... but I told you so

Apparently since 24 hour alcohol licensing came into effect there has been a trebling of binge-drinking related A&E admissions into hospitals. Stupid brits. We already binge-drunk ourselves stupid anyway and somehow, someone thought giving us more time to drink would slow us down... seems we need to get more sense like the rest of europe when it comes to drink.

Just more time and experience. Apparently the 24 hour drinking hasn't been in effect long enough to cause empty bank accounts.

yea, imo it's just a matter of time. The idiots will kill themselves off or run out of money and everyone else will get used to it. I'm always in favor of more freedom... artificially limiting the hours you're allowed to drink always seemed odd to me.

But enjoy the fun until they're all dead!

Yea but its the innocent they take with them that worries me the most. Just the other day, 4 young people got killed because the driver claimed to be sober but was actually totally wasted. Pity the rest of crew found out later when he started accelerating uncontrollably and the first turn, the first tree snuffed all of them.

If you don't notice your driver is drunk then you're quite far off yourself... so I won't call the four other people completely innocent. In Belgium and the Netherlands the government have for the past few years actively been promoting that when people go out, they should decide beforehand on who stays sober and drives the others home, rather then deciding halfway through the night after a few drinks have already been taken. It seems to work, although retards still exist and manage to pass their driving test. I won't mourn them.

A designated driver (ie, sober person to drive) has been a push by the US for quite a long time. Alot of bars/clubs will give a DD free soda and such to encourage that behavior. Personally, I don't see that happening much, but if I know I'm going to be driving (or I know noone else will be able to) I try to stay fairly sober....maybe a few beers, but certainly not enough to get wasted.

Though I agree on the principle of never driving with someone that's obviously incapable, I've been in that situation myself (as a passenger) and it's not necessarily so easy to tell. Sucks for the passengers, but in the end it's not society's fault, it's the individuals.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being run over by one just sucks.

I can't drink just a bit when everybody else is tanking up, so I either drink a lot or not at all. Fortunately I do everything by tram, metro or bike in Amsterdam. Driving a car is not going to bring you far in this city.

Yea, Europe has the advantage of a much more robust public transportation system. Though if I recall correctly, in Germany the whole thing basically shut down at midnight. If you were out past then it was walking or a cab. I don't know if things have changed any since then.

The US has a very crappy public transportation system. There's some there but nowhere near what would be necessary to make it a viable option to driving. Too bad.

Most public transport shuts down shortly after midnight here as well. There's only a train link between the mayor cities Utrecht Amsterdam and Rotterdam that stops on a few more stops in-between, going once per hour, and there are a few buses at night, but not to where I live. So I normally go to the city-centre by metro (and taking my bike with me), then cycle back for half an hour early in the morning. Works pretty well. Off course, that's only for the Randstad area where I live, the rest of the country isn't that densely populated, so there's less public transport.
That's probably the problem with public transport in the US too. Your country's simply not densely populated enough, so it'll never be profitable to have transport at night.

It's a shame selection of the fittest takes so long.

haha...artificial selection was tried a few times... usually it's frowned upon by the rest of the world. But hey, to each their own.

Hitler ist schon seit langem kaputtgemacht! Zwar haben die Russen den Deutschen versprochen, sie würden sie alle töten, würden sie nochmals so eine Scheiße bauen.

Erm...

A supposed-to-be-good public transport exists everywhere where the living standard is too low to allow just anybody to have a car or pay taxi. In example I know many families in Serbia (including mine) which doesn't own a car or have too low income to be capable of paying enough fuel. They got to do everything by public transport and since the more-less frequent buses, trolleys, tramways etc. are almost always full, you can figure out they're really (used and therefore) needed. An interesting thing is that while in Bulgaria public transport really shuts down totally during the night (only taxi drivers will drive you for double day price), in Serbia (at least Belgrade) it doesn't. It works with a lower rate and some external lines are shut down, but in the city core everything still works, for double-price ticket as well.

Night: 24-06.