By RJ Beam
Here we are in the holiday season, or as many officers refer to it: amateur drinking season.
With company parties, family events and everything else going on, the alcohol flows – New Year’s Eve, of course, being the grand championship of amateur drinking. With more people drinking, we tend to make more drunk driving arrests.
Here are some of the best excuses drunks have given me to explain why they needed to drive drunk:
1. It is too cold out, I might freeze to death
On a cold December night, I responded to a car wrapped around a tree in someone else’s front lawn. The driver was miraculously unharmed. The sound of the crash had woken up the owner of the house. As I was doing sobriety testing on the driver the homeowner yells out the window, “Hey dumb ass, what are you thinking trying to drive home drunk?”
Without a second thought, the drunk guy yells back, “When I am this drunk I walk real slow so I don’t stumble and fall. It is too cold out; if I walk slowly I would freeze to death so I had to drive to save my life.”
The irony was not lost on anyone who watched the dash camera footage from the sobriety tests.
2. I need to get home because my wife is fertile
It was somewhat early in the night, and I pulled a guy over for speeding. Around here we have a script for traffic stops so I did the whole, “Hello, I am Officer Beam with the PD. The reason I am pulling you over is for going 18MPH over the limit. I am going to need to see your license. Is there any reason for you to be speeding tonight?”
The driver is fumbling with his wallet. I can smell the alcohol coming off him. Yet, he still looks me right in the eye and matter-of-factly says, “My wife and I are having trouble getting pregnant. She texted me that her temperature is in the range that the doctor told us is optimal for baby-making. I need to get home and have sex now to increase our chances of a baby.”
3. I didn’t want a parking ticket
In the winter here in Wisconsin, we have a number of overnight parking rules to help make sure snow plows clean streets the best as possible. On many major roads there is no parking from 3 am–6 am. On the other side streets, we have alternate parking rules. Most of these rules for my city are only enforced when snow is in the forecast and thus the plows will be out.
One snowy night a guy ends up getting his car trapped in a snowbank. I arrive and end up asking him to do sobriety tests. Halfway through the process, he blurts out, “I only drove home because I can’t afford another parking ticket. Now you’re going to screw me over with a DUI.”
4. My boss will fire me if I miss work tonight
Around 10 pm we got a call about a car parked in the middle of the road of the industrial park. I arrived to find it occupied by a person passed out behind the wheel.
He worked third shift at one of the industrial plants. He told me, “I am trying to be responsible. My boss said that if I miss any more shifts this year, I’ll be fired. Yeah, I got a little drunk at a family get-together, so I drove up here to sleep it off before my shift at eleven. I even set my watch alarm to get me up before I have to punch in.”
5. I needed my GPS to find my hotel
I pulled over a vehicle going the wrong way on a one-way street. I approached the driver and asked why he was going the wrong way. He said the GPS told him to go down the street.
Later at the PD as I am processing him, he gets all upset, yelling, “You know the only reason I was driving was that I needed the GPS to find my hotel. Then the GPS sends me the wrong way down the street and I get busted.”
6. But I am the designated driver
This one is sad because I have been told this over a dozen times. Typically the car has a number of people in it. The alleged DD often times will say, “I only drank beer, never did shots” or, “I normally drink whiskey, but because I was the DD I only drank the clear stuff like vodka.”
In the end, they are always well over the limit.
Everyone be safe out there and have a Happy New Year!
This article, originally published 12/07/2016, has been updated.
