I appreciate the sentiment, but a call to the local Taxi company would have been smarter and accomplished the same moral goal.
That would involve thinking clearly, and as I have noted many times over the years, when schnockered out the wazoo, clear thinking is not my strong suit.
[I posted this on another forum about this same story. I thought I would toss my two cents in here as well and see what people think.]
Well, see... there's the problem right there. After a few drinks, one of the first things to disappear is good judgment. We all know this, yet for some reason we expect drunks to excercise the same good judgment that sober people would. I don't know why. Alcohol impairs judgment long before it impairs motor skills. Check out any "Girls Gone Wild" video for confirmation of this.
This lady, like lots of people, probably thought she was fine to drive when she got in the car (i.e. impaired judgment). She was a little more aware than most, however (and probably a little less drunk than most) because at some point as she was driving she realized that she should not be.
What she could have done was just to pull off into some safe place and stop... either to wait to sober up or sleep it off. But of course if she did that she'd be busted for DUI anyway. Not to mention that depending on the town, there's no actual safe place to do such a thing, especially for a woman by herself.
Many, if not most drunks, once they hit the road... do realize at some point that they really shouldn't be driving and they really should get off the road. It would be good if they did, voluntarily like that. It would be good to give people this option somehow, though I'm not sure how that would work. But as it sits we basically force drunks to attempt to run the gauntlet and get all the way home. Too many times, this has tragic consequences.
A couple cents tossed into the pool for consideration...