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Trail drinking

454Sub said:
As a recovering alcoholic I can see both sides of this clearly.

On one hand I don't feel a responsible person having 1-3 beers over the course of a day will hurt anything. But on the other hand I also realize that there are about 10% of the world's population who truly are responsible drinkers. It's almost impossible to do. And most people who think they are are in fact not. Especially factoring in wheeling, excitement and groups of friends. People tend to go over with it.

The main concern isn't BB, DUI's, CK5, or any of that stuff. The financial burden passes and any friends you may lose can be replaced to a point. It's potentially yours or someone else's life. or both. And it can be taken from you or them in an instant over a two beer decision on just the wrong kind of day. That is something that can never be gotten back. And it's just always some 3 second decision that normally would be a stupid simple one that gets you or someone else hurt or even killed or a rig wiped out.

It's just not worth it. Drink a case of soda and when you get back then a case of beer. Or even two cases. Hell then it's cool. You know when you wake up your wife, child, yourself or one of your buddies won't be dead and your rig won't be totalled.
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One thousand times this. Speaking from the experience of one who was somehow pardoned from my past addictive behavior, this is so true. You may not even remember what happened or why it happened, but it doesn't change the fact that something happened that you can't undo. I was granted a pardon, it is something I am grateful for every day.
 
miniwally said:
I understand and respect your point, but to counter that;

Say I have a beer with an early lunch say at 11:00, then we finish the trail at 3:00 and BS for an hour while I have another beer and before the hour+ long drive out to the trail head. I wasn't actively drinking while driving and didn't just slam a beer and take off again in either instance. Assuming these are typical mass produced beers and not a higher alcohol content beer my BAC should never exceed the legal limits for DUI.

I've had 2 beers "on the trail" but I've done it in such a way as to never have a BAC level that is too high and for the typical person judgement isn't significantly impaired by a single beer. This is my idea of reasonable and responsible alcohol consumption on the trail.

Are the state laws actually written in such a way that if we go out to dinner and I have a singular drink with that meal I should as the average person be fine? That's for all intents what I've described above. Now there are technicalities with open container laws and public land etc. that might cause issues as well.

Sitting back and drinking 2 or 3 beers in a row or doing the steady drinking thing all day net's you your example and I understand where your going with that.
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I'll say this a thousand times if necessary.

it's not about you, it's the presumption they will make about you.
 
I say save it for camp. If you must drink, do it as a passenger. Lord help me if someone causes harm to my wife, dogs, or a kid and I find out they've been drinking. I've seen and felt too much pain due to drunk/buzzed driving. It's just too easy to wait, in my opinion. Plus, it gives you something to look forward to after the ride.
 
%95 of the people I see on the trail are drinking or drunk. That's just the way it is out here I guess. I can't see it being different anywhere else. Rubicon is also a county road.
 
I have had friends arrested and vehicles impounded for drinking on the Trails in Moab....Welcome to Utah, our new BAC will be .05 in 2018
 
CDL is .04 and you don't have to be driving a truck at the time, any vehicle counts.
 
alf4444 said:
I have had friends arrested and vehicles impounded for drinking on the Trails in Moab....Welcome to Utah, our new BAC will be .05 in 2018
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I'll ninja edit, but I thought (as I said above) that the date was June 1, 2017 for the .05%....

It's interesting to me how few people realize that any level of intoxication is a potential DUI - it's when it gets over the threshhold (.08 in Washington) that it's no longer arguable that the person is drunk. The law says that anyone above that level IS intoxicated. But you could have a sip of one beer and be convicted of DUI.... so "only 2 beers" or whatever is kind of a red herring. All it takes is for a person to swear that based upon their training that the person was impaired and unable to safely operate a motor vehicle.

Injure someone, have an open container and you'll have a tough day in Court... I remember the days of "pour it out, go home, and don't let me see you out here again tonight" (1992, Nevada). Those days are LONG and thankfully gone. By the grace of God it wasn't me who injured someone but I sure could have... don't be me, don't learn like I did... just don't do it - it's really not worth it. Not a month later, the officer who said that to me told a kid in a Corvette that he was too drunk to drive and to wait for his dad to pick him up. The kid didn't wait and both he and the passenger were killed. I'm thankful I'm not the officer who gave the kid a break.
 
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Any National park that has a lot of visitors, such as Moab or Zion, is not a good place to be drinking and driving because of the heavy Ranger presence at those parks.
 
You can be convicted of a DUI and sent to prison for it if your BAC is anything over .00. Any level of alcohol in your blood is enough to earn you a guilty verdict. .08/.05 is just there because at that level it's automatically guilty. Below that they just have to work harder to get it.
 
The one offroad club I have been a member of since the late-90's specifically states no alcohol during a trailride. While I like drinking a few cold ones as much as anybody else I can wait until we get back to camp in the evening. The other club I've been a member of for the last few years doesn't have an official policy but there is very little to no drinking on the trail with them either. These rules, official or unwritten, are not there because of the majority of the people that may have 1 -2 beers throughout the day but rather the one or two people that would get drunk. It's really annoying and sometimes scary to be around really drunk people on the trail.
 
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