Drinking & driving 1597referred, unsteady. The slight - and temporary - unsteadiness when walking (part way through the evening) does not necessarily mean an inability to handle the controls of the car reliably. You say...
David Knowles
Drinking & driving 1598Does 'mood change' really matter? Perhaps you're equating this to a change of atbreastude to one's driving, like a reduced sensitivity to the concern for safety. I'm not sure it's the same...
If you had two pints of "Stella" beer, which seems to be 5.2% alcohol by volume, that's equivalent to 2.08 fluid ounces of alcohol. AFAIK about two pints of beer at 3.4% is, for the average person with no existing blood alcohol, about the limit (yes, I know lots of factors influence whether this is true), which is 1.36 fl. oz. of alcohol. You therefore consumed what would, at first sight, seem to be about 1.53 times the limit, or the equivalent of about 3 pints of "ordinary strength beer" (I use this calculation for illustration, there are easier ones). You say you're of average weight, and that you drank this beer over the course of about 2 1-2 hours with a meal that was "fairly substantial". Perhaps you would've metabolised the equivalent of 1 pt. of "ordinary" beer. Perhaps the food might have slowed the absorbtion rate so that your blood alcohol level didn't exceed the limit for driving. You were, on the face of it, likely to be "legal". The limit is there for a purpose - to balance the social side of things with the potential for errors. I think it's about right.
