To be fuming with MIL and Husband?

Having seen the devastation in a family caused by death as a result of a drunk driver, I do not advocate for any drinking if one is driving. It's so easy not to drink and drive, can't understand why anyone would do it. If you're not happy about the weekend away, tell him why he and don't go.

@HoppingPavlova I’ve gone with the idea that if I am driving I don’t drink. Then you know you won’t be over the limit.

I have lost a relative to a drunk driver who drove head on into them. They didn’t stand a chance, although the drunk driver survived

We all used to have personal breathalysers when younger and many places used to have them set up as well but that seemed to go out of fashion ages ago. It wasn’t a case of drinking too much, it was so you knew if you had to wait for another hour or not to set off if you were driving so you were not over the limit, it’s a really good idea. Many decades on we all know what we can/can’t have in this regard though, it’s the figuring it out earlier in life where this comes in handy.

I’ve got 50 years driving experience and can guarantee after a few, and being under the limit as I have never and will never drink and drive over the limit, I’m still a much better driver than any of my kids who have less than 10 years experience and have not had a drop to drink. I’ve also dealt with many patients from rta’s over the years, many fatalities, some caused by drunk driving but I’m still happy to be under the limit and drive. I’ve treated many people but don’t believe the cause of all accidents should be banned either. People put hands in moving blenders for instance to move things, no need to ban blenders! I’m happy for people to drive under the limit but not over the limit and definitely not drunk driving (you’ll be over the limit before you are drunk so it’s a good cut off point).

I think if you feel you need a breathalyser to check alcohol levels you are probably drinking too much when driving

The only way to be sure you aren't over the limit, when you don't have a breathalyser to check, is don't drink alcohol if you drive. You don't need to be drunk to have impaired reactions and I saw first hand how having been responsible for an accident can ruin your life, when a close friend was. Imagine how you would feel if you seriously injured or god forbid, killed someone. It's just not worth it!!

I'd be very cautious in letting them get away with saying it's "just 3 beers", it might be or not. People metabolise alcohol in different ways and without a definitive test they have no idea if he's legal or not. Much better to take the attitude of assuming you aren't, unless you can prove you are by a test, if he insists on driving after consuming alcohol. Ask him how he would feel if someone else caused an accident and hurt one of his kids but said "I only had three beers".

Id not go away for the weekend because I wouldn't feel comfortable with MIL judgement and I would be telling them both why.

Did you miss the dozens and dozens of posts before yours discussing the OP's post saying he drank beer?

Where the "only" 3 Drinks ...3 bottles of Scotch then?

What counts is whether he would fail a breathalyser - not whether he's had food with his beers.

Having food in your belly slows your digestion down, so alcohol enters your bloodstream more slowly (whereupon you body immediately begins trying to neutralize the toxin.) It also makes it so that you have glucose and more fluids in your bloodstream, which partially interfere with the alcohol’s effect on your brain (acting like a receptor antagonist or effectually diluting the concentration of alcohol in your bloodstream.)

This means that you can have the same amount of alcohol on two different occasions, but if you were full and hydrated the first time and hadn’t eaten and dehydrated the second time, you will feel the effects of the alcohol a lot more the second time.

I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to have 1-2 drinks at a time and not drive within 3-4 hours of that. Also breathalyzers are not that expensive; if you tend to drink a lot, you can get one and keep it in your car or purse.

So many factors in play here as to whether he was over the limit or not.

If he lied, he either

1. knew he was over the limit, or felt he'd had too much to have driven

2. knew you'd blow up about it if he'd driven after 3 x 3.5% beers over 10 hours

Food eaten or not eaten has absolutely nothing to do with the alcohol in your blood stream, so it's interesting to see this being mentioned by an awful lot of posters.

I now know that I've historically driven when over the limit. I didn't know then. I now know that I've let friends drive home who have been over the limit. I didn't know then.

The debate on this thread is typical of society. No one sits after a couple of drinks and calculates percentages, timings etc. English law needs a massive overhaul in this area.

Off topic, but in Scotland the limit is 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, compared with 80 in England and Wales. Zero would be unenforceable, at 2 o'clock the next day there's still a tiny amount left.

If he's driving you to wherever you were going this afternoon he might still be over the limit if he drank a lot more last night.

In the event of an accident police usually breathalyse all the drivers involved even if it wasn't your fault.

That’s ridiculous obviously. If you drank 2 pints of 2 unit/pint beer at 12-1pm and then drove at 6pm then I’d not only expect you to be under the limit but have zero alcohol in your system or very close to it.

What was the plan originally if your MIL had driven to the wedding? Was her plan to not have a drink and drive home, but when she got there decided to have a drink anyway and then let your DH know she was over the limit so he decided to drive instead?
Not that this excuses either of them.

Unfortunately I can see many many objections to this.

Define "drinking all day"?

If he said he'd only had 3 beers and had been there all day, then he would have been fine to drive home.

You metabolise about a unit per hour. 3 pints of beer would be 6 to 9 units. You can drive with a couple of units as that would still be under the legal limit, so as he was at the wedding for hours, then assuming he didn't just down the three pints before he went home, then he would have processed the alcohol by then.

I'd be more annoyed he tried to lie, because why lie if he was OK to drive?

Oh you can bet there would be plenty objections😐

This is a bit ambiguous though definitely not great. Rather than thinking about what's 'right' I'd focus on what you want to achieve.

If he's done this before or you're confident he was over the limit and you want to pull him up sharp, then cancel the weekend.

If you want to draw a line in the sand about frequent lying, then cancel the weekend.

If this is unusual and you want him to think clearly about the possible consequences, then I'd still go away but raise it calmly and firmly as something that can't be ignored (both the lying and the driving)

If you have other concerns about your MIL's competence to look after your DCs, then use this as a trigger to say no (but if he convinced her he was under the limit & looked sober, the decision was on him not her)

If you are looking for an excuse to cancel the weekend for other reasons then be honest.

This with bells on. Why would anyone oppose this?

And personally I think any alcoholic drink in a day and no one should be driving, let alone people saying they would drive after three drinks That is a bit terrifying. Not to mention how unreliable people on the whole are about measurements, how much they’ve actually had, length of time since drinking, etc.

If you want to drink, don’t take the car. If you’ve brought the car, don’t drink. It should be as simple as that nowadays 🤷‍♀️

So if technically you could have 6 bottles of beer in a day and just be under the limit, would people really drive after that? Surely most people who are driving will have one or two at most over the course of the day

The limit in Scotland is basically nothing. No one I’m close to here would even have one drink and drive these days, it’s stupidity.

Send the MIL home. No weekend away. The money's wasted but some things are more important. You have to put your foot down so he understands how important this is to you. I would no way tolerate being with a drunk driver - what if he killed someone else's children? Just no.

Adding to the chorus of if he genuinely only drank a small amount and was fine to drive, he wouldn't have initially lied about how they got home.

I'd be absolutely disgusted - he could have killed someone.

Sounda like the day was maybe 12 hours.
It takes 1 hour to process a unit of alcohol so there is little or no alcohol in the blood.
A beer is about 2 units.
So he could in theory have had 6 beers in 12 hours and be under the limit.
I mean, I dont drink and drive at all but the facts are as above, so in theory, if he did only have three beers or even four, then he should be under the limit and fine to drive if he spaced them and didnt drink for the last hour or so.