Virtual drink-driving

[simont]

I've known for some years that driving a car while perceptibly under the influence of any alcohol at all is a terrifying experience. Once, due to bad organisation, I drove after drinking half a pint of Guinness (which ought to have put me a comfortably long way within the legal limit), and that was so scary I decided never to do anything like it again.

Since then I've discovered that a number of other things involving drinking and cars make me scared in much the same way.

For example, a couple of months ago, I was sitting in the pub with some friends, and the conversation turned to the fine points of road safety, and what drivers and cyclists should do in particular situations. After a few minutes I found that I needed to go and find some people who were talking about something else, because being perceptibly drunk and even imagining myself at the wheel of a car brought on much the same sort of fear.

It gets sillier. Being in a car driven by somebody else while I'm drunk can also, I've found, make me somewhat anxious. I think this one is because, having my own car, I'm very rarely driven by somebody else at all. So usually if I'm in a car I'm also in the driving seat. Hence, my subconscious must have felt, if I'm in a car and I'm drunk then I'm probably doing something dangerous.

The thing that brings this to mind today is that yesterday evening I went to the pub, and then walked home and went to bed. I fell asleep, and had a dream involving driving a car. Somehow, in the dream, I was drunk, which turned the dream into a nightmare. I don't know whether being drunk in the dream had anything to do with being drunk when I went to bed, but I suspect it probably did; in which case, even drunkenly dreaming about driving appears to be unacceptable to me.

I suppose it's comforting to know that I have such good defences against accidentally doing anything stupid of this kind in real life. But it would be nice if those defences didn't keep firing for the wrong reasons…

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I used to have nightmares about driving before I started learning, where I was a passenger and the driver died in the seat, or it was vitally important that somebody get to hospital and the only way they could get there was if I got in the car and drove. I am a better novice driver in real life than I am in my dreams.

The hazard perception video is in slightly slower motion, slightly blurry, with no sound except headphone hissing. You bet that feels like driving drunk.

[simont]

One of the Grand Theft Auto games has a mission in which you have to drive somebody to a hospital while drunk. They simulate drunkenness by blurring the picture a bit and also having a small delay between you pressing the controller and the car responding.

I haven't actually played that, though, only seen somebody else play it. (Hmm, which makes me think: an obvious form of virtual drink-driving which I don't think I've done is playing a driving-related computer game while drunk. I wonder if that would be scary as well. Perhaps it would depend on how realistic the game was.)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think that would still not quite be like driving drunk though, because you're still sober and can learn to compensate for the delay and the blurring, whereas if you are drunk you may be too drunk to implement that, and probably think you're not acting any differently to sober too.

That makes a change from the rest of Grand Theft Auto, in which the aim seems to be to kill and maim as many people as possible, not save people's lives!

[simont]

Oh no, plenty of bits of GTA involve trying to protect the lives of people your character cares about.

There just aren't very many such people :-)

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

It's not entirely about killing and maiming. In GTA: San Andreas, there are missions involving driving a fire engine and putting out fires, and (I think) driving an ambulance as well. Although I'm pretty rubbish at controlling the vehicles so end up running people over anyway. :/

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The ambulance needs a delicate touch, but given that the fire engine is like the fist of God that's pretty much the best way to get it around, anyway.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

'Wrong' reasons? Interesting, dreaming about scary stuff sounds perfectly normal to me, however unpleasant it is.

As far as being driven by someone who is under the influence (I'm talking borderline limit not well under) that would scare me most of all. In fact, if I even suspect that it might come to pass, I will *not* get in the car. I was in that situation most recently after going to dinner with my then boss. She was getting quite stroppy that I wouldn't accept a lift and in the end I stupidly gave in, knowing that if I didn't she would take serious umbridge. We came to no harm but I was terrfied for the whole journey home and cursing my capitualtion. In the event, that night I had a bad dream that replayed the memory of when I was a passenger in the back of a car involved in a RTA on the M1 some 20 years ago.

[simont]

Yikes, yes, that would definitely be scary. I don't think I've ever been in that position, fortunately. *hugs*

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

I remember our French teacher drove the whole CSYS class to the Filmhouse to see a French film once; seeing as we were in 6th year we were allowed to go to the bar for a drink, but the teacher only had half a pint of lager. Afterwards, he offered to drive a few people home, to which one girl threw her hands up in horror at the mere suggestion. As it was I was getting a lift from someone else, but I wasn't particularly fussed by him having had one drink.

For 'safe' dangerous driving, I endorse Grand Theft Auto. We have Vice City (mmm, 80's) and San Andreas (mmm, gangsta's) which you are welcome to come round and play over a glass of wine or two. :)

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, anxiety's nice like that, isn't it. I'm getting so I'm a *really* bad passenger if anyone other than Ross or Mark is driving, which is just silly.