Yes, both cases where around the mid 80s
I think even careless driving resulting in a death is 5 years these days.
The 80s, the decade when a couple of pints and a drive were the norm for many.
Lol it was six pints back then, minimum. I knew an old guy who would have eight pints, top up the last one with barley wine (8%), then drive home through the country lanes.
How much of that was just lack of understanding, and how much of it was just selfishness / twattery? I was only born in 1985 so wasnât exactly on the pulse of what attitudes to drinking were like back then!
I used to drive to the pub which was 12 mins walk away. A mate of mine once said âIf you had an outside toilet you would drive to itâ
My folks used to drive to the pub with my sister and I in the car. Theyâd head in and have 4-5 drinks while simply abandoning us to our own devices in the car, then drive us all home. Weâd just be totally bored, never really thought about how dangerous it was.
Ultimately life was a bit more chaotic back then. I was reminded of those times when I went to Far East cities (Bangkok, Manila) or India/Sri Lanka - the police were largely ineffective, and ignored you unless you actually hurt someone. I sometimes think that much of Brexit was about getting rid of the overly ordered way we live now.
I wonder if this has popped the lid and the police will finally come under some proper scrutiny now?
A bit of both. My dad used to do a Saturday drive to a pub, drink four or five pints, place his bets and come home and watch the nags racing. He knew the drink drive limit and didnât care.
As Bob says, a bit of both. Going back to the early 60âs I can (just) remember my auntâs 21st birthday party which was held at our house. Iâd have been 4 or 5 and couldnât sleep for the noise, so came down stairs to find mayhem, including people dancing on our dining room table. Apparently some US airmen had turned up from one of the nearby bases with a large amount of cheap bourbon.
Most of the attendees drove home afterwards. As it was their house and they had two small kids my parents chose to stay sober. My dad followed my great uncle and aunt home, to make sure they got there, and came back saying theyâd driven onto the main town centre roundabout and had then been unable to get off it, not recognising any of the exits ! After a few orbits my dad came to a stop just after the right one and basically forced them off. It was considered funny rather than culpable though, and it wasnât as if he made them park their car and get into his for the rest of the journey.
VB
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There seems to be an element of discretion - just over a year ago a lad died in a straight-road, no-other-vehicle crash a few hundred metres up the road from us, his mate, the driver survived, albeit badly injured. On a 40mph quiet rural road-to-nowhere, the car went clean through a telegraph pole and a 20â tree, and then hit the side of a bungalow well back from the road - the bungalow needed a major rebuild having gone off-square and shifted on its foundations. Police estimated ~100mph at first impact as there were no signs of an attempt to brake, and the telegraph pole not only broke at the point of impact but snapped in two other places higher up. Itâs a fucking miracle one of the cunts survived. Both had been drinking and smoking dope, both were well-known to the police. Iâm told by the bungalow owner that CPS have no plans to prosecute the driver.
Blimey, Iâd have thought that would have been a trivially easy prosecution. I guess it might depend on what state the driver was actually left in after relevant medical treatments.
I did some monumentally stupid things and was very very lucky that I didnât hurt anyone.
How I still had a clean licence in 2002 (when I stopped drinking) is a total mystery.
I dread to think how many times I drove to work in the mornings still over the limit.
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I wonât start on what I got away with in the 70s and early 80s cos it will make me sound like a cunt.
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Yes I think I will leave it there as well.
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It never ends.
That will be the same for a few of us - Friday Pub lock-in followed by a 6AM ten mile drive to grab four hours OT
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and that was just some of the records you were listening to
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When I was in my twenties there was a young fellow named a Stanley that used to haunt the same streams that my mates and I fished for trout. Stanley had (Iâm guessing) Asperger syndrome. We would let Stanley tag along with us if we ran into him, and we would run into him in the damnedest places as he really got around on his bicycle 
One night Stanley was struck by a car while riding his bicycle on a desolate backroad and left to die a slow death by bleeding out from a severed artery in his leg. The driver turned himself in the next day, claiming he was too scared to stop and help. My suspicion is that the driver was drunk and wanted to sober up (young dude with a carload of friends in an area known for late night drunk asshole driving).
Stanleyâs distraught parents showing up looking for him when he hadnât returned home is a scene Iâll never forget. Some times when I canât sleep I still think about how terrified Stanley must have been that night 
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