Should You Drive Home, Or Call A Taxi?

It is not against the law to have something alcoholic to drink, and then to drive. Put differently, drinking and then driving is not illegal. As a DUI lawyer will tell you, it is illegal to exceed to permissible alcohol concentration in your bloodstream. If you do, you could be stopped on suspicion of operating (driving) a motor vehicle while your ability is impaired. It should be noted that impairment can be not only from consumption of alcohol, but also of drugs, prescription medications or a combination of alcohol and drugs. Your ability to drive has to be impaired to the extent that you cannot safely operate a motor vehicle. Most people are not likely to have an attorney on speed dial to assist them in deciding if they should get behind the wheel of the car after they have had alcoholic beverages. It is a matter of common sense, and having a good sense of how alcohol affects you.

If drinking and driving in and of itself is not illegal, it does carry risk. If you want to be absolutely safe, call a cab. You can come back and retrieve your car the next day, or call someone to come and get it for you. If your vehicle is in a restaurant or club parking lot, you can let the manager on duty know that you are leaving it there. Many proprietors prefer to have a patron who may be inebriated to leave the car and get home safely. If it helps to look at it from a financial point of view, the cabbie might charge you thirty bucks. A court is going to fine you ten times that and more for drunken driving.

What have you got to lose besides money if you are arrested and convicted of driving under the influence of intoxicants? You can lose your driver license; you could lose your job; you could sacrifice whats in your bank account, and you may lose your freedom. Someone including you could lose their life. A drunk driving defense attorney is usually kept busy because many people are arrested for drunken driving every week. Some people think that a guy who has a burger and a beer has the potential of being aware of the effect on him, if there is any. But a person with a lot of gin on top of only a few olives has impaired judgment about impaired driving.