I don't do it, but unfortunately I do know a great many friends of mine that do. For the most part they justify this by saying that they are only going a short distance but to me, a responsible adult, I don't think the distance that you are traveling is relevant at all. If you are joining a public road and you are drunk, you shouldn't be doing it.
In Chiang Mai we have some safeguards in place as there are checkpoints throughout the city that will test your breath with that machine to make sure you are not drunk but here's the thing, they checkpoints are always in the same places and everyone knows where they are. So someone with a little bit of strategy could easily avoid them. I have been going through these checkpoints many times and see people on motorbikes turn around abruptly and nobody pursues them so it all seems a bit pointless. I guess it accomplishes something but not a great deal.
I talk about this not just because it is common but you might have noticed that I have been on a bit of a conquest to bad-mouth Pattaya lately even thought Pattaya never did anything bad to me :)
It must have been a slow day for news because a foreigner crashing into a light post at 3am when they are near blind drunk is nothing new. I'm just kind of happy that the only person injured was himself and not some innocent bystanders. Not to be judgmental but I don't really think that there are very many innocent bystanders on a street at 3am.
In other countries the fear of getting a DUI or drunk-driving ticket is a very fearful thing that people generally wont mess with. In USA which is where I hail from a DUI is going to cost you thousands of dollars to fight the charges and then even when you do fight it your insurance is going to triple and there are going to be serious restrictions on how and where you can drive or maybe even if you are allowed to drive at all.
In Thailand you pay a fine and get on your bike or back in your car the same day. It all seems a bit silly. I know a guy that paid I think it was 1000 Baht when he was blind drunk at a checkpoint, wasn't even able to get his bike started and fell on the ground again and rather than have the police stop him from continuing to be a public danger, they assisted him in getting his bike started so he could carry on down the road. How crazy is that? I'm not saying the entire country is like this but most of it is. You have to work pretty hard to get denied a driving license here and even then, if you ever get busted for driving without a license, you just pay 500 Baht ($16 or so) on the spot and they let you go. I once forgot my wallet and went through a checkpoint with no license. There was no requirement of me showing them later that I do in fact have a license, they just charged me money and gave me a sheet of paper on the spot.
It is the same with drunk driving and this contributes a great deal to the already quite dangerous roads here in Thailand.
If I was someone that was simply visiting here I might feel tempted (when I was new) to drink and drive as well because honestly, there are no consequences for doing this and I feel this is a mistake. It is a mistake that isn't going to change though because Thailand is accustomed to how things are and any attempts at changing these aspects of society in the past have been disregarded after a couple of months.
So I guess the warning here is that if you are visiting Thailand and are near roads at night, you can be guaranteed that a great many of the people operating vehicles on the roads, especially at night, are under the influence. Despite having one of the highest road mortality rates in the world, this doesn't and likely wont change. So get a taxi. That's always an option. You can always lockup your bike inside the business that you got drunk at. Every place I have been to is more than willing to do this.
