Do you call in drunk (or careless) drivers?
 

I can't remember if we had this thread.

Late at night. Car in front of you is all over the place. Do you try to call it into the locality(or highway patrol). Or just pass them as quickly as possible

Depends on the situation. I've made that call at least a couple of times when there's a significant obvious danger, usually not (otherwise I'd be making a helluva a lot more calls)

edit to add: One of the things that really determines it is whether I think there's a legit chance that the response time/location/etc has a reasonable chance of being productive. Otherwise, seems kind of pointless since LE has to see it themselves in order to act.

I do my best to call in on any drunk drivers that I spot. Works best if you have a passenger who can call for you.

True - based off the studies from the last drunk driving thread, whipping out the cell phone makes you just as bad a driver. :p

Personally I called the police once when I was run off the inside lane of a 2-lane rotary and forced to hop a curb. Flashed the lights at the guy, he pulls over, then when I do to see if there's damage to my car he takes off again, so I called the police and tailed him 20 miles on Rt 2 towards Boston (where I was going anyways). The officer on the phone couldn't care less once I told them that the other car did not make contact with my vehicle (which I pointed out was solely because I hit other things to avoid him) and despite having the license plate, approximate make/model and exact location of the car. If that isn't going to work, then just saying a car is swerving lanes on the highway isn't going to be enough to get an officer involved (and with how shitty many people drive there's a decent chance they're not drunk), so I just stay far back/pass 2 lanes away if possible and get out of dodge.

(I do love the ironic misspelling in the thread title.)

lol

I've thought about it a few times when I've seen guys swerving all over the freeway but I guess I'm very skeptical that it produces results. You have maybe 1 highway patrol for a big stretch of freeway at that time of night and you're assuming a) he's available and b) close enough to do something about it (and maybe even c) cares enough to make the effort)

I know that's a pretty crappy reason not to do anything about it but that's honestly been my thought process when I've decided not to call. Plus yeah, if I called I'm technically breaking the law myself :D

EDIT - also in LA my experiences with dispatch have been beyond horrible. Chances are I'm just getting put on hold indefinitely or getting treated like shit anyway.

I haven't in America but I did a couple of times in England when I've seen someone who didn't appear to be in full control of the vehicle (ie. meandering onto the wrong side of the road that sort of thing).

I think its important to do personally, after all getting them off the road might save someones life.

I've done this before.

I have done it 3 or 4 times when it is really obvious that somene is impaired. Not only for the sake of others but their own sake as well.

Ironically my Wife was also caught by a call in from another motorist last December At my wits end right now - Follow up question for Legal types - Front Office Football Central and if I ran into the person now I would thank them.

Yeah the incident caused us some financial difficulties as we are now over 15 K in money shelled out for the various costs that come with this and we had several "intense" conversations, but it in the end I know I will never need to worry about it again and it possibly saved not only my wifes life, but innocent people as well. In the end we were lucky and things have worked out fine.

I was all for it before this happened and even more so now.

Absolutely I'll do it and have done it, but sometimes it's hard to determine if they're drunk or just a horrible driver. Having known a number of people who have been killed or permanently injured by drunk drivers, I take this personally.

I would, but I don't carry a cell phone.

I have from work (run a cstore/gas station)

I have called in someone and then found out that the person I called in caused a fatal crash shortly after I exited.

Wow, that is just terrible. At least you know you did the right thing by calling it in.

I did that when I worked at one.

This one guy came in barely able to walk & covered with blood, his clothes all torn. He had a broken & bent cigarette in his mouth that had blood on it. He looked at me & slurred "They fucked me up." Then before I could call the cops he starts pumping gas all over the trunk of his car... and tries to light the cigarette! I stopped him, pumped the gas, then called the cops. Felt pretty good when he left & the cops came hauling ass after him about 2 min after I called.

Full story please. K thx.

I honestly feel it is my duty to call in if I see someone who is drunk driving. What the police do on their end is out of my control. There must be some out there who care enough to follow up on these types of calls.

This is why I do not do it. You only know they're swerving, not that they're drunk.

Besides, I think the police have too much to do to respond to "this guy is driving badly" phone calls - as many people's experiences recounted here bear out.

So drunk drivers aren't a serious problem? We need to be going after jaywalkers or something instead?

If someone is swerving they shouldn't be driving in the first place, regardless of the reason behind it.

Maybe theyre not drunk, just swerving around because they are on their cell phone calling in someone else who ran a red light.

My guess is that youve probably called in more bad drivers than drunk drivers.

Cops have better things to do than follow up average joe nit wit tips.

I was gonna ask someone to PM me when this thread made The Turn, but I can see we're well on our way!

Every decent-sized police department has officers who specialize in DUIs - all they do is cruise around, look for erratic driving and respond to citizen reports of erratic driving.

Also, depending on the state, what the tipster actually saw, and whether the tipster identifies himself, an officer may have reasonable suspicion to stop someone solely on on the citizen report of annoymous driving. Then the stop may (or may not) reveal more information that could lead to grounds for an actual arrest.

So those tips matter, a lot. They're the catalyst for PLENTY of DUI convictions.

Sure, driving erratically is no guarantee that you're drunk - but it certainly creates a reasonable suspicion for a stop and further investigation.

Regardless, if they are driving poorly, reporting them is good. Getting killed by a sober terrible driver is probably not much better than being killed by a drunk driver.


Also, FWIW, if I don't have a passenger to call, I will find a safe place to stop and then call it in. I don't talk on the phone when I'm driving, as that is pretty much as bad as drunk driving.

I have called them in before and have also followed them home...depends on the situations....

Never really had a good chance too. Most obviously impaired drivers I have seen have been on the interstate at night, where it wouldn't exactly be safe for me to whip out the cell phone while trying to stay behind the danger driver..

I'd imagine most of what the cops do is follow up on average joe nit wit tips to catch criminals. What, you think they are super heroes that can hear a scream from 4 miles away and rush to the aid of a victim?

They still need to get busted.

The phrase "so what?" comes pretty quickly to mind.

Hmm. I may have finally found the misspelled word in the thread title.

I thought bishop was talking about the incorrect usage of "into"