Most of my friends will admit to driving home when they know they shouldn't have. I used to be in that category but have made good use of the bus system over the past few years.

In Smalltown, NY where my friend's cottage is located... her father tells stories of the town's own police chief driving home after a heavy night of drinking at the local legion after fish fry fridays. He brags that his driving habits are untouchable in that town because of this knowledge.

It's disgusting, really.

(Nit: it's legal at a state level but municipalities and counties are allowed to dictate more rules on drunk driving - most don't, but YMMV)

That, and by the fact that in a lot of the very rural areas, drunk driving has a rather low fatality rate, given that there are no other cars on the road and no obstacles to crash into. If you run off the road, you just drive into some corn or wheat or alfalfa, or at worst hit somebody's cows. (These are the same places you'll see people e.g. allowing their young children to drive trucks or motorcycles—even by themselves, at night. There's just nothing much that can go wrong.)

(I think this is all also true of rural Russia, which is a large part of where the American stereotype of Russians as constantly drinking comes from.)

Nonetheless, we clamp down hard on drink-driving, to such an extent that I was massively shocked by how acceptable it was in the US.

You give two excuses to drink and drive. Both are indefensible.

The first excuse is "need a car to get around, have car". I live in a sparsely populated area as well, and everyone uses a car to get around. When we go out drinking, we plan ahead. The most common options are designated drivers, taxis, sleeping over, walking, or cycling.

The second excuse is "can't expect to make good decisions while drunk". That's a bit intellectually dishonest. The decision to think about how to get back later, knowing you're going to be drinking, is a bad decision made while entirely sober.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_St...

Drunk driving is a lot easier to avoid if you can get anywhere easily without driving at all.

Over here, drinking and driving is an extremely shameful and embarrassing thing to do. I would say it's on par with hitting a child. You just don't do it, not to save 20 bucks, or to save you from walking an hour.

I think you'll find that outside of larger urban areas in the US, drunk driving tends to fall into a gray area of morality, or in some cases (in my experience, very rural locales with very little meaningful road traffic), an accepted norm.

Almost nobody I know that lives in an urban US area drives drunk or finds it acceptable. This becomes more lax among my suburban friends and acquaintances. For some of my more rural acquaintances, taking a 6 pack along for consumption during a drive is typical behavior that nobody in their community even bats an eye at.

But then I was in a similar situation off in a small town in Norway. I was at a 80th birthday party in a small town. Most of the attendees were drunk. Everyone already knew someone to take them home, and organized themselves accordingly, some waiting a bit for the sober driver to return empty. A few found someone at the party (my spouse)- and then proceeded to drink. It was nearly surreal to be in the situation.

The truth is that in the states, it is OK to say, "I've only had X beers, so I'm ok to drive." IT is socailly acceptable behavior. And no one really keeps track most times, so if they seem sober enough to us or we know better, we'll let them go. The acceptable BAC level is much lower here - one beer can send you over the limit - and penalties are harsher, so that could be a major factor as well.

I feel it's much more commonplace and acceptable in the US to drive alone to a bar, drink, and then drive home. Cities are much smaller in Australia and the UK so catching a taxi, public transport or walking is feasible.