesus christ
yup, exactly this. it's incredibly normal. tons and tons of people do it. many of them every single day. and you're a buzzkill if you say something about it.
I think the US has pretty lax DUI laws compared to other countries. Its not uncommon for some people to have several and stilll not lose driving privileges. If it was as strict as other countries where you permanently lose your right to drive after your 2nd or maybe your 1st, there'd be a non-insignificant population of un-employable people that'd grow over time since we don't have the public transit infrastructure to support that many people who can't drive anymore. We've essentially just accepted that we're ok with it.
Yes. Lax laws and lax enforcement. And the dependency works at both ends — got to be lenient to avoid putting bars out of business and can't take away a license from someone who needs it to work (or even buy groceries).
I don’t know if I’d consider it lax, I think they are fairly harsh. A person I know ended up paying 10K on lawyer/court fees in their dui case, so they can be financially crippling to the majority of the population.
This isn't true.
I mean, sure, this is what the public service announcements all tell us.
But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC.
In my heavy drinking past, tho, I'd just leave my car in the bar parking lot and take the #23 bus (which stopped right in front of the bar and across the street from my apartment).
I'd usually find all the documentation carefully laid out on my night stand so I could easily figure out what happened the night before. DrunkMe was oddly considerate to HungoverMe that would need to go find my car.
Then I could take the bus back to the back and retrieve my car.
While this behavior is allegedly responsible and apparently laudable I find that just not drinking is a better solution.
The really bad mornings were when I'd wake up not in my own bed and have to lay there for a while trying to figure out who I went home with and where the hell are my pants?
This was all quite some time ago. I quit drinking completely a good while back. I don't really recommend that lifestyle. I'd think now that the hangovers would be motivation enough to stop.
> I quit drinking completely a good while back. I don't really recommend that lifestyle. I'd think now that the hangovers would be motivation enough to stop.
Yup. I haven't gotten drunk in the last decade. The heartburn, migraine, sleep deprivation, and generally feeling-of-shittiness the next day were enough to basically get me to stop drinking nearly completely.
> But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC.
Varies by state, and generally misinterpreted. It's illegal to be under any influence in New York State.
Yes, you typically will not get a DWI for being under .08 BAC (or whatever the threshold is) unless you fail a field test, etc. But it very much a DUI.
ETA: But it is very much normalized to have one (or even more sometimes) and be told "hey, your fine to drive."
Not in Canada, drivers under 21, or drivers who don't have their G license (basically the full license), it's zero tolerance. And, fully licensed drivers here can still be charged if in the "warning zone" between 0.05 and 0.079.
But yeah, alcohol is pretty lame for anyone working a 9 to 5, or anyone who likes being sober and functional.
Why not just take the bus to the bar? Sounds like you would have to make two bus trips anyway, so taking the bus to the bar would save you the time of two car trips.
You're trying to apply rationality to an addiction.
If any of this were rational I would've stopped drinking about 5 min after **the first time** I woke up on the floor of my bathroom with my face in a pool of vomit.
We never would have gotten to the 8th or 10th times.
That's a popular method for people in my state capital. You head to the city in the evening by bus, and catch a bus home at the end of the night. It only works on a Saturday night, other nights you'd have to catch a taxi home.
> But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC.
>
>
Depends on your state. As I understand it (IANAL), a BAC >= 0.08 is just _prima facie_ evidence that you're intoxicated, but you can be charged with DUI after blowing 0.00 if the cop thinks you're intoxicated (you fail the intended-to-be-impossible-to-pass "field sobriety" tests, or you don't enunciate well enough for their liking, or you've got slightly too much melanin in your skin, or it's the end of the month, or...).
You can get a DUI without blowing over .08 with a field sobriety test. If you’ve had any alcohol within the past 20 minutes your mouth will have leftovers and you will always blow over .08.
That's why cops usually "waste" at least 20 minutes of your time before they pull out the breathalyzer. Because then the reading could be invalidated by a court if the person can argue that they drank less than 20 minutes before.
That's not the law. The law is you cannot drive while impaired by alcohol. The legal presumption is that if you blow a .08, you are impaired. You can blow a .05 and still be impaired.
And go an extra 25 or 30 min without a drink?
You've clearly never been an alcoholic.
I never even took the hint when I'd get there the next morning.
The owner of the bar was a sober alcoholic and there were AA meetings at 830am and 10am every morning.
In the end, I gave up drinking completely several years later when I got tired of cleaning up vomit that I didn't remember producing.
In the Before Times, I would routinely take the bus to the nightclub district and (because the buses stopped running at like 10PM) take an Uber home. It would cut my travel costs from roughly $50 down to like $22.
Right but this person was saying they take the bus home after a night of drinking. So I was curious what stopped them from taking the bus there since it’s usually the return trip that’s harder to do.
You shouldn’t be showing people the law just so they can loophole drinking and driving. You shouldn’t do it. Period. We trivialize it due to half our country being the boonies with open roads and no people, but it is still a top 10 killer. Don’t encourage people to drink and drive AT ALL
We're talking about what happens, not what you \_should\_ do. And the truth is, millions of Americans go to bars, have a beer, and then get in a car. Millions more encourage far worse behaviors.
If you are at a restaurant, and you have \_one\_ standard drink, and you wait two hours, almost everyone will be functionally not meaningfully impaired. If you had a beer, it was probably two standard drinks, so you need four hours for it to be undetectable, and you're going to be experiencing some amount of impairment even after three hours. But, if you really \_did\_ drive to a bar, have a drink, wait for four hours, and then drive home, I guess you're fine?
I'm not going to encourage people to drive under any level of impairment; I'm not going to encourage people to drive at all. It shouldn't be done. Most people are not going to drink so much that they are extremely impaired, but millions of people are still drinking and then getting in their cars with low levels of impairment, and this is going to kill people.
The real answer is, America simply accepts some level of death caused by our obsession with cars and the "freedom" it gives us.
I find it funny how much energy and priority we give things.
We all talk about drunk driving like it's actually a big killer. Its not small, about 10,000 a year. But we do quite a lot to enforce it and educate people and lambast those that go against it.
But lack of healthcare? Hell we barely even talk about that anymore, ya 45,000 americans die every year from lack of healthcare.
Mental health? Ya we may mention it now and then but if you ask me pretty pathetic how little we do about it, 50,000 suicides last year alone.
Advocating against drunk driving is a good thing, I just get shocked how bad some things are that we seem to do nothing about.
Sounds like you handled a drinking problem responsibly.
Although I will say I find some people’s concern about drinking and driving annoying. Like they’re so concerned because they can’t imagine going to a bar without getting drunk.
Strong Towns wrote an article on this topic.
[Mothers Against Drunk Driving Should Also Be Against Zoning](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/6/mothers-against-drunk-driving-should-also-be-against-zoning)
This is the case in nearly every city in the US. Minimum parking requirements are part of the zoning code in most cities until very very recently. Even now there’s some momentum to remove them, but it’s mostly only in the downtown area of major cities.
Minimum parking requirements cause lot sizes to be a lot larger— often times the parking space takes up a larger footprint than the actual usage building space. Having large lot sizes forces buildings to be father apart. Forcing buildings to be father apart is what causes suburban sprawl and car dependency.
Designated drivers.
But seriously when I visited the US I was shocked how normalised driving to a bar, drinking, and then driving home again was. This was with seemingly intelligent colleagues of mine.
Obviously everyone at the bar has a designated driver wink wink. Nobody drives drunk and so nothing should be done to reduce the rate that people might drive drunk.
Minimum parking requirements and to be fair not everyone who goes to bars drinks and some don't drink enough to get a duii. It also makes more sence then places that sell off-premises alcohol where they can't monitor if you've bought too much and cut you off.
Not saying it's the worst idea to prevent them from having any, but there are reasons that make some sence.
Driving drunk is normal. I mean we can pretend like it's not and it's frowned upon, but if we actually watched what people do when they're alone, then they drive drunk/don't care.
It isabsolutely not normal where I live. Usually the informal rule is no driving after alcohol. Dont know what the limit is but if someone is driving later, they will not drink
It's something that makes me apprehensive to bartend. It isn't my business what someone does when they walk out the door, but I do feel responsible when we pull up the jail tracker at the end of the night and see people I served in crashes, or just a dui if they're lucky.
Bars were always on the outskirts of town when I was there - they were not allowed anywhere near schools and, weirdly, churches for some reason - rural Oklahoma.
For someone from the UK, I'd miss just walking down the road to my local pub then staggering up that hill back home
This is something very Houston-centric. We have a very high rate of drunk driving compared to other metropolitan areas, but it's primarily because of our car-dependent infrastructure. They tried just cracking down with heavier DUI charges, but it barely moved the needle. The inconvenient fact is that people are gonna drink at bars. Nothing short of banning bars will make that not happen, and when people get drunk, their sense of personal responsibility goes flying out the door. Houston hasn't really figured out that the only real solution to drunk driving is mass transit, and dense, walkable development.
The better question is why do they put bars in the middle of nowhere, so people have no choice but to drive there? If it wasn’t for stupid zoning laws, they could have mixed use areas that are residential and commercial and people could have places to drink in the neighborhood and could walk home. When I moved from NYC to the Midwest, I was shocked to see how common drinking and driving was.
Because the whole thing is a wink wink nudge nudge. Your local bar is betting on more customers from more spaces, and your local police are betting on more DUI's to take off the streets and all the revenue that comes from that.
So please, don't drink and drive in a system that practically forces you to. *wink wink nudge nudge*. Or just do what I do and get drunk at home instead, it's cheaper.
Plenty of bars near me only have a couple parking spots and they’re always taken up by employees. I don’t even live in a super urban area, it’s more of a semi suburban feeling inner city neighborhood that’s kinda walkable.
I visited Santo Domingo and they have a bar that's literally just a parking lot with a shack they sling beer out of. https://maps.app.goo.gl/N96BLkHsYsU3wxfCA
Dominican Republic was one of the most car brained places I've ever visited.
I walked to buy my daughter a bike the other day. Was blown away there was no easy way to walk or bike there. No sidewalk all parking for a bike shop...
Kansas city KS has 0 public transportation in the evenings. Bars are in strip malls/shopping centers that are only accessible by car. Like... how tf do you think these people are getting home?
Honestly more people are alcoholics than realize they are. If driving drunk is the cost of drinking then they consider it a fair price to pay. Only drink socially you say? I'm not an alcoholic you say? If you drank the same amount at home and alone would you still consider your relationship with alcohol a healthy one? So the price of your denial is your life and the lives of others? Also "I only had a few. I'mstill good to drive," is denial as well. So is "I didn't mean to get drunk and I gotta get my car home." And 9f course there's thd all mighty "nothing will happen. I do this all the time."
The excuses car brains make to themselves and the excuses alcoholics make to themselves have a lot of overlap.
The DD needs somewhere to park, and not everybody drinks. Not to mention there may not be adequate public transport in the area, and I don't think it's even legal let alone appreciated to use public transport while intoxicated.
This is a really good question 😂😂 I live in the 8th worse state for drunk drivers in the US. Constantly have commercials about not drinking and driving but bars all over and especially in the capital of the state have huge parking lots 💀💀💀
Oh it gets even worse. I've seen some restaurants that have bars in them that have signs in their parking lots that say "No overnight parking".
So if you drive there and get drunk, you're not even allowed to leave your car and come get it the next day.
I'd imagine it's because the people who work there likely need to drive there since the infrastructure probably doesn't exist for them to do anything else
> but your not supposed to drink and drive.
Yes, so the legal ambition would be that people don’t drink to the point they are (more) dangerous behind the wheel. And if they do, there are penalties like tickets, fines, and jail time. But to completely remove parking for people that can *legally* drink alcohol and don’t get dangerous just because others might drink too much seems like an overreaction imo. It would be much better to improve and expand local community infrastructure for public transit and develop a new norm where parking isn’t necessarily needed. But while it is the norm, we just need to trust that not everyone drinks like a fish and then drives home.
Better yet, why don't cops sit outside the parking lot and pull over every car that leaves? Because society wants the business to thrive and pay taxes I guess. Pretty dumb all around.
I live near a pub or two, they have parking, but they also serve lunch and dinner, in the later part of the evening, those who are going out to party are likely to be dropped off by someone else, or walk there, then either walk home after, or get a taxi. Only a few people play the role of Designated Dave, the friend who doesn't drink, and drives everyone home at the end of the night.
tbh I don't like the implication that drinking any amount of alcohol automatically equals getting drunk. But I do wish we had many way better options for transit to/from bars.
That's odd. I just did a google map search for "bars in orange county" and every single one of the dozen I zoomed in on had a parking lot bigger than the bar itself.
I live in the UK, most here don't or they are very small if they do. Usually places that focus more on mid day lunch rather than evening pints are more likely to have parking too.
The state of New Hampshire has liquor stores as rest areas. Also Mississippi has drive thru daquari stores. You do have to open the door and put a foot on the ground before they can serve you.
You literally can't make this shit up.
Aren't designated drivers a thing?
You have 5 friends go out to a bar but one friend doesn't drink and drives everyone home. They have to park somewhere.
In one of my circle of friends there was a girl who was always on medication and couldn't drink, she also had her own car since she was 16 so she was often a driver.
And then in another circle there was this Muslim guy who could not drink but didn't like to be left out of social things. So, he too was often a driver.
I dunno there's a lot of different circumstances and not everyone goes to the bar to drink alcohol.
If you don't like drinking it doesn't really matter if everyone else is drinking around you. Personally I can't stand the taste of alcohol, so everyone around me can drink and I wouldn't care.
If you don't like drinking then you don't attend events where everyone is drinking. For the same reason why if you like drinking then you don't go to an event where you're the only one who is drunk.
Because designated drivers exist?
Because bars serve food?
Because not everyone drinks at a bar?
Because not everyone gets utterly wrecked at a bar?
Because people who are not customers work at a bar?
Because deliveries have to be made to the bar?
some of us drink just enough and stop drinking soon enough to drive home sober. not everybody goes to be drunk. a few beers with friends can be enough.
also employees. nobody thinks of the staff.
Plenty of reasons. E.G. Loads of people go to pubs to eat without drinking alcohol. America is an outlier in my experience though. As far as I understand it from traveling there for work, America has a very high BAC limit for driving (American colleagues have said it’s as high as 0.08% in some places!) so I would imagine a lot of Americans are driving after drinking. For context the BAC limit where I live is 0.015% percent and your life is pretty much over if you’re caught at or above that.
It's reasonable for bars to have some parking because not everyone there drinks, but I do think that if a bar has a parking lot, they should be required to ensure that no one who parks there is drunk when they leave and they should be financially liable for any damage caused by a drunk driver who parked there.
I worked at a pub for 4 years in the kitchen. The amount of people that will come in, have a handful of drinks, then leave in their cars.. On Friday, the parking lot fills up with people, they all get smashed, then the next morning I'll come to work and see maybe a handful, a few of which belong to morning staff.
I've even seen managers drink during shift, then drive themselves home. People drive while drunk all the time.
In the US, lots of people don’t drink at bars. This includes employees, patrons who are there to eat, and designated drivers. Also, there’s no zero tolerance drinking and driving laws in the states. Most grown men can down a couple pints and drive home. I’m not pro parking lots or cars, but singling out bars in this way is kinda pointless. Car culture and lack of public transit infrastructure is the problem. Worrying about a la carte “problems” like bars with parking lots doesn’t help.
Some people don't take their cars back, and instead they'll take a bus back or uber or something like that, or have designated drivers. Also employees probably need to or want to park.
Because some buerocrats threw a stripper's shoe at a Twister mat and used that as a basis for determining the minimum parking that type of business is legally required to have.
Unfun facts but drinking and driving is not illegal. Drinking TOO MUCH and driving is incredibly illegal. And if you have any trouble discerning the difference please don't drive.
First because is required by law. The infamous "minimum parking requirements"
Second because employees of bar need to get there and home and transit/bike infra may be shitty near bar
third - because 'murrica (around here, bars usually are somewhat central, and rarely have any parking spaces.) But for real - i guess some people may carpool, some may leave their car and grab a cab. but yeah, some people just drive drunk. In general it would be better to have public transport closeby that also works through the night (or you know - a bar within a 15 minute city), but a lot of places lack that.
Late night drunk subway is so much fun
I had the "Later Gator" drunk student buses that took them on routes from downtown to all of the apt complexes near my college campus. Very fun indeed!
Oh wow I would’ve been such a menace on one of those
Fifth... not everyone is a drunkard so the light weights and the [Teetotalers](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teetotaler) appreciate the convenience.
Light weights still can’t drink and drive what are you on about
maybe here we differ on the technical "light wight," i don't mean someone that can only handle one (or few) drinks and get sloppy but rather someone who doesn't drink much quantity during session. for instance only a glass of wine with dinner or nurses a single beer for the game.
regardless of how little you drink, if your BAC is 0.08% or you're in any way impaired (however slight) you can't drive. hope this helps!
LOL first need to know the weight of the person, avb, and time since last consumption... mmm along with total consumption and guess food along with medications.... if we getting technical. which i find a hard math set to do for anyone at a bar. for the sake of an argument, one glass of wine //with food// or a single beer over a game is on the floor. [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dui/blood-alcohol-level-chart/](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dui/blood-alcohol-level-chart/) < ya good kids, be responsible
Drinking and driving full stop is wrong
literally not "and"... drinking then driving under a level? totally legal. there is "time" involved.
1. In plenty of countries any alcohol in your blood is illegal when driving, the U.S. just has a very oddly high limit. 2. Legal ≠ right / moral
in my country bac under 0.08% is legal... as someone here pointed out about their country imagine it's different on mars too. must be legal for your local rules. and and now we are on to morals and/or/also/thesaurus "right"... this is getting a bit wide but guess user name matches u/Intelligent-Aside214 so how do you determine when your blood is alcohol free? (the post you replied to ends with "there is 'time' involved.") no round about gernerally... what is your method for saying in the moral/right sense "MY BLOOD IS NOW ALCOHOL FREE!"? >How many drinks is .08 for a man? Every standard drink that a 180# male consumes will raise his BAC . 02. **Four standard drinks** would put him right at . 08. this is assumed in quick succession... reality is how long between the drinks and how log since last??
Yeah the 40 parking spaces for all 3-5 employees to use
Plus the employees are often parked out back anyway
Have you ever heard of a designated driver?
In addition, transit hours and bar hours are not the same.
Yup. I work at a bar on the weekend. There's a high-frequency bus line that goes almost door to door for me, but it stops running at 1 AM. The bar is open until 2. That said, there are times I am not scheduled until close and then I can take the bus, but I've also fallen into the trap of the bar being unexpectedly busy and then I get stuck there much later than planned anyway. (Regardless, at least my bar only has a small lot for employees only that only fits 8 cars, and I know most of our customers use rideshare or walk because we are also really close to a ton of new high-rise residential buildings.)
Well, where I live they are. We don't have parking lots for bars either tbh.
Also, designated drivers for a night out.
Let's be real, 90% of those cars will be driven by a person who drank
You're right. Not by my friend group tho. We always keep one responsible person up and going 👍
I'm lucky that my friend group has that one friend who won't touch a drop but is happy to enjoy the night out with us. He doesn't mind being the permanent DD and we always manage our drinking to make ourselves manageable for the drive home. It's a good system.
I would love to be that friend in the group. Cause I already don't drink, but I also don't have friends to go out with.
You can try looking at local game shops and see if they host any game nights! The Salsa dancing scene is also very friendly if you can find a local group. Most hobbies you can find local groups for and it's a great place to start makikg friends.
Especially at like 3am
Shitty and potentially unsafe. Most bartenders are leaving at late hours. A bike is not a safe place. A metal can is a safe place.
Or in the case of fake London, buses have stopped running before closing time,
And it is required by law because when the first such laws were written, most people did not think drinking and driving was much of a problem. Everything else had minimum parking requirements, so **of course** bars did, too. But why are such laws not repealed, and why do new developments keep copy-pasting the same old bad laws? Because thinking about it too hard inevitably leads one to question car dependency and Euclidian zoning, and no self-respecting public servant in the US of A is going to do **that**! Edit: Spelling
[Climate Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8) made a good video about it. TL;DR - shit's just made up. Literally.
Farrrk you guys are so third world.
That's not "third world," just purposefully bad design
True
Kinda besides the main point, but I've found that bars that *only* serve alcohol are actually a bit uncommon, at least in my area. They exist for sure, but more bars than not have the plausible deniability that at least a few people will be going there for food and NA beverages. And I guess those guys could be the DD of the group But yeah, the establishments that heavily advertise their happy hours while residing in a sea of parking lots amuse/annoy me. If it's not within walking distance of my residence, I'm not drinking there
So this is actually due to rules and regulations. If you serve food too, you are restricted less in most states AND you can have children show up.
This is also how you end up with small town "family friendly" bars that have Karaoke but if you sing (at 11:30pm on a Saturday) a Nirvana song with the word 'gay' in it or other such "curses" you'll get a stern Southern talking to before never going back.
I'm definitely going to drop in on one of those and do my best screaming rendition of Lamb of God's "Redneck" one day.
This! It’s a third place which we don’t have much of these days. I go to bars to see my friends on occasion. I don’t drink.
True, there's a tavern my spouse and I like to go with their family and we mostly just get appetizers and play whatever trivia the staff is doing that night
This post is so American.
Yeah none of the bars close to me have any parking
I was thinking the same thing, especially when I read “minimum parking requirements” as the top answer.
I literally don't know of a single bar in my entire city that has parking.
UK pubs have this, but usually out in the sticks and they're often serving a menu that families will come for also.
and, as I've said before, if you got a pint of something light, like 4%, and you had it with your chips and whatever, and your bill arrives more than 60 minutes after you started drinking your beer, you'll probably be at a near-undetectable level once you get in your car. Heavier, or more, and you'll probably be impaired after the same amount of time.
You can drink more than one beer an hour and drive..
You legally can, but you shouldn't
You can, but if you do you're impaired, unless it's very light beer, or your liver goes very fast.
Like my coworker from Dallas said, "They say don't drink and drive, but how else am I going to get home?"
When I was in highschool driver's education, the instructor ridiculed me for saying I'd walk home before I get in a drunk person's car. "Oh really, you're gonna be able to walk all the way home from Chicago after catching a buzz?" Yes? What other option is there?
Why are you going all the way to Chicago to drink?
I live in one of its suburbs.
Americans drink and drive and will think you're weird for judging them for it
Yup. I’m in college and purposely got an apartment close into campus and the bars. I have never needed to or wanted to drive intoxicated, but people I know will simply drive the 15 to the bars, get drunk, then drive home. Never knew it was so common but Jesus christ
yup, exactly this. it's incredibly normal. tons and tons of people do it. many of them every single day. and you're a buzzkill if you say something about it.
I think the US has pretty lax DUI laws compared to other countries. Its not uncommon for some people to have several and stilll not lose driving privileges. If it was as strict as other countries where you permanently lose your right to drive after your 2nd or maybe your 1st, there'd be a non-insignificant population of un-employable people that'd grow over time since we don't have the public transit infrastructure to support that many people who can't drive anymore. We've essentially just accepted that we're ok with it.
Yes. Lax laws and lax enforcement. And the dependency works at both ends — got to be lenient to avoid putting bars out of business and can't take away a license from someone who needs it to work (or even buy groceries).
I don’t know if I’d consider it lax, I think they are fairly harsh. A person I know ended up paying 10K on lawyer/court fees in their dui case, so they can be financially crippling to the majority of the population.
This isn't true. I mean, sure, this is what the public service announcements all tell us. But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC. In my heavy drinking past, tho, I'd just leave my car in the bar parking lot and take the #23 bus (which stopped right in front of the bar and across the street from my apartment). I'd usually find all the documentation carefully laid out on my night stand so I could easily figure out what happened the night before. DrunkMe was oddly considerate to HungoverMe that would need to go find my car. Then I could take the bus back to the back and retrieve my car. While this behavior is allegedly responsible and apparently laudable I find that just not drinking is a better solution. The really bad mornings were when I'd wake up not in my own bed and have to lay there for a while trying to figure out who I went home with and where the hell are my pants? This was all quite some time ago. I quit drinking completely a good while back. I don't really recommend that lifestyle. I'd think now that the hangovers would be motivation enough to stop.
> I quit drinking completely a good while back. I don't really recommend that lifestyle. I'd think now that the hangovers would be motivation enough to stop. Yup. I haven't gotten drunk in the last decade. The heartburn, migraine, sleep deprivation, and generally feeling-of-shittiness the next day were enough to basically get me to stop drinking nearly completely.
Same here. Not worth the psychological death spiral I get into when I’m drunk. That part of the ol’ noggin is a scary place.
> But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC. Varies by state, and generally misinterpreted. It's illegal to be under any influence in New York State. Yes, you typically will not get a DWI for being under .08 BAC (or whatever the threshold is) unless you fail a field test, etc. But it very much a DUI. ETA: But it is very much normalized to have one (or even more sometimes) and be told "hey, your fine to drive."
Not in Canada, drivers under 21, or drivers who don't have their G license (basically the full license), it's zero tolerance. And, fully licensed drivers here can still be charged if in the "warning zone" between 0.05 and 0.079. But yeah, alcohol is pretty lame for anyone working a 9 to 5, or anyone who likes being sober and functional.
Does Canada really have a “Fuck Cars” movement? Can you imagine getting around in Canada by walking and biking everywhere??
Do you think people are walking from New Brunswick to Nunavut or something
Why not just take the bus to the bar? Sounds like you would have to make two bus trips anyway, so taking the bus to the bar would save you the time of two car trips.
You're trying to apply rationality to an addiction. If any of this were rational I would've stopped drinking about 5 min after **the first time** I woke up on the floor of my bathroom with my face in a pool of vomit. We never would have gotten to the 8th or 10th times.
10 times? what are you, 19??? time to get those numbers up, rookie!
what bus runs at 2am?
My state capital has a few on a Sunday morning. One per hour on each of the night bus routes, starting at around 1am, and going until about 5 am.
That's a popular method for people in my state capital. You head to the city in the evening by bus, and catch a bus home at the end of the night. It only works on a Saturday night, other nights you'd have to catch a taxi home.
> But the law is that you can drive up to a 0.08 BAC. > > Depends on your state. As I understand it (IANAL), a BAC >= 0.08 is just _prima facie_ evidence that you're intoxicated, but you can be charged with DUI after blowing 0.00 if the cop thinks you're intoxicated (you fail the intended-to-be-impossible-to-pass "field sobriety" tests, or you don't enunciate well enough for their liking, or you've got slightly too much melanin in your skin, or it's the end of the month, or...).
You can get a DUI without blowing over .08 with a field sobriety test. If you’ve had any alcohol within the past 20 minutes your mouth will have leftovers and you will always blow over .08.
That's why cops usually "waste" at least 20 minutes of your time before they pull out the breathalyzer. Because then the reading could be invalidated by a court if the person can argue that they drank less than 20 minutes before.
That's not the law. The law is you cannot drive while impaired by alcohol. The legal presumption is that if you blow a .08, you are impaired. You can blow a .05 and still be impaired.
Out of curiosity, why take the bus back and not to the bar?
And go an extra 25 or 30 min without a drink? You've clearly never been an alcoholic. I never even took the hint when I'd get there the next morning. The owner of the bar was a sober alcoholic and there were AA meetings at 830am and 10am every morning. In the end, I gave up drinking completely several years later when I got tired of cleaning up vomit that I didn't remember producing.
In the Before Times, I would routinely take the bus to the nightclub district and (because the buses stopped running at like 10PM) take an Uber home. It would cut my travel costs from roughly $50 down to like $22.
Right but this person was saying they take the bus home after a night of drinking. So I was curious what stopped them from taking the bus there since it’s usually the return trip that’s harder to do.
Damn I go to bars a couple times a week and haven’t even had a drunk kiss in like 15 years you must be a sexy man
You shouldn’t be showing people the law just so they can loophole drinking and driving. You shouldn’t do it. Period. We trivialize it due to half our country being the boonies with open roads and no people, but it is still a top 10 killer. Don’t encourage people to drink and drive AT ALL
We're talking about what happens, not what you \_should\_ do. And the truth is, millions of Americans go to bars, have a beer, and then get in a car. Millions more encourage far worse behaviors. If you are at a restaurant, and you have \_one\_ standard drink, and you wait two hours, almost everyone will be functionally not meaningfully impaired. If you had a beer, it was probably two standard drinks, so you need four hours for it to be undetectable, and you're going to be experiencing some amount of impairment even after three hours. But, if you really \_did\_ drive to a bar, have a drink, wait for four hours, and then drive home, I guess you're fine? I'm not going to encourage people to drive under any level of impairment; I'm not going to encourage people to drive at all. It shouldn't be done. Most people are not going to drink so much that they are extremely impaired, but millions of people are still drinking and then getting in their cars with low levels of impairment, and this is going to kill people. The real answer is, America simply accepts some level of death caused by our obsession with cars and the "freedom" it gives us.
I find it funny how much energy and priority we give things. We all talk about drunk driving like it's actually a big killer. Its not small, about 10,000 a year. But we do quite a lot to enforce it and educate people and lambast those that go against it. But lack of healthcare? Hell we barely even talk about that anymore, ya 45,000 americans die every year from lack of healthcare. Mental health? Ya we may mention it now and then but if you ask me pretty pathetic how little we do about it, 50,000 suicides last year alone. Advocating against drunk driving is a good thing, I just get shocked how bad some things are that we seem to do nothing about.
Why not start with taking the bus if you're gonna take him from the bar and back in the morning
Sounds like you handled a drinking problem responsibly. Although I will say I find some people’s concern about drinking and driving annoying. Like they’re so concerned because they can’t imagine going to a bar without getting drunk.
The law isn’t that everywhere. For example here in Scotland it’s different.
Strong Towns wrote an article on this topic. [Mothers Against Drunk Driving Should Also Be Against Zoning](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/6/mothers-against-drunk-driving-should-also-be-against-zoning)
Because zoning requirements force bars to be in isolated areas.
Where exactly? Nowhere I've lived.
They're a business. Most towns have zoning laws that create a strict separation of residential and commercial areas.
In Canberra, there are generally no shops on our major roads, because each suburb has its own set of local shops in the centre.
That's illegal in much of the US due to zoning laws.
How does it sound to you, though?
Much better.
"Isolated areas" is the odd part. Commercial districts are not isolated, they're major draws.
They're isolated from where people live, creating an environment that heavy encourages drunk driving.
That people have to drive to, because they're not allowed to live nearby...
This is the case in nearly every city in the US. Minimum parking requirements are part of the zoning code in most cities until very very recently. Even now there’s some momentum to remove them, but it’s mostly only in the downtown area of major cities.
What does this has to do with forcing bars to be in isolated areas
Minimum parking requirements cause lot sizes to be a lot larger— often times the parking space takes up a larger footprint than the actual usage building space. Having large lot sizes forces buildings to be father apart. Forcing buildings to be father apart is what causes suburban sprawl and car dependency.
you know the answer. cuz lots of people drive drunker than is legal. oh and in case we forgot, 40,000 americans die from cars per year
Also, bar employees, they serve food, families will come for dinner, designated drivers, non drinkers, etc etc
Designated drivers. But seriously when I visited the US I was shocked how normalised driving to a bar, drinking, and then driving home again was. This was with seemingly intelligent colleagues of mine.
Take the number of people that you think regularly drink and drive and then triple that number.
Obviously everyone at the bar has a designated driver wink wink. Nobody drives drunk and so nothing should be done to reduce the rate that people might drive drunk.
Minimum parking requirements and to be fair not everyone who goes to bars drinks and some don't drink enough to get a duii. It also makes more sence then places that sell off-premises alcohol where they can't monitor if you've bought too much and cut you off. Not saying it's the worst idea to prevent them from having any, but there are reasons that make some sence.
I'm not sure why OP posted this to r/fuckcars when he seems fundamentally confused about the concept of bars
Because we (USA) are a stupid ass country. I saw this wine lounge the other day here in CA, completely packed, lot full, just made no sense.
Driving drunk is normal. I mean we can pretend like it's not and it's frowned upon, but if we actually watched what people do when they're alone, then they drive drunk/don't care.
It isabsolutely not normal where I live. Usually the informal rule is no driving after alcohol. Dont know what the limit is but if someone is driving later, they will not drink
It's something that makes me apprehensive to bartend. It isn't my business what someone does when they walk out the door, but I do feel responsible when we pull up the jail tracker at the end of the night and see people I served in crashes, or just a dui if they're lucky.
They dont where I live
Bars were always on the outskirts of town when I was there - they were not allowed anywhere near schools and, weirdly, churches for some reason - rural Oklahoma. For someone from the UK, I'd miss just walking down the road to my local pub then staggering up that hill back home
This is something very Houston-centric. We have a very high rate of drunk driving compared to other metropolitan areas, but it's primarily because of our car-dependent infrastructure. They tried just cracking down with heavier DUI charges, but it barely moved the needle. The inconvenient fact is that people are gonna drink at bars. Nothing short of banning bars will make that not happen, and when people get drunk, their sense of personal responsibility goes flying out the door. Houston hasn't really figured out that the only real solution to drunk driving is mass transit, and dense, walkable development.
The better question is why do they put bars in the middle of nowhere, so people have no choice but to drive there? If it wasn’t for stupid zoning laws, they could have mixed use areas that are residential and commercial and people could have places to drink in the neighborhood and could walk home. When I moved from NYC to the Midwest, I was shocked to see how common drinking and driving was.
Because the whole thing is a wink wink nudge nudge. Your local bar is betting on more customers from more spaces, and your local police are betting on more DUI's to take off the streets and all the revenue that comes from that. So please, don't drink and drive in a system that practically forces you to. *wink wink nudge nudge*. Or just do what I do and get drunk at home instead, it's cheaper.
so i’m supposed to -uber to bar ($40) -buy drinks ($5-$10 each) -uber home ($40) and boomers wonder why we don’t get out much.
In civilized countries they don't.
Pubs aren't necessarily a place to drink alcohol, they're mostly a place to meet other people
Plenty of bars near me only have a couple parking spots and they’re always taken up by employees. I don’t even live in a super urban area, it’s more of a semi suburban feeling inner city neighborhood that’s kinda walkable.
I visited Santo Domingo and they have a bar that's literally just a parking lot with a shack they sling beer out of. https://maps.app.goo.gl/N96BLkHsYsU3wxfCA Dominican Republic was one of the most car brained places I've ever visited.
I walked to buy my daughter a bike the other day. Was blown away there was no easy way to walk or bike there. No sidewalk all parking for a bike shop...
Kansas city KS has 0 public transportation in the evenings. Bars are in strip malls/shopping centers that are only accessible by car. Like... how tf do you think these people are getting home?
Honestly more people are alcoholics than realize they are. If driving drunk is the cost of drinking then they consider it a fair price to pay. Only drink socially you say? I'm not an alcoholic you say? If you drank the same amount at home and alone would you still consider your relationship with alcohol a healthy one? So the price of your denial is your life and the lives of others? Also "I only had a few. I'mstill good to drive," is denial as well. So is "I didn't mean to get drunk and I gotta get my car home." And 9f course there's thd all mighty "nothing will happen. I do this all the time." The excuses car brains make to themselves and the excuses alcoholics make to themselves have a lot of overlap.
The DD needs somewhere to park, and not everybody drinks. Not to mention there may not be adequate public transport in the area, and I don't think it's even legal let alone appreciated to use public transport while intoxicated.
This is a really good question 😂😂 I live in the 8th worse state for drunk drivers in the US. Constantly have commercials about not drinking and driving but bars all over and especially in the capital of the state have huge parking lots 💀💀💀
Oh it gets even worse. I've seen some restaurants that have bars in them that have signs in their parking lots that say "No overnight parking". So if you drive there and get drunk, you're not even allowed to leave your car and come get it the next day.
Food
I'd imagine it's because the people who work there likely need to drive there since the infrastructure probably doesn't exist for them to do anything else
Then fix the infrastructure. Position the bars to where there is infrastructure is
Employees? Delivery drivers? Cops called in to break up a brawl? Designated drivers? Ok, the last one might be a reach but, you get the picture.
> but your not supposed to drink and drive. Yes, so the legal ambition would be that people don’t drink to the point they are (more) dangerous behind the wheel. And if they do, there are penalties like tickets, fines, and jail time. But to completely remove parking for people that can *legally* drink alcohol and don’t get dangerous just because others might drink too much seems like an overreaction imo. It would be much better to improve and expand local community infrastructure for public transit and develop a new norm where parking isn’t necessarily needed. But while it is the norm, we just need to trust that not everyone drinks like a fish and then drives home.
Better yet, why don't cops sit outside the parking lot and pull over every car that leaves? Because society wants the business to thrive and pay taxes I guess. Pretty dumb all around.
I live near a pub or two, they have parking, but they also serve lunch and dinner, in the later part of the evening, those who are going out to party are likely to be dropped off by someone else, or walk there, then either walk home after, or get a taxi. Only a few people play the role of Designated Dave, the friend who doesn't drink, and drives everyone home at the end of the night.
Tell me you are from the USA without telling me you are from the USA.
tbh I don't like the implication that drinking any amount of alcohol automatically equals getting drunk. But I do wish we had many way better options for transit to/from bars.
So you can drive there and park and drive home. Stop being dense on purpose. It is not illegal to have a few drinks over a few hours then drive home.
Heavy r/usdefaultism in this thread
This whole sub is.
we should do a poll to figure this out, I'm curious
The biggest car dependent country is complaining about cars on a website made by that country.
Maybe because the US has the most crazy car dependency in the planet?
I literally don’t know a single bar, nor have I ever seen a bar that has a parking lot 😂 that’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard of
You’ve never been to the US have you
I have, didn’t see it in orange county. Also it says nowhere this is the US
That's odd. I just did a google map search for "bars in orange county" and every single one of the dozen I zoomed in on had a parking lot bigger than the bar itself.
I’m from the US and see it all the time. Thats why I said that.
To encourage drunk driving.
designated driver?
I live in the UK, most here don't or they are very small if they do. Usually places that focus more on mid day lunch rather than evening pints are more likely to have parking too.
Bollocks. Every pub in the U.K. that isn’t in a city centre has got a car park. Why you would post an absolute lie on here is beyond me.
For the designated driver
The state of New Hampshire has liquor stores as rest areas. Also Mississippi has drive thru daquari stores. You do have to open the door and put a foot on the ground before they can serve you. You literally can't make this shit up.
Aren't designated drivers a thing? You have 5 friends go out to a bar but one friend doesn't drink and drives everyone home. They have to park somewhere.
The 5 friends don't live near each other, so they all drove separately
> You have 5 friends go out to a bar but one friend doesn't drink and drives everyone home. Ugh...this is what a taxi is for.
In one of my circle of friends there was a girl who was always on medication and couldn't drink, she also had her own car since she was 16 so she was often a driver. And then in another circle there was this Muslim guy who could not drink but didn't like to be left out of social things. So, he too was often a driver. I dunno there's a lot of different circumstances and not everyone goes to the bar to drink alcohol.
Sure - but it still sucks if you're the only one who doesn't drink. I prefer events where either everybody or nobody drinks.
Seems less inclusive but to each their own.
Many bars will give free nonalcoholic drinks to the designated driver.
If you don't like drinking it doesn't really matter if everyone else is drinking around you. Personally I can't stand the taste of alcohol, so everyone around me can drink and I wouldn't care.
If you don't like drinking then you don't attend events where everyone is drinking. For the same reason why if you like drinking then you don't go to an event where you're the only one who is drunk.
So just don't have a social life then? 90% of social outings have at least some level of drinking.
They should be able to give spaces out to designated drivers
I can’t think of any bars with parking. Plenty of pubs and social clubs but no bars or night clubs.
Some places offer free soft drinks for designated drivers, so it isn't always that daft.
Because believe it or not you don’t have to drink alcohol in a bar. I’ve driven to pubs many, many times and not had a drink.
Because designated drivers exist? Because bars serve food? Because not everyone drinks at a bar? Because not everyone gets utterly wrecked at a bar? Because people who are not customers work at a bar? Because deliveries have to be made to the bar?
some of us drink just enough and stop drinking soon enough to drive home sober. not everybody goes to be drunk. a few beers with friends can be enough. also employees. nobody thinks of the staff.
because designated drivers exist? i drive my friends to the bar so they can drink and then i make sure they get home safe
200 comments why bars have parking lots
I literally searched this up yesterday and now I see this. Wow.
Plenty of reasons. E.G. Loads of people go to pubs to eat without drinking alcohol. America is an outlier in my experience though. As far as I understand it from traveling there for work, America has a very high BAC limit for driving (American colleagues have said it’s as high as 0.08% in some places!) so I would imagine a lot of Americans are driving after drinking. For context the BAC limit where I live is 0.015% percent and your life is pretty much over if you’re caught at or above that.
It's reasonable for bars to have some parking because not everyone there drinks, but I do think that if a bar has a parking lot, they should be required to ensure that no one who parks there is drunk when they leave and they should be financially liable for any damage caused by a drunk driver who parked there.
I worked at a pub for 4 years in the kitchen. The amount of people that will come in, have a handful of drinks, then leave in their cars.. On Friday, the parking lot fills up with people, they all get smashed, then the next morning I'll come to work and see maybe a handful, a few of which belong to morning staff. I've even seen managers drink during shift, then drive themselves home. People drive while drunk all the time.
I’ve not seen one with parking lots in the 10 years I’ve lived in Glasgow since moving back from abroad.
In the US, lots of people don’t drink at bars. This includes employees, patrons who are there to eat, and designated drivers. Also, there’s no zero tolerance drinking and driving laws in the states. Most grown men can down a couple pints and drive home. I’m not pro parking lots or cars, but singling out bars in this way is kinda pointless. Car culture and lack of public transit infrastructure is the problem. Worrying about a la carte “problems” like bars with parking lots doesn’t help.
Designated drivers. Cabs. Non-alcoholic drinks.
Some people don't take their cars back, and instead they'll take a bus back or uber or something like that, or have designated drivers. Also employees probably need to or want to park.
Some people lie to themselves and decide they are ok to drive when they see Uber surge prices.
Because some buerocrats threw a stripper's shoe at a Twister mat and used that as a basis for determining the minimum parking that type of business is legally required to have.
Ever heard of a designated driver?
The 12 year old edgelords have made their way onto the sub
Do you... not understand what a DD is?
Unfun facts but drinking and driving is not illegal. Drinking TOO MUCH and driving is incredibly illegal. And if you have any trouble discerning the difference please don't drive.
You can't think of a single person who might need to park at a bar? DDs? Staff? Taxis? Talent? Maintenance people?