Judge commends cyclist for his bravery in clinging onto car door to stop drunk driver

6 pints, 2+ large glasses of wine rough and ready but it all depends on your physiology, food eaten and how fast you drank.

Thanks for that! Ok so I guess I underestimated the alcohol amount and hadn't factored that he would be metabolising the first drink as he drank the last....

But still, even at 6 pints in 4 hours I think I'd remember crashing the car with someone stuck in the door! Though either way in no fit state to be anywhere near the drivers seat...

Freetime101 wrote:

Just how much is 3 times over the limit? Can anyone help vizualise that?

My loose understanding is that the limit is roughly 1 pint of beer (not an exact science, I know the amount varies person to person). Working on this, 3 pints would be 3 times the limit?

My reason for asking is that having drunk 3 pints, I would remember sombody clinging to my car door as I hit a lampost... even with 6 pints I'd remember! This gives me the suspicion that hitting the pole may not have been as accidental as the judge implies...

You are correct, it is nowhere nears as exact a science at that. A pint of normal strength beer is typically around 2 units, and around 3.5 units are considered approximately equivalent to the limit (so 2 pints would put you over and 6 pints would therefore be around 3 times over). 

However, an average human will metabolise away around 1 unit per hour, so if he had been drinking for say 4 hours, that would mean he could have drunk 8 pints of beer, having burned off the units from 2 of those pints. As you say, that will vary widely from one person to another though. 

He could also be an occasional drinker like me who would be incapable of even finding his car, let alone getting in it and starting the engine, after much more than a couple of pints. 

If you're taking the limit as being about 3.5 units, then to be 3 times over it you would have to have drunk around 14 units (before accounting for metabolism). That would be 7 pints @ 2 units per pint.

However, 2 units per pint would be on the weaker side these days - about 3.5%. 'Normal' strength (more like 4%) would be about 2.3 units per pint. 14 units of that would be... about 6 pints. So, er, as you were...

[edit]

Just read the original story. He had a reading of 118mcg/100ml; the limit is 35mcg. So both the original report and road.cc's copy/paste are wrong - he wasn't 'more than three times over the limit' - he was not quite 2.5 times over the limit.

If the limit equates to ~3.5 units, then that reading would suggest ~12 units, or something around 5 pints @ 4%. If the limit is more like ~4 pints (as chrisos says below) then it would be closer to 7 pints @ 4%.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the evidential alcohol test is done back at the police station, which may be some time later.

According to Google the limit allows the average height/weight adult male to drink 4 units of alcohol and units are calculated by (ABV% x Volume in ml) / 1000 so if 3 times the limit is 12 units then an "average" guy drinking 5% beer would need to consume 2.4 litres or just over 4 pints. Or a 4% beer would be 3 litres or a bit over 5 pints.

orangecannonim wrote:

'Davis has now given up drinking'. I wonder if he has given up driving too?

Fair point - plainly crap at both