I’m interrupting my IKEA story to bring you a sobering reminder of the consequences of drinking and driving and how it affects me, you, and our neighbors on a surprisingly frequent basis.
Several days after my first Uber ride with Rob-from-Michigan, I turned on my Uber driving app coming out of Home Depot in Noblesville, IN. Almost immediately I got a ding from Rebecca. She was 7 minutes away at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I found it interesting that someone coming out of the BMV should need a ride, so I was confident there was a story here. And indeed, there was…and it’s not a happy one. But it’s an important one to tell.
It turns out that Rebecca had no business with the BMV. She just gets picked up there so her employer down the strip mall (a home décor place) won’t find out that she doesn’t drive. You see, a few months ago Rebecca received a DUI. She told me that she was one block from her home when the policeman pulled her over and she blew a 0.09; just barely above the legal limit of .08. She claimed that she felt completely fine and that, although she had a few drinks, she drank only water during the last hour before she left the party. She seemed to be about 32, articulate and composed. So now the consequences: She paid about $6,000 in fines and legal fees and still had her license suspended. She worked as a dental technician and the dentist fired her for the DUI. Like the majority of states, Indiana employs ‘at will’ so it is not difficult to fire people, but I’m not at all sure that it’s legal to fire somebody for having a DUI when driving is not part of their job. Regardless, Rebecca had no money to contest the firing and recently landed the retail job at the strip mall. Now she Ubers to and from work, as well as to the County Court House twice a week to check in. She must do this for 6 months and then can get her license back after paying another $1,600 fee. Total costs: About $7600; a suspended license, the cost and hassle of Uber rides daily for 6 months, a lost job, and a major hit to self-esteem.
Rebecca does seem truly sorry about the whole thing and took responsibility. As we pulled up the to the courthouse she reminded me not to drink and drive. She told me that last week she met a woman during one of her courthouse check-ins who is awaiting a jail sentence because she drove drunk and killed two people. Rebecca said it was only luck that she didn’t hurt anybody.
After dropping her off, I was left to consider my behavior and resolved to be much more critical with regard to alcohol consumption and driving. Probably a good thing for us all. Thanks for the lesson Rebecca, and good luck.
PS: From multiple sources: Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) is influenced by many factors including body weight, time between drinks, food consumed, etc, but the general rule of thumb is that 2 standard drinks (12 oz. beer, glass of wine or cocktail) in the first hour will raise your BAC to 0.05%, and 3 in an hour will put you over the legal limit. Generally, you can subtract 0.01% from your BAC for each 40 minutes following your last drink. BTW, the legal BAC limit for drivers of commercial vehicles is .05
PPS: I was waiting to tell you this story until well into my IKEA experience, but a week and 3 Uber riders after Rebecca, I picked up Sabrina in Carmel in a nice subdivision just a few miles from my house. She also earned a DUI, but the circumstances were a bit different and so was the punishment. She has already spent well over $10,000 and is under house arrest. This means she has a bulky electronic monitor locked around her ankle and must check in with the county JAIL (not Courthouse) every two weeks. She submits to random drug testing and is not allowed to drink one drop of alcohol during her arrest period. The judge told her that her health and family situation was the only thing that kept her out of jail for an extended period. Sabrina is a handsome woman in her late 30’s and a single mother of two high schoolers. The kids were visited by two policemen near midnight on the night their Mom was taken to jail. Since they were minors, the cops took them to their grandmother’s house for the evening. Imagine opening that door. Sabrina blew a nearly-flammable .16 and she also lost her job as a ‘nurse’. While Sabrina was not nearly as contrite as Rebecca (“everybody makes mistakes”), and Rebecca may be more relatable for most readers, it’s interesting to hear about a more severe situation, and I’m sure it can get worse. Care to share any stories that you’ve heard?
Let me be Frank... 
In 1980, I was driving home from a date and came upon a pickup truck sitting across the road. It was a former high school classmate of mine. He failed to make a curve and crashed into the concrete end of a bridge. I still remember seeing his lifeless body laying in the seat and floor, (No seat belt), reaching through the window turning the key to shut off the still running engine. The next person to arrive went to call the police, (no cell phones yet). I was left standing there for what seemed an eternity. A few weeks later, his mother called and tearfully asked me if he had been drinking. I said there were a couple of beer bottles in the floor of the truck, but that determination should be made by the police I have shared my story with my children and their friends with the hope I never have this experience again.
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Thanks for this Scott. Two thoughts: my wife has been a juror many times (and I have NEVER been called….Mmmmm) and after each trial she tells me about the “inadmissible evidence” that ultimately tells the jurors whether they got it right or not. Seems a bit broken, but glad you guys got it right. Second, although not many comments here, I’ve received many emails detailing experiences of friends and their families. The most heartbreaking ones involve innocent victims. This remains a serious issue for our society. Thanks for adding to the fabric of the discussion.
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Very important reminders, Frank. Thanks for sharing. I have a similar story around the consequences of drunk driving, albeit from a different step in the timeline. Earlier this summer, I was called to jury duty in Forsyth County, Georgia. Like most people, I was not too thrilled with the idea of being called to jury duty, spending a day or more waiting around in a court room to be quizzed about my suitability to serve on a jury, and — God forbid — actually be selected to serve on a jury. I am a bit ashamed now to admit I even spent some time in advance of my first day at the Courthouse on-line, looking up excuses to get out of jury duty.
Dutifully, I showed up at the Courthouse at 8 am on Monday, along with 100 or more strangers. They showed us all a video emphasizing the importance of regular citizens serving on juries and drilling home the “jury of your peers” philosophy. I was not overly moved by the video, although intellectually I could appreciate the truth in the messages. Before I knew it, I was called into one of the courtrooms with about 20 other people, and I was given a juror # of 2. Without going into all of the questions asked by the prosecuting and defense attorneys, I have to admit I started to feel a bit guilty myself (ironic, eh?) as prospective jurors started giving answers to questions that seemed blatantly designed to get them off the hook. The case was a drunk driving charge, we were told, involving a man who was also being accused of hit-and-run and driving too close to another car. When I get in these moral quandaries, I typically ask myself the same question: “What would my grandfather do?” The voice in my head said to answer the questions honestly and let the system decide if I would be fit as a juror. As you might guess, the system decided that “YES – Scott would make an excellent juror.” I was the first person picked to serve on the 12-person jury, with one alternate. Thanks Grandpa!
Wasting no time, the 13 of us were quickly assembled for the proceedings to begin. The accused was a bearded and tattooed fellow, kind of heavy-set, and about 35 years old by my estimation. My first thought was this guy did not look like my peer. He looked more like a biker or blues bar bouncer to me, and I immediately reminded myself to reserve judgment and let the case play itself out. Innocent until proven guilty!
I could get into a fairly long narrative about what happened over the next day and a half, but suffice to say this. We learned this man had at least one previous DUI on his record. We watched video proof of him in the back of a police car, clearly incapable of speech based on what appeared to be acute intoxication. He only admitted to having one drink, many hours before he was pulled over. The police offers testified this is what almost all DUI suspects will admit to : “One drink officer, and that was hours ago.” The fellow had refused to take a breathalyzer, and the arresting officer was not yet trained on how to administer a field sobriety test. One officer smelled alcohol on his breath and another did not. After a full 8 hours of testimony and questioning, the jury was sent off to deliberate and deliver a verdict. In mind, the guy was absolutely guilty of all charges based on the preponderance of the evidence. Nice, I thought, this will be easy-breezy and we will be done on day 1 with a slam-dunk guilty verdict. It was not that simple, but it should have been.
I immediately found out that at least half of my fellow jurors did not view the case against this man as being that simple. They worried about the lack of absolute proof of his being drunk (video notwithstanding). They wondered why only one officer claimed to have smelled alcohol on his breath. One female juror started crying, saying how could we find a man guilty with such flimsy evidence? She confessed she had driven drunk more than a few times and had never been busted, so would it not make her a hypocrite to find this man guilty. We could reach no consensus after day one. So, we all went home with strict instructions to not discuss or research the case and come back the next day for more deliberations. I challenged myself to trust the process and be a responsible and fair-minded juror.
One day two, we all met again around 9 in the morning and resumed deliberations. I believed very strongly that this man was guilty of all crimes as accused. The video evidence weighed heavily on me. He admitted to drinking during the day. He clearly had struck another car, although it was a fender tap and caused no damage. We also knew he had a previous DUI. My fellow jurors seemed to be living in the land of conjecture and creating explanation stories about what might have caused everything we heard. It was at this point that I decided to exercise my 20 years of selling experience and start hard-selling my beliefs about the case, and I mean HARD-SELLING! I use logic. I used emotion. I admitted I could probably have been arrested for DUI in the past, and so what? My mistakes in the past, even if I got away with them, did not absolve us of our responsibility to find this man guilty of the same things we could have been found guilty of…but for the Grace of God. I used every ounce of energy and bit of logic I could muster to change the minds of my fellow jurors. And it worked. After 4 hours of deliberating on Day Two we agreed we could find him guilty on all counts. And, of course, this is when my fellow jurors announced that they thought I should be the Jury Foreman. Great, I thought. Now I have to face the accused and read our verdict to him. Ah well, the burden of having convictions and a little fire in the belly — I agreed.
As I read the guilty verdicts to the judge, the legal teams, the accused, and what appeared to be his family in the courtroom, I felt extremely nervous. What if we got it wrong? What if I let me ego allow me to manipulate my peers to render a verdict they did not truly believe? Too late. I read the verdict in a shaky voice and watched as the accused gentleman stared straight ahead and never glanced our way once. We all went back to the deliberation room so the Judge could share a few final thoughts with us as a group. “You did the right thing,” he said. He never gave us any indication during the trial how we felt, or what he knew, but the Judge indicated this guy was guilty and we simply were not privy to all of the evidence. Still, he seemed relieved and satisfied with our decision.
As the jury group left the courthouse, we were shaking hands and wishing each other well. It truly had been an emotional and intense two days. All of the sudden, one of the arresting officers approached our group. She thanked us for doing our civic duty and asked if she could share more info about the accused. We said yes. We were curious. She told us this guy had a long criminal record. This was his 3rd or 4th DUI charge. He had been found guilty of some other violent crimes and none of this had been able to be brought up in court. She also said when she first arrested him and he was in the back of her squad car, the guy was so intoxicated that he mistook the officer for his wife, tried to kiss her, and said he loved her. She stressed that there was absolutely no question in her mind he was guilty and she was greatly relieved we had made a good decision.
A few days after the case, I checked on the status of the Accused fellow. He was sentenced to 6 months in jail. His life was clearly a mess, and his future certainly was going to be forever stained by the bad decisions he made around drinking and driving. At the same time, I felt proud of the work we did as a jury. It made our community a bit safer. And I have absolutely vowed I will never put myself in the slightest risk of drinking and driving ever again. I’ve taken at least half a dozen Uber rides since this jury experience, and will not get behind the wheel of a car if I’ve had more than 1 drink. It’s just not worth it.
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Hi Frank, new reader so I’m working through the backlog. Thanks for the sobering reminder (pun intended) – I think we all tend to forget how easily this can happen to us. Not sure if you came across this in your research, but I’d like to add that BAC is completely independent of a user’s tolerance. This means that a more veteran drinker that “feels” absolutely nothing after knocking back a couple will have the same BAC result as if those were his first drinks ever.
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