Lincolnite: Lincoln's Online Community

Many students have been sporting buttons around campus that say something to the effect of: “91% of students don’t drink and drive”

Am I alone in thinking this is a horrible statistic? That means 9% of students admitted to driving drunk. That’s at least 1,950 students.

I don’t know where they got the stats, but I’d be interested to find out.

Eep. Be careful driving around downtown, especially around the time of last call.

Some of those posters are unintentionally hilarious. There’s one that says something along the lines of “85% of UNL students oppose drinking and driving”. So 15% support driving drunk? Or they couldn’t make up their mind?

There was another one to the effect that 75% of students don’t binge drink.

I’m guessing that there are probably no more than a third of UNL students actually of age to drink, anyway, which makes that statistic sound pretty bad.

The definition of binge drinking, though, is 5 or more drinks in a sitting, so I can’t say I’m not guilty of it every once in a while.

The “75%” one was all the rage a few years ago.  It seems a little reverse psyhology would work.  Since college kids want to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing, tell them that 99% of students drive drunk and/or don’t drink.  You would see the DUI and binge drinking rates plummet.

FYI, the local cab companies (which are really just one as they’re owned and operated by the same person) will not do a scheduled pick up at the downtown bars.  I am out of college so I cannot use the transportation provided to those students, which I think is a free service.  There is no excuse for drinking and driving whether it’s in town going 25mph or on a highway at 65mph.  The problem has 2 parts:

1.  Each person has a responsibility to be responsible, clearly not everyone understands this simple concept.
2.  Have the necessary resources, ie cabs/shuttles available for people to use… Yet another simple concept.

I don’t understand why the busses don’t run one route out of downtown around the time of last call. I’m sure something could be worked out.

Most cities I have lived in have had some free ride program sponsored by a company or group of companies.

Perhaps the University could extend their service to those that are not students? Perhaps the city could pitch in a few dollars to help? After all, many of the people drinking downtown were once students of UNL. It seems like using a service already in place would be preferable than starting a new one.

I’m just glad I like close enough to walk - I have not had to for a while, but having the option is nice.

Cabs are available to students who had too much to drink.  However it can take 1-3 hours to get a ride, and it seems law enforcement is more likely to show up than the cab first.  Drinking and driving is stupid.  We live in a culture that makes alcohol a taboo, and having alcohol on campus is illegal.  We should take a lesson from the Europeans, alcohol isn’t a forbidden fruit, and have extremely strict DUI laws.  I dunno, that’s my take.  Everything in moderation, be safe, and maybe we could have better laws.

Strange I didnt see this thread earlier for some reason, just today. Drunk driving is one of my pet peeves. I think we have all known people who either killed themselves, or have been killed by drunk drivers (I have known several in both categories). I agree with you all, I had heard that there was a free taxi service, but that is appalling that it takes 1-3 hours to get service. We really do need creative solutions for this. I’m game for almost all policy options, whether that be increasing free transportation resources, or being more harsh in terms of enforcement (with the possible exception of dram shop liability). Still, I think the best investment is in changing behavior through some sort of preventive education, as well as in creative ways to increase designated driving behavior.

I would very much support a student driven creative process to this, maybe even some sort of campaign that the CBA could take up to create, market, and execute a community wide campaign of some sort. Sounds like an idea someone should run by Harvey Perlman!