I've been interested in this topic for a while. The article was fairly good but I did have a few minor quibbles. For one, ordering from IDGod (the vendor in the story) is known to be very reliable. If packages get stopped at customs, a customer can contact support to get a replacement shipped at no charge. Additionally, the advanced scanner BarZapp is pretty much a non-issue. Almost any ID purchased from vendors on the subreddit mentioned in the article will pass those easily.
How will a fake id pass BarZapp? According to the article (I know nothing about this, so could be wrong) it looks up the id in a database and returns the name and dob of the owner. How could the made-up name be in the database?
Or are they cloning existing IDs, and the buyer doesn't get a choice in the name?
It's neither. All BarZapp does is read the barcode and check that it contains reasonable information and it formatted according to the standards. Vendors have figured out proper formatting so they look appropriate to BarZapp. Of course, no fake id will pass actual lookup in a database. Except of course cloned IDs, which are extremely rare in my experience. I've heard of stories of someone with a stolen DMV database who would sell fakes with real information for about $700 each, but I've never seen it myself, and no reasonable vendor doing anything like that would be selling through the clearweb.
I believe the apps only pull whatever information is in the barcode on the back of the idea - only law enforcement can actually check the ID against the DMV database.
I scanned the 2-D barcode on my license using a generic barcode reader on my phone, and it's a PDF417 barcode that contains all the information that's printed on my id (number, name, address, license type, physical descriptors, dates, organ donor) as well as a few other fields (revision number of the card format, and an inventory control number that looks like the concatenation of the DL number, state name, license type, and some other fields)
The situation is crazier yet more logical than it appears.
How do you prove someone once showed you a fake ID? Well, back in the $1 per shot polaroid / kodak instamatic era, you didn't. So the fake ID owner got away with it and bar owner got punished, which is the only reason bars cared about carefully checking fake IDs.
Now with a machine the bar has a fighting chance in court, the police verbally claim the bar served an underage patron, and the police provide a person residing in the city who is underage, but there is nothing in common between those two people, your honor here is a copy of the patron's license clearly showing he's 22 at that time and there's no legal record of my patron ever having been charged with a fake ID infraction and my patron is not the same person as the supposed police witness, so, your honor I request you dismiss the case K thx bye.
There is also the 3rd party to blame, if a bouncer knows some punk who gets drunk and starts fights, oh so sorry your ID failed the scan, now go away. "No point arguing with me, buddy, you need a better fake ID, yell at the guy who sold it to you".
A lot of bars in my college town are starting to require two forms of ID before they let you in. One must be a driver's license but the other can be your student ID card or a credit card. I'm sure it would be easy to fake our student ID cards but for the most part, this rule works well. Some bars are known for letting in minors. Their bouncers are inexperienced or just don't care. Every now and then those bars get a fine and they put someone experienced out front and give them a UV flashlight. That guy will collect enough fake IDs until the bar isn't making enough money so they will bring the first bouncers out and rake in more money from the underaged patrons until they get another fine.
I've seen people get let in using the worst fake IDs I've ever seen and I've seen people rejected using real IDs. It all depends on the bouncer's experience and how much the bar owner cares about not letting in underaged people.
I'm a bit disappointed in this article. Interviewing someone who bought fake IDs and a small scale seller from 1994 isn't that insightful. He should have tracked down a current seller and interviewed them.
Prices have dropped in the past 10 years which I assume means increased competition. It would be interesting to hear how that has affected the business. I'm also curious about the techniques they use. When I was selling IDs 13 years ago it was teslin, PVC card printers, and Alps printers. I assume the Alps printers are no longer used since they went out of production in 2003 or 2004.
A lot of IDs are still fairly easy to replicate. The hardest thing is a real hologram which most IDs don't have.
Teslin and PVC are still big, although some states are using polycarbonate as well. Real holograms got a lot easier. IDGod (among other vendors), apart from selling IDs, also sells bulk holograms, so most vendors on Reddit now have them. The bigger hurdles are the higher security states with perforations, raised signatures, windows, etc.
Before the days of prevalent computers and searchable databases, one would just take someone else's information to the DMV and get a real ID with their info.
In the 70-80's, we made them with colored stock paper, hand-drawn seals, and rub on letters and border lines. You would make them much larger than the real deal, then take photos and reduce the size. That masked any imperfections.
The back side was typically just text, so we could photocopy that. Insert the photo, and find a high end laminating machine. Oh, and fake a neighboring state ID so it's less critical to have it perfect.
You didn't even need to use someone else's information, you could just use your own with a different DoB.
Growing up, my "fake" ID was my passport. When I applied for it, they read my birth year wrong (I guess my 7 wasn't too legible and they thought it was a 2). I could barely pass for my own age, let alone 5 years older, but it worked most of the time.
All my friends ended up using the flaw that I'd inadvertently exposed when their fakes got confiscated. It was just cheaper and more reliable to use an actual government-issued ID.
I think this is why Indiana quit printing ID's in the county offices. They are now printed in a central location in Indianapolis and arrive in the mail.
The mass use of fake IDs of this sort is a bizarrely American problem. In the UK, you're considered an adult at age 18. Most (aside from the unfortunate 17-year-olds) university students can legally purchase alcohol, smoke, or gamble if they so choose.
Yes and there is even push back against under 21 sqadies /grunts being able to drink - you can put your life on the line for your country but cant get a beer
Depends on the state, but Federal law does require you to be 21 or older to purchase a handgun. Ammunition can be sold without any background checks or ID checks in some states.
It's rooted in federalism. The federal government generally doesn't have the power to regulate transactions between individuals within a state. When it has assumed such powers, it has required some legal gymnastics.
A gun dealer with an FFL has a license to do interstate commerce in firearms and is subject to federal regulations on the subject. A private sale is governed by state law.
Is that really so backwards? Seems to me that a personal sale is a more intimate exchange and it might be expected that the seller vets the buyer a bit more carefully than your average retail transaction, thus justifying the lower age restriction.
Not only automatic rifles. Hand grenades, fully-automatic grenade launchers, anti-tank rocket launchers, claymore mines... You name it. The infantry can be pretty fun.
If you look under 25, IIRC, you're supposed to be "challenged" (asked for ID) in the UK for alcohol sales.
Also, under 18s probably still want to be served. I was 14 when I first tried to get served in a bar (barman sold a 16yo the drinks, then came and confiscated them; canny barman).
Being a well-off 19yo engineer in Poland I can't even imagine being treated unequally in everyday life, so that's yet another reason to not visit US for me, other than almost certainly being questioned at a border (although 90% of my income comes from startups in California).
Don't let it stop you. Despite the anecdotes most people pass through the border with no issues at all, certainly no more than the grilling you'll get flying into parts of Europe (UK and Denmark come to mind from my personal experience - nothing too crazy just a lot of questions vs some of my US crossings where they barely look at you).
Likewise with the violence you'll see in the media. Most of America is safe and people aren't walking around waiting to shoot someone.
It would be like saying you won't visit any of the great European cities due to terrorism concerns. The perceived risk is much greater than the actual tiny risk.
Being in EU, we don't know the grilling at UK, Denmark or any other EU (Schengen participants to be specific), (it's more or less like going from one state to the other in USA), so the comparison doesn't help much to parent poster.
Correct. My main issue is that in fact I worked (led development / designed the whole security system) at an encrypted email service and CEO claimed police investigated into us before we ran out of money. It might be bullshit, but I'd rather not risk getting humiliated by some asshole at border control, especially considering how much more interesting many countries in EU are.
Schengen residents returning to the area from trips outside of it surely pass through border control and immigration screening?
My most recent travel to Europe took me through Madrid and Copenhagen on the way to London - I recall seeing everyone (EU residents and non EU residents) waiting in line to clear immigration into the UK. On those same trips I also flew through France and Germany - those were all like domestic US flights without any additional screening but the UK definitely seemed to screen everyone. I also know multiple EU residents/family members who have had similar experiences with UK immigration being less than friendly when returning from the US.
Yes, we just show our passports to the person at a booth or show it to a machine that I assume checks for the biometrics things and off we go.
It's no where near what I had to go over when I visited USA, each time after long exhausting flight - a long queue and at the end a guy that asks you stupid questions e.g. "do you have your flight back tickets with yourself?" (no, this is XXI century, I have it in an email), "how many times have you been here?" (where "here" might mean the city or the country, whichever you answer you will be wrong).
Oh, and don't say "hi" to them (trying to be polite, English is not my first language), I once did and was asked "Do we know each other?".
If you're a stereotypically ethnic Polish person (just guessing from the username) no one is going to even look cross-eyed at you if you can speak English at all.
The 21 year drinking age is still idiotic and actively harmful.
The only advise I would give on this angle is more that one should carry their passports (or some other form of ID) with them if they want to enter US bars / drinking establishments or even just want to order a beer.
The United States (from my perception) seems to have far more establishments serving alcohol, whose policy is to ask identification for everyone (or if not everyone, a ridiculously over-heavy subsection of their clients, eg "we check ID for anyone under 35"). Probably for CYA reasons.
I don't ever recall any place in Europe asking for ID when buying a beer over in there (even when I visited when I was in my mid 20s). Whereas, I still occasionally get asked for ID in the United States in spite of being over 40.
Most places in the US will criminally charge the server for selling alcohol to a minor. In my jurisdiction it is a misdemeanor with a $5000 fine for a first offense. Police regularly conduct "sting" operations to catch minimum wage store clerks. The business might also face a penalty but the primary punishment falls on the clerk/server/bartender.
In Greece, we don't check IDs for alcohol use (in practice. I think we're supposed to be doing it, nowadays). There are also no on-premises laws for alcohol. I think that's mostly because the culture is different, as people don't generally drink to get drunk like in other countries. You won't see the round-after-round drinking that you see in the UK or US, people will generally buy one or two drinks, and will rarely get drunk unless it's a big night out (or if they're reckless kids).
Definitely, but you could say the same about many behaviours that aren't currently being age-restricted. Even drunk kids will just have a bad next morning, rather than go out and cause larger-scale problems like vandalism (although plenty do that sober).
Self driving cars should probably fix this someday. All other cars should have mandatory ignition interlocks for breathalyzing.
Someone should invent an bluetooth-connected breathalyzer which at least annoyingly beeps when you drive until you pass. It worked for seatbelts! Kids used to not wear then until the beeping made it more annoying to not do it. Annoyance is a big motivator.
You got downvoted, but I agree with your comment. I disagree with the reasoning of "if you let kids drink, they'll definitely drive afterwards!", but I agree with stronger drunk driving enforcement.
As long as the breathalyzer is only required once to start the car. I drove a car with an interlock one time and it required you to blow into the thing randomly while driving. Failure to do this correctly fast enough caused the engine to die. I felt more impaired driving under that system than I would have after 2 beers.
>In Greece, we don't check IDs for alcohol use (in practice. I think we're supposed to be doing it, nowadays). There are also no on-premises laws for alcohol.
That's not correct. The law states clearly that alcohol purchase and consumption in public are illegal for underage people [1]. It's also illegal to enter premises where alcohol is served, without being escorted by an adult.
Unfortunately the problem with Greece is not the lack of laws, it's enforcing them
I'm not convinced it's reasonable to call it a problem. Prohibitionists have done little good, particularly when it comes to lighter drugs, such as alcohol or marijuana.
It's not as big a problem as in northern Europe (alcoholism), but it's still a problem. Alcohol has claimed significantly more victims than all hard drugs combined. I agree prohibition is not the answer, only a change of culture will deter you from e.g. driving when you're drunk. But taking the drunk drivers off the streets or shutting down premises that systematically serve alcohol to kids, is not a bad idea
The farther away from the root cause something is, the less I can get behind it. For example, I'm against banning underage drinking, but I'm for educating teenagers about knowing their limits.
Drunk driving is something that's already illegal (obviously), and the bac threshold is quite low here, although I do wish it was (much) more stringently enforced.
> the problem with Greece is not the lack of laws, it's enforcing them
Hey, you don't have to tell me, I'm still waiting for smoke-free bars. Underage drinking is enforced even less than that, but it's a much less widespread problem.
The lack of "on-premises" laws is especially of little concern, as we very rarely get public disturbances because of drunk people.
Smoke free bars? How about smoke-free restaurants first :)
To be fair though I'm witnessing a shift the last few years, at least in restaurants/tavernas/fast-food joints. You can more easily find places to eat these days where smoking inside is not allowed.
Yeah, over here in Thessaloniki we have smoke-free places which I try to support by frequenting. I guess we know the answer to the question "how much of your population needs to do something before it becomes unenforceable?". It's 30%, the percentage of adult smokers in Greece.
Pardon my ignorance, but why drink if not to get 'drunk'? Alcohol doesn't taste very nice, so the only advantage I get out of it is that I feel more of a 'buzz'. Is it common just to drink as if it were something that tastes nice, like juice?
The way he phrased it was a definitive statement, which is aggressive and will prime people to respond the way people responded. (Your other post, which I replied to, was way more reasonable than his was.)
I like beer. And if I could have non-alcoholic beer that tasted as well as standard beer I'd prefer that. (IMO todays alternatives still taste very different.)
I stopped drinking 2 years ago. I never crave the high from alcohol anymore, but every once in a while I get a strong craving for a nice tall glass of beer.
Beer takes a bit to develop a taste for, but it's pretty much sugar water and it goes so perfectly with so many dishes.
I'm tempted to pick up a non-alcoholic beer like O'Douls, but I don't want to start drinking again and I figure drinking non-alcoholic drinks is a step in that direction for me (I'm not a recovering alcoholic, I quit because it was getting in the way of my health/fitness goals).
You probably haven't found the right alcohol that agrees with you. Wine, beer, spirits (whether alone or in a mixer) have myriad tastes and flavor profiles. Saying alcohol doesn't taste nice is a bit like saying "I could never be a vegetarian because all the foods taste the same."
Not judging you BTW. In the long run not drinking is probably healthier than drinking. Certainly the case if one struggles to control the quantity of drinking.
I think it's too bad that you got downvoted for asking a reasonable question. I don't like the taste of alcohol at all either, and I never drink because of that, but yes, I do think that most people acquire the taste. My girlfriend, for example, both likes the taste of wine and the "happiness" she gets after two glasses.
For me it wasn't "acquiring a taste"--it was finding the taste that I like. I tried a lot of stuff and thought most of it was crap. Beer tastes foul to me (all of it, from Coors to IPAs and everything in between), as do most liquors (gin, vodka) and while Scotches are drinkable I find a lot of them are the IPAs of liquor ("duuuude, it's so smoky"/"duuuuude, it's so hoppy")--but I happened to find that I really like Irish whiskeys. I'll drink Jameson or Bushmill's neat or a little ginger ale and it's great. Been drinking them for most of a decade now. Still don't like the others I mentioned.
There may totally be nothing that fits your flavor profile, but I wouldn't write it off totally as an acquired taste. Might just not have found what clicks for you.
That's entirely possible, but I don't think it's worth it enough to even look. I think being drunk is a waste of time, and there are health concerns in overdoing it, so I've never found enough motivation to look for an alcoholic drink I might enjoy.
I also actually think that it's the taste of the actual alcohol that I don't like, because I can't even have food if it has a little bit of liqueur in it or whatever. The taste sticks out greatly.
I can buy that. I totally know people for whom the taste totally sticks. I've found some success in cadging together something that (without being a sugar bomb) often can appeal, but it's a tough thing.
There is a difference between a "buzz" and vomiting in the street. The argument I've seen is that by not giving teens an outlet with lower concentrations (eg beer, wine) from a younger age (16, like Europe), the USA doesn't let its youth learn to manage alcohol consumption in a healthy way; this results in more crazy behaviour and poisoning cases.
Many people do enjoy the taste. This is why nonalcoholic beer and wine exist.
Also, my understanding of the word drunk is that it means "very or extremely intoxicated." Even if you hated the taste of alcohol you could still put up with the taste and have a small amount to feel slightly intoxicated and still not be drunk.
Just FYI, a handful of states have 19 or 21 as the age to buy tobacco, and while I think you're right about the age to gamble being 18 in most states, most casinos require you to be 21 – at least from my anecdotal experience.
This doesn't change your overall point about fake IDs, but it does support the idea that America has a bizarre set of age limits around "sinful" behaviors.
18 year olds can only gamble a bit: Some states have the ages set at 21, and I guess if the casino serves alcohol on the gambling floor, they must be 21 to go there. They can buy lottery tickets. I'm not sure how things like betting on horse races works, though.
And it doesn't, but it can be slightly harder for a 16-17 year old to get a fake ID without alerting their parents.
> I'm not sure how things like betting on horse races works, though.
You need to be 18 in most of the states where it's legal, 21 in a handful and 19 in Alabama. I've never seen anyone carding at a racetrack, but then most of the people at a racetrack are 40+
I think a big part of the problem is that America is very large and very car focused. If you can reasonably walk to where you're drinking (or more importantly, walk home from there), then you're less likely to drive drunk. Many bars in America essentially require driving to and from.
This doesn't make any sense. Doesn't matter your age if you have to drive to/from the bar and drink driving is illegal, what difference does being 18 or 21 make?
> https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa... "Among drivers with BAC levels of 0.08% or higher involved in fatal crashes in 2014, three out of every 10 were between 21 and 24 years of age (30%). The next two largest groups were ages 25 to 34 (29%) and 35 to 44 (24%)."
It's not unreasonable to assume the 18-20 age group would be a similarly high percent as the 21-24 currently is, if it were legal for them to be drinking.
And that is why your insurance gets significantly cheaper when you turn 25.
And no it's not unreasonable at all to assume that. I am frightened enough as it is by drivers under 25, heck some of that is thinking back to 18, 20, 23 year old me driving.
By the same token it's not unreasonable to assume if the drinking age were 18, the 21-24 group would see fewer alcohol-involved fatal crashes. What makes the most sense to me would be to lower the drinking age to 16 or so and raise the driving age to 18.
It's much higher, actually. There's data on it from the 70's and 80's which is the biggest reason the laws were changed. If I remember correctly, yearly drunk driving fatalities quickly went down 60%.
Weird that it is the drinking they regulate more, where usually injuries are done to your own person and not the driving where you are in charge of a serious amount of metal capable of injuring or killing others. 16 year olds make stupid decisions with or without alcohol.
That's not really a relevant question. The problem is that the "neighborhoods" are too large for there to be a location that's walkable for enough people.
In college students will a mile or several to/from parties or over the course of a night party hopping. Not walking everywhere is more of a social norms issue. In college towns you see many more non-students walking everywhere. People expect people to walk everywhere in college towns and consequently you don't get bothered by the cops for walking around after a reasonable hour unless you're doing something stupid.
In small cities and towns where walking everywhere isn't the social norm nobody does it because walking home from the bar at 2am is likely to get you bothered by the cops because it's not typical.
That would be like surfing without fear of sharks. If we are going to give alcohol to people, if we are going to allow them to surf, then we must acknowledge that drunk people sometimes do stupid things. Like shark encounters, sometimes those stupid things get people hurt. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims, but if we are going to allow people to drink we must acknowledge associated risks. Young drunk girls should not walk home at night. No daughter's father would say otherwise.
I think the car-orientation of the US would greatly benefit from a European-style approach to teaching kids about alcohol.
I lived in Germany for a year as an exchange student when I was 16, the age at which kids can drink without a parent present. They can't get a license until 18. The vast bulk of kids there, in my experience, seemed to figure out sane drinking well before they got behind the wheel.
Coming back to the US and going to college, I watched kids drinking at 18-19 and driving, because they were inexperienced with alcohol, and in a culture that tends to encourage binge drinking.
It'll never happen; the US simply seems culturally incapable of healthy approaches to easing kids through becoming adults on a number of dimensions.
The worst part is that teaching kids about alcohol safely at home, European style, is ILLEGAL in much of the US, meaning that social services might come take your kids if they discover you gave them a glass of wine at Christmas.
I grew up in Europe. I was planning on letting my kid try a small glass of wine with food in their early teens. But doing so in the US, I actually risk jail and loss of parental custody. Let that sink in...
The US has a really unhealthy attitude towards alcohol that results in binge drinking and excess in college, and society here almost prefers it that way which is depressing.
PS - I know many parents ignore these laws, but the point remains, the law makes no exception for parental consent or at home.
It boggles my mind that outside my small social bubble, people around my age (23) spend their whole weekends drunk. I'm not out to stop them and I accept their choices, but I wonder if it's also a result of our alcohol culture. Most people can't seem to enjoy just one or two beers.
> Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol beverages on licensed premises?
> Yes. Persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed premise may choose to prohibit consumption and possession of alcohol beverages by underage persons.
This site has a good summary[0] of Wisconsin, and in general I think Wisconsin's drinking laws are very sane.
But contrast it with Utah[1], Arizona[2], Kansas[3], North Dakota[4], Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania or Vermont.
Yeah, seriously...on a ski trip with my father in Vermont when I was a high schooler, I could not even CARRY A BAG with beer in it between the store and the car.
I think you've oversimplified the legal situation here. Many states' laws do allow parents to give their children alcohol, but they may also allow the parents' practices in this regard to be considered as a factor in finding that they are unfit parents, which is a determination that should be made by a formal hearing, considering various evidence.
This may seem kind of bizarre, and perhaps the criteria in many states need to be made clearer and more objective, but it's not an inconsistent position. In many contexts the law allows parents to expose their kids to different kinds of risks, but if the overall amount of risk is considered too high, then the parents' fitness may be questioned. In the alcohol context, a judge might consider that letting children drink at meals in their parents' presence was not unfit parenting, but knowingly allowing the children to drink every day without any supervision was.
The state I'm currently in has no such exception. It is illegal for both the parent to supply and the child to consume alcohol at home. Both can be arrested.
Whenever I've gone to a beer hall in Germany the only super drunk people were American college students. It's really a shame, and you are absolutely right: We Americans are going the wrong way with this (and have been for decades).
My middle son turned 21 (legal drinking age here in the US) a couple of weeks ago. He never drank at all as a "kid." You couldn't give him a glass of wine at a holiday dinner, or a beer to watch a ball game or anything. Neither myself nor his mother were a part of his birthday celebration. I was honestly quite worried that he would be out with friends and have his first experience go horribly wrong. He has no idea how it will affect him. (Thankfully all turned out ok).
When I visited Germany on a 1 month exchange, it seemed like it was the 10th graders that were doing stupid things around drinking, but of course none of them were even close to being the age at which they would have a car. Whereas in the US, I got my learners permit in 10th grade, and was driving myself to school in 11th (it saved about 30 minutes versus taking the bus).
When I was 14 years old I engaged a vocational school maintained by the Brazilian national railroad company.
There I learned a lot of metal working including welding and operating lathes. Spent 3 years there and ended up as a certified maintenance electrician for diesel-electric locomotives (never worked in railroads after that but several skills were useful both at professional and hobby situations).
Now the laws are more aligned with the USA and that school is closed. Such laws are said to be more "protective" as if teenagers are incapable of handling sharp tools. Brazil wastes no opportunity to dumb down.
7th grade shop class (ca. 1978) we were using drills, jigsaws, soldering irons, etc. We weren't allow to use the table saw but hand-held power tools were fine.
I don't think they even have shop in middle schools anymore.
This. MADD really is fighting the wrong battle and should be a lobby for real mass transit in most major US cities. The idea that America is "too spread out" is a terrible myth.
Every America city I've lived it use to have amazing tram systems. They're all gone now; killed by the desire of Ford and GM to see us a car future. There is an amazing amount of advertising that trained Americans to love their cars and consider buses as the means of transport for the poor.
More walkable spaces and better community transport; removing the necessity for a car, would greatly reduce the amount of drunk driving more than fines/jail-time/campaigns. It's insane that the US drinking age is still 21 when so many of other countries, from most of Europe to Australia to Canada to Singapore, all have 18 as their drinking age.
I've lived in big and small cities and I am a strong proponent of good public transit, however, other than in big cities that have terrible parking and even worse traffic, cars really are more efficient to get around (except if you want to drink, I don't get drunk much anymore so this isn't a big issue). With cars you can easily go multiple places, close or far, you can transport kids, pets, sick and elderly people with minimal effort.
Obviously for many situations in big cities everyone can't just drive a car or you end up with terrible grid lock. Traffic problems now suggest that keeping the old trams around would probably have been better but around the time they got rid of them cars may have been truly more efficient and people lacked the foresight to save the public transit.
No, it actually really is too spread out. My hometown of St. Louis once had an extensive streetcar network, that much is true; but you're missing a key point: that network was almost entirely within the 66 square miles of the original St. Louis City limits.
The region is now spread far, far beyond those original borders. Only about 300k of the 2.8 million residents of greater St. Louis currently live within those limits.
The historic streetcar network cannot be replicated today precisely because, yes, we are too spread out.
This is really short sighted. If that original tram network was kept in place and upgraded, then money could have been spent on suburban rail networks.
Excellent examples: Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia. In fact, Adelaide is pretty spread out and suburban, but it still has a nicely laid out (if a bit dated) train network). Melbourne didn't ditch their trams and now have the largest network in the world (and they still have tons of suburbs with regional V-Lines reaching almost all of them).
If the tram networks hadn't been removed, we would have seen different priorities. Also, just because it's gone now, doesn't mean we shouldn't start fixing it. The amazing thing is when you do lay out rail, people tend to start building around them; including stores and housing. They have a an incredible impact on commerce simply by being laid down. There is a psychological impact of seeing the rails and seeing the trams pass at constant intervals that changes the way people think about transport.
This is really short sighted. If that original tram network was kept in place and upgraded, then money could have been spent on suburban rail networks.
I'm passionately in favor of your counterfactual. If we hadn't allowed so much low-density development, if we'd have kept and extended the streetcar lines, if we hadn't invested so much in automobile infrastructure, then we'd be in a much better position today.
But now we're faced with a confluence of factors that make getting to that counterfactual really, really hard. Those factors, collectively, are what I'm referring to when I say we're too "spread out."
"Spread out" isn't just about distance; it's about population size over a given area. It's about density, in other words.
Exactly like the sibling poster showed, there are multiple examples of this not being the case.
Melbourne has 4.6M people in 3800 sq mi.
It has a tram/light rail network of over 160 miles of track on 24 separate routes, and nearly two thousand tram stops. It runs a network of nearly 500 trams, and carries 200 million passengers a year.
To give scale to that map, the radius of those routes (you can see something of a circle around the downtown area) from the city center averages about 15 miles (East Malvern, Box Hill, etc), and stretches near 25 miles at points.
Using your St Louis example and recognizing that certainly, not all of the Melbourne urban area is serviced by light rail, well over 700 sq mi is 'very well served'.
I'm not convinced this would be worthwhile in the St. Louis suburbs as they exist today. For one, low population densities naturally diminish the value proposition of rail. But, second, the existing auto infrastructure is so good that people would likely still choose to drive.
Yes, I agree that we should strive for higher population densities and that we shouldn't have invested so much in automobile infrastructure, but given that this is where we are, people will make rational decisions.
That's what I mean when I say that we're already too "spread out."
By the way, on the off chance anyone's interested, here's a map of those original streetcar lines:
And Americans kinda overreact when there's a tradegy like a drunk driving accident.
And America believes they can solve complex proplems with ham fisted laws, like .08 percent for Everyone. (We all know that person who has one drink and is a mess.)
And America gets very used to the extra fees/grants to local agencies brought in by DUI fear/arrests.
Texas is the only state I know of that takes a person's susceptibility/tolerance to alcohol in effect when prosecuting a DUI.
This .08 for everyone is not the way. I would rather the state, federal government take some of those taxes they slap on alcohol purchases, and put it towards testing individuals when a driver's licence is renewed. People would have diifferent percentages printed right on the drivers licence. Mixing medications would invalidate that number. You could test the individuals at a remote location? "You want to drive, and drink--lets take a test?"
We all know there's people who shouldn't be driving after one drink.
I know there's people, like my decised father, who was a maintance drinker, that could safely drive after more than a few drinks.
I'll get a lot of downvotes, but I'm tired of getting pulled over by cops looking for a marginal DUI.
I'm tired of them looking into bars, and following patrons home, just hoping to make a bust.
I'm tired of cops thing everyone drinks to excess like they do on their days off. Yes--many do drink heavily, and "the flash of the badge" is still alive and well in America. Did you ever wonder when the profession with the highest rates of alcoholism never seems to get DUI's?
You are in America too, adult enough to marry, adult enough to join the army and die for your country, adult enough to drive, smoke cigarettes (and weed in some states), have sex (gay sex too) but not old enough to drink alcohol.
Many states have a provision allowing minors to consume alcohol provided by parents/guardians, but good luck getting a bar to serve to a minor, even if the parent is there.
No bar owner wants to deal with nitpicking from law enforcement over whether or not the person with the minor was actually their parent or guardian, and serving someone that is obviously a minor is a big enough cultural taboo in the US that few if any business owners/managers are willing to do it.
One would've thought that maybe a place which stuck it's neck out and became known as 'the place to drink under 21' would get a lot of business, but I guess that could also be a potential PR disaster
That and religious ceremony are the only two common ones I'm aware of.
Anything else and it can be used to throw the book at you in a lot of ways.
I had a friend kicked out of our high school graduation because a teacher disliked him, convinced an officer to breathalyze him, and he blew a ~.02 if I'm remembering correctly. He'd had a beer with his parents at dinner before the ceremony, but by the time that was all sorted it was well after the ceremony had ended. Kid didn't walk the stage at his own graduation because of a power hungry teacher and a (legal) beer his parents gave him.
In most states in the US having any alcohol at all in your system or being in possession of it is very much a crime and the burden of proof is on you that it was consumed legally.
Purchase and consume in all but a very narrow set of circumstances, the same (or similar) ones that apply most places, i.e in the home, with your parents.
The person you're replying to isn't talking about minors. The age of majority in every state in the US is 18 with the exceptions of Nebraska and Alabama where it is 19.
The activities listed - getting married, serving in the military, etc. are related to no longer being a minor. It is completely ridiculous that people who are not minors are barred from purchasing alcohol.
>The mass use of fake IDs of this sort is a bizarrely American problem. In the UK, you're considered an adult at age 18. Most (aside from the unfortunate 17-year-olds) university students can legally purchase alcohol, smoke, or gamble if they so choose.
In the late 90s, when I was 16-17 and doing my A levels in the South East, plenty of people had fake "Prove It" cards and the like.
If you wanted to grab a drink at anything but the most desperate of pubs or go out in e.g. Brighton, you didn't have a hope unless you could prove your age.
Funnily enough, I knew plenty of 18 and 19 year olds that also used fake IDs, just because getting a more legitimate form of ID was a bigger pain than they could be bothered with - and taking your passport out seemed a bit over the top.
I dunno, maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd?
That's one thing the scrapped national ID Card scheme may have helped with.
A lot of teens aren't learning to drive in the UK anymore due to the high cost and quality of public transport in cities. So they by extension don't get a driving license until well into their 20s (if at all). So their choice was either, as you said, take out your passport (dangerous/impractical) or use a fake ID.
That's why they had to create the PASS scheme (Proof of Age Standards Scheme)[0][1]. In essence it is a non-driving licence/non-national ID card, card which only exists to prove your age. It costs £15, but that's still cheap relative to getting a driving licence (inc. test/cost to learn £200+) or replacing a lost passport (£72.50).
Most(?) US states have an "ID" card option you can get instead of a driver's license. It's official proof of age etc. but does not confer any driving privileges, and it's a bit less expensive. No need for the Feds to have to manage this.
> I dunno, maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd?
You and me both. I remember going out "in town" drinking and watching live bands from the age of 14, fake ID in hand. Pretty much all of my friends had them. Good times.
The craziest part of it in the US, to me, is that everyone involved knows it's BS.
Most vendors/bouncers in a college town are going to know the kid handing them a florida ID thousands of miles away from florida is almost certainly a fake - the fakes being produced by IDGod and most of the other college vendors are pretty terrible. They don't care though, it's enough to keep them from being fined/losing an alcohol license should police become involved. Hell, most of the local police departments in college towns are relatively unconcerned about underage drinking unless they can use it as a way to shut down other behavior they deem an issue. Most parents in the US are fine with their college students drinking as well.
The optimist in me thinks our insane drinking laws are the next to fall after widespread legalization of cannabis, but unfortunately most of the influential people in politics are so far removed from that period of life that they're apathetic towards it being an issue.
The better question is among those who plan to drink in the US, who actually waited to be 21 to drink? I don't know anyone.
In the last 5 years or such, that lax attitude towards IDs has changed.
Police departments in large cities, are asking bar owners to use the ID "verification" machines to check IDs at the door. And in some cases, that ask is making its way into the state's alcohol control departments' policies.
I put verification in quotes, because while these machines verify the data on your ID, what they actually do is record the magstripe data for later downloading.
That data can then be downloaded by for CRM purposes, or likely by your PD after a crime, to gain a list of potential suspects and/or witnesses.
Compared to what? I've seen much simpler driver's licenses from other countries. Up until recently (2013 maybe) the French driver's license was literally a piece of pink paper with a picture glued to it.
That looks similar to many of the new US state IDs due to increased security requirements of REAL ID. My Washington, DC license has a holograms and a neat translucent panel where you can see my photo if you hold it up to the light. I would guess it is very hard to fake.
France probably has a proper ID card and doesn't have to use the driver's license as ID. So the driver's license is just that and since whenever you're stopped by police while driving they can verify you actually having one duplication isn't a real risk.
Drivers licences are issued by the states, so the quality of licences vary. Each state comes up with their own implementation, which can be as secure as they see fit. If you have any friends from Pennsylvania and Minnesota you should ask to compare their licences; only one should seem difficult to reproduce.
There really is no national minimum on the security of a drivers license. Since a drivers license can be used to board a domestic flight, there is something called the REAL ID Act that attempts to set a federal standard for state issued licenses. But other than that the states are mostly on their own with regards to implementation.
Don't the REAL ID requirements make this much less true than it used to be? A lot of states are catching up now due to the consequences of not doing so.
About 5 years ago I went to a getaway-type bachelor party. Along with us were the groom's future brother-in-law and two state police officers (friends of the groom, it wasn't that exciting a trip). At one point in the night, the brother-in-law (18) hands his fake ID over to the cops, they both stare at it and go, "Nope, no way I could tell that was fake."
Ever since I've been waiting for the US to suck it up and drop the drinking age back to 18, highway funds be damned.
A friend of mine from the University of Texas was arrested by Federal Agents while eating dinner in the cafeteria at Jester dormitory. He had purchased a card printing machine, a hologram printer, a blue portrait backdrop, etc. and set up shop in his dorm room. He made quite a bit of money before the law caught up to him and, despite being older and wiser, still has that felony charge hanging over him. A disgruntled customer who was turned away from a bar on 6th Street snitched. Nevermind that this kid looked 15 and it wasn't the ID that sold out his true age.
I am confident that these shipments from IDGod are being tracked and recorded, and a bust of the customers and/or IDGod is in the works.
Lesson #1: Stick with your ideal customers because a customer who isn't a good fit for your product will inevitably experience problems and decide to blame you for it. This is why a refund policy makes sense but even that could be avoided by sticking to rule #1.
> in my case, hidden inside a box of red chopsticks. Though I reflexively tossed the utensils out with a glut of election mailers and Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, I soon realized they just might contain what I’d been waiting over two months for.
This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?
"This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?"
Actually, every two months or so we will receive an amazon package with some item that we never ordered and is not in our purchase queue, etc. Something we never even looked at.
I used to think this was just a mistaken fulfillment, etc., but now I think it's intentional. I think vendors are mining purchase history to determine likely new customers for item X and then sending a "mistaken" shipment to introduce the product.
If you don't already know, you should be really careful about this. It's something which scammers do once they've got hold of your card; websites often require you to purchase something shipped to the billing address already on your card before changing the address.
> The options for payment were Bitcoin and Western Union; since I’m neither a Russian hacker nor a Dark Web impresario, I opted for the latter.
This is so frustrating for me to read. Western Union has its own set of problems and its users throw money away on fees, but why is cryptocurrency being thought of as a only being used by Russian Hackers and Dark Web impresarios?
Because most people who use it are in one of those groups or doing business with someone who is. It is, of course, an unfair stereotype. It's just as popular among Chinese hackers.
Because they accept it as currency when your local convenience store doesn't.
Who you can give the money too is generally a good indication of what it's used for and for better or worse bitcoin is for hording and illicit purchases.
Still cheaper than WU. A typical BTC txn fee is somewhere in the ballpark of $0.50 right now. The author of this article paid WU a txn fee of $14 if I'm reading it right.
Several of my friends are college bartenders who check these IDs regularly. Most fakes are easy to spot but its generally more of a hassle to actually bounce someone then let them get by. If a bar gets any heat, like a higher percentage of incidents outside in a given month, they'll step up their rejections. Attractive people, and specifically attractive women, are let in much more often.
Interesting that they mention Boston - along with NC it's the only place where my green card has been refused as an acceptable form of ID. I have no idea why a federally issued photo ID with my name, DoB and photo on it apparently isn't enough to prove my age.
As a Brit, it amuses me that there are apparently so many balding 20 year olds with grey beards in the US that I am suspicious.
They also don't seem to like my SO's GA driver's license in Boston.
Edit - I should add that the second time we went back to the place which wouldn't take my green card as ID they didn't ID us at all
Boston is the real deal when it comes to ID crackdowns. About 150k college students so some tens of thousands of fake IDs, plus a history of blue laws. I believe that legally they are even allowed to refuse legitimate out-of-state US drivers' licenses (most places do not do this, but they can). Foreign passports also can be refused. And that's not even counting the notorious "box scanners" which, to my knowledge, are yet to be beaten reliably with a fake...
Good to know - I've yet to have my passport refused anywhere, but it's annoying to have to carry it around, let alone potentially lose it on a night out
A document that permits someone to enter the country isn't acceptable to prove their age. Wacky.
Meanwhile in the UK I have had many places accept my expired US license from a rural state most have not even heard of. Once at a supermarket, a cashier asked me for ID and I absent mindedly said "No thanks". He was satisfied with that answer, and I didn't realize what I had said until I had already left with my drinks in hand.
If you're 16+ you can drink beer, wine or cider with your meal if it's bought by an adult. And in that scenario it would be rare to be asked to prove you aren't 15
I remember one year we ended up driving to NH to fill the trunk - due to the day that Xmas fell on nowhere in MA was allowed to sell booze, even though it was a regular business day
Charlotte North Carolina is adjacent to the South Carolina state line, where the alcohol taxes are lower. A few years ago, the NC Alcohol Beverage Control Commission sent an officer to sit in the parking lot of one of the beer & wine stores located just across the border. He would radio the vehicle license plates to his buddies waiting along Interstate 77, who would pull the cars over and charge the driver with bootlegging (still a crime, even in the 21st century).
The South Carolina highway patrol took great offense to this and sent several officers to the store and explained to the NC ABC officer that he was out of his jurisdiction and would he kindly go home and not come back.
All Star Liquor Express on I-5 just south of the Oregon border to California.
There's nothing there. In fact the exit says "No Services" and indeed there's none.
But there is a big liquor store, that also has a sign on the front door saying "We will not knowingly sell to retail customers" (I'd estimate that 99% of their customers are retail, buying their liquor for about 2/3 the price of Oregon liquor prices, or coming up on half of the Washington price).
You're also not protected from liability if you accept a MA non-driver ID. There is a separate liquor license which is acceptable but it's not acceptable for most of the things you'd want ID for so I don't think most people have them.
Friends and I went to a store once in California. Their sticker on the counter - YOU MUST BE BORN BEFORE [DATE] - was out of date. The clerk couldn't do the math or accept that the sticker was out of date. That was a bizarre experience.
So many interesting threads to discuss on this matter.
The problem in the US is too many people hate that others have freedom--hence the MADD group's desire to remove any semblance of fun in order to make everyone else as miserable as they are.
The US drinking age, if there should be one at all, should revert to 18 and the ID problem would pretty much disappear.
I can't describe all the ways that people have become emotionally and socially stunted simply because we have too many laws making typical, normal human behavior illegal in order so that some company can earn higher profits (think lawyers, think insurance industry). They've ruined our way of life and we need it back. We are a nation in hiding, ducking too many laws, too many cops, and too many restrictions. I'm not saying people should be free to drink and drive, but I am saying that all the laws limiting behavior have had tremendous negative consequences.
On to the lowly driver's license. Once upon a time, possessing one demonstrated that one could competently operate a motor vehicle. No more. Today, most "driver's" can't drive worth a damn, and the "license" they hold is an over-regulated, poorly implemented national identity card that you must have in order to get on a flight or enter certain Federal facilities. It's utterly stupid. Identity cards in general are dumb and over-wrought contrivances that are mostly totalitarian in nature "your papers please"--how soon we forget. And now we have RealID, which is even worse, and soon there will be a massive data breach of all that RealID information the feds are hanging on to with all the attendant negative consequences for the people who willingly surrendered themselves to big government.
That there exists a thriving illegal Id industry in the 21st century makes me happy because it means the trap of tyranny isn't completed shut--there is still resistance, still a means of escape.
People, Americans especially, and HN readers most notably, need to forego their fears and re-learn what it means to be free again. Free doesn't mean "subject to incalculable bureaucratic restrictions on one's life." Quite the contrary. Be free, resist the bullshit!
The other, related matter that irks me is the background check. Never was there are more worthless, false sense of security than the background check. But that is a matter for another day.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadOr are they cloning existing IDs, and the buyer doesn't get a choice in the name?
I scanned the 2-D barcode on my license using a generic barcode reader on my phone, and it's a PDF417 barcode that contains all the information that's printed on my id (number, name, address, license type, physical descriptors, dates, organ donor) as well as a few other fields (revision number of the card format, and an inventory control number that looks like the concatenation of the DL number, state name, license type, and some other fields)
How do you prove someone once showed you a fake ID? Well, back in the $1 per shot polaroid / kodak instamatic era, you didn't. So the fake ID owner got away with it and bar owner got punished, which is the only reason bars cared about carefully checking fake IDs.
Now with a machine the bar has a fighting chance in court, the police verbally claim the bar served an underage patron, and the police provide a person residing in the city who is underage, but there is nothing in common between those two people, your honor here is a copy of the patron's license clearly showing he's 22 at that time and there's no legal record of my patron ever having been charged with a fake ID infraction and my patron is not the same person as the supposed police witness, so, your honor I request you dismiss the case K thx bye.
There is also the 3rd party to blame, if a bouncer knows some punk who gets drunk and starts fights, oh so sorry your ID failed the scan, now go away. "No point arguing with me, buddy, you need a better fake ID, yell at the guy who sold it to you".
I've seen people get let in using the worst fake IDs I've ever seen and I've seen people rejected using real IDs. It all depends on the bouncer's experience and how much the bar owner cares about not letting in underaged people.
Prices have dropped in the past 10 years which I assume means increased competition. It would be interesting to hear how that has affected the business. I'm also curious about the techniques they use. When I was selling IDs 13 years ago it was teslin, PVC card printers, and Alps printers. I assume the Alps printers are no longer used since they went out of production in 2003 or 2004.
A lot of IDs are still fairly easy to replicate. The hardest thing is a real hologram which most IDs don't have.
The back side was typically just text, so we could photocopy that. Insert the photo, and find a high end laminating machine. Oh, and fake a neighboring state ID so it's less critical to have it perfect.
Growing up, my "fake" ID was my passport. When I applied for it, they read my birth year wrong (I guess my 7 wasn't too legible and they thought it was a 2). I could barely pass for my own age, let alone 5 years older, but it worked most of the time.
All my friends ended up using the flaw that I'd inadvertently exposed when their fakes got confiscated. It was just cheaper and more reliable to use an actual government-issued ID.
But we don't have MADD, I guess.
A gun dealer with an FFL has a license to do interstate commerce in firearms and is subject to federal regulations on the subject. A private sale is governed by state law.
Also, under 18s probably still want to be served. I was 14 when I first tried to get served in a bar (barman sold a 16yo the drinks, then came and confiscated them; canny barman).
Likewise with the violence you'll see in the media. Most of America is safe and people aren't walking around waiting to shoot someone.
It would be like saying you won't visit any of the great European cities due to terrorism concerns. The perceived risk is much greater than the actual tiny risk.
My most recent travel to Europe took me through Madrid and Copenhagen on the way to London - I recall seeing everyone (EU residents and non EU residents) waiting in line to clear immigration into the UK. On those same trips I also flew through France and Germany - those were all like domestic US flights without any additional screening but the UK definitely seemed to screen everyone. I also know multiple EU residents/family members who have had similar experiences with UK immigration being less than friendly when returning from the US.
Google also suggests that many EU countries have reintroduced border checks due to security concerns - https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/border...
Passing from one state to another in the US doesn't involve any stop or screening.
It's no where near what I had to go over when I visited USA, each time after long exhausting flight - a long queue and at the end a guy that asks you stupid questions e.g. "do you have your flight back tickets with yourself?" (no, this is XXI century, I have it in an email), "how many times have you been here?" (where "here" might mean the city or the country, whichever you answer you will be wrong).
Oh, and don't say "hi" to them (trying to be polite, English is not my first language), I once did and was asked "Do we know each other?".
The 21 year drinking age is still idiotic and actively harmful.
The United States (from my perception) seems to have far more establishments serving alcohol, whose policy is to ask identification for everyone (or if not everyone, a ridiculously over-heavy subsection of their clients, eg "we check ID for anyone under 35"). Probably for CYA reasons.
I don't ever recall any place in Europe asking for ID when buying a beer over in there (even when I visited when I was in my mid 20s). Whereas, I still occasionally get asked for ID in the United States in spite of being over 40.
It's all pretty bonkers.
Why is that? Are Polish persons more grown up looking?
Which (right or wrong) is the rationalization behind restricting alcohol to those under a certain age.
Self driving cars should probably fix this someday. All other cars should have mandatory ignition interlocks for breathalyzing.
Someone should invent an bluetooth-connected breathalyzer which at least annoyingly beeps when you drive until you pass. It worked for seatbelts! Kids used to not wear then until the beeping made it more annoying to not do it. Annoyance is a big motivator.
That's not correct. The law states clearly that alcohol purchase and consumption in public are illegal for underage people [1]. It's also illegal to enter premises where alcohol is served, without being escorted by an adult. Unfortunately the problem with Greece is not the lack of laws, it's enforcing them
[1] https://www.taxheaven.gr/laws/law/index/law/213 (in greek)
Drunk driving is something that's already illegal (obviously), and the bac threshold is quite low here, although I do wish it was (much) more stringently enforced.
You can't throw law enforcement at a problem when it itself is a problem in a lot of cases.
They don't. Some people even at 20s, 30s, 40s, haven't had the necessary mental/emotional development.
Hey, you don't have to tell me, I'm still waiting for smoke-free bars. Underage drinking is enforced even less than that, but it's a much less widespread problem.
The lack of "on-premises" laws is especially of little concern, as we very rarely get public disturbances because of drunk people.
To be fair though I'm witnessing a shift the last few years, at least in restaurants/tavernas/fast-food joints. You can more easily find places to eat these days where smoking inside is not allowed.
I like beer. And if I could have non-alcoholic beer that tasted as well as standard beer I'd prefer that. (IMO todays alternatives still taste very different.)
But anyway my point still stands: I'd still drink beer if didn't get drunk. Actually I think I would drink more beer then.
Beer takes a bit to develop a taste for, but it's pretty much sugar water and it goes so perfectly with so many dishes.
I'm tempted to pick up a non-alcoholic beer like O'Douls, but I don't want to start drinking again and I figure drinking non-alcoholic drinks is a step in that direction for me (I'm not a recovering alcoholic, I quit because it was getting in the way of my health/fitness goals).
Not judging you BTW. In the long run not drinking is probably healthier than drinking. Certainly the case if one struggles to control the quantity of drinking.
There may totally be nothing that fits your flavor profile, but I wouldn't write it off totally as an acquired taste. Might just not have found what clicks for you.
I also actually think that it's the taste of the actual alcohol that I don't like, because I can't even have food if it has a little bit of liqueur in it or whatever. The taste sticks out greatly.
Also, my understanding of the word drunk is that it means "very or extremely intoxicated." Even if you hated the taste of alcohol you could still put up with the taste and have a small amount to feel slightly intoxicated and still not be drunk.
Quite a quick walk out of the pub that day.
I don't see how 18 prevents fake ids from 16 and 17 year olds though.
And 21 is the gambling age in many states in the US.
This doesn't change your overall point about fake IDs, but it does support the idea that America has a bizarre set of age limits around "sinful" behaviors.
And it doesn't, but it can be slightly harder for a 16-17 year old to get a fake ID without alerting their parents.
You need to be 18 in most of the states where it's legal, 21 in a handful and 19 in Alabama. I've never seen anyone carding at a racetrack, but then most of the people at a racetrack are 40+
The UK was perfectly fine before the maastricht treaty and will be in 2 years time.
> https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa... "Among drivers with BAC levels of 0.08% or higher involved in fatal crashes in 2014, three out of every 10 were between 21 and 24 years of age (30%). The next two largest groups were ages 25 to 34 (29%) and 35 to 44 (24%)."
It's not unreasonable to assume the 18-20 age group would be a similarly high percent as the 21-24 currently is, if it were legal for them to be drinking.
And no it's not unreasonable at all to assume that. I am frightened enough as it is by drivers under 25, heck some of that is thinking back to 18, 20, 23 year old me driving.
In small cities and towns where walking everywhere isn't the social norm nobody does it because walking home from the bar at 2am is likely to get you bothered by the cops because it's not typical.
Add in the availability of public transit, and you can basically always go to whatever bar you wish without driving.
Plenty of US cities have 24 hour bus service too.
I lived in Germany for a year as an exchange student when I was 16, the age at which kids can drink without a parent present. They can't get a license until 18. The vast bulk of kids there, in my experience, seemed to figure out sane drinking well before they got behind the wheel.
Coming back to the US and going to college, I watched kids drinking at 18-19 and driving, because they were inexperienced with alcohol, and in a culture that tends to encourage binge drinking.
It'll never happen; the US simply seems culturally incapable of healthy approaches to easing kids through becoming adults on a number of dimensions.
I couldn't agree more, and numerous problems are pretty much a direct result.
I grew up in Europe. I was planning on letting my kid try a small glass of wine with food in their early teens. But doing so in the US, I actually risk jail and loss of parental custody. Let that sink in...
The US has a really unhealthy attitude towards alcohol that results in binge drinking and excess in college, and society here almost prefers it that way which is depressing.
PS - I know many parents ignore these laws, but the point remains, the law makes no exception for parental consent or at home.
> Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol beverages on licensed premises?
> Yes. Persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed premise may choose to prohibit consumption and possession of alcohol beverages by underage persons.
https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-atundrg.aspx
But contrast it with Utah[1], Arizona[2], Kansas[3], North Dakota[4], Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania or Vermont.
[0] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...
[1] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...
[2] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...
[3] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...
[4] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...
This may seem kind of bizarre, and perhaps the criteria in many states need to be made clearer and more objective, but it's not an inconsistent position. In many contexts the law allows parents to expose their kids to different kinds of risks, but if the overall amount of risk is considered too high, then the parents' fitness may be questioned. In the alcohol context, a judge might consider that letting children drink at meals in their parents' presence was not unfit parenting, but knowingly allowing the children to drink every day without any supervision was.
This is true for several states.
My middle son turned 21 (legal drinking age here in the US) a couple of weeks ago. He never drank at all as a "kid." You couldn't give him a glass of wine at a holiday dinner, or a beer to watch a ball game or anything. Neither myself nor his mother were a part of his birthday celebration. I was honestly quite worried that he would be out with friends and have his first experience go horribly wrong. He has no idea how it will affect him. (Thankfully all turned out ok).
Unfortunately this is true and applies to a broad range of subjects.
There I learned a lot of metal working including welding and operating lathes. Spent 3 years there and ended up as a certified maintenance electrician for diesel-electric locomotives (never worked in railroads after that but several skills were useful both at professional and hobby situations).
Now the laws are more aligned with the USA and that school is closed. Such laws are said to be more "protective" as if teenagers are incapable of handling sharp tools. Brazil wastes no opportunity to dumb down.
I don't think they even have shop in middle schools anymore.
Every America city I've lived it use to have amazing tram systems. They're all gone now; killed by the desire of Ford and GM to see us a car future. There is an amazing amount of advertising that trained Americans to love their cars and consider buses as the means of transport for the poor.
More walkable spaces and better community transport; removing the necessity for a car, would greatly reduce the amount of drunk driving more than fines/jail-time/campaigns. It's insane that the US drinking age is still 21 when so many of other countries, from most of Europe to Australia to Canada to Singapore, all have 18 as their drinking age.
Obviously for many situations in big cities everyone can't just drive a car or you end up with terrible grid lock. Traffic problems now suggest that keeping the old trams around would probably have been better but around the time they got rid of them cars may have been truly more efficient and people lacked the foresight to save the public transit.
The region is now spread far, far beyond those original borders. Only about 300k of the 2.8 million residents of greater St. Louis currently live within those limits.
The historic streetcar network cannot be replicated today precisely because, yes, we are too spread out.
Excellent examples: Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia. In fact, Adelaide is pretty spread out and suburban, but it still has a nicely laid out (if a bit dated) train network). Melbourne didn't ditch their trams and now have the largest network in the world (and they still have tons of suburbs with regional V-Lines reaching almost all of them).
If the tram networks hadn't been removed, we would have seen different priorities. Also, just because it's gone now, doesn't mean we shouldn't start fixing it. The amazing thing is when you do lay out rail, people tend to start building around them; including stores and housing. They have a an incredible impact on commerce simply by being laid down. There is a psychological impact of seeing the rails and seeing the trams pass at constant intervals that changes the way people think about transport.
I'm passionately in favor of your counterfactual. If we hadn't allowed so much low-density development, if we'd have kept and extended the streetcar lines, if we hadn't invested so much in automobile infrastructure, then we'd be in a much better position today.
But now we're faced with a confluence of factors that make getting to that counterfactual really, really hard. Those factors, collectively, are what I'm referring to when I say we're too "spread out."
"Spread out" isn't just about distance; it's about population size over a given area. It's about density, in other words.
Melbourne has 4.6M people in 3800 sq mi.
It has a tram/light rail network of over 160 miles of track on 24 separate routes, and nearly two thousand tram stops. It runs a network of nearly 500 trams, and carries 200 million passengers a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Melbourne#/media/File...
To give scale to that map, the radius of those routes (you can see something of a circle around the downtown area) from the city center averages about 15 miles (East Malvern, Box Hill, etc), and stretches near 25 miles at points.
Using your St Louis example and recognizing that certainly, not all of the Melbourne urban area is serviced by light rail, well over 700 sq mi is 'very well served'.
Yes, I agree that we should strive for higher population densities and that we shouldn't have invested so much in automobile infrastructure, but given that this is where we are, people will make rational decisions.
That's what I mean when I say that we're already too "spread out."
By the way, on the off chance anyone's interested, here's a map of those original streetcar lines:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1W809wsAmB9GR3ZvyII...
And America believes they can solve complex proplems with ham fisted laws, like .08 percent for Everyone. (We all know that person who has one drink and is a mess.)
And America gets very used to the extra fees/grants to local agencies brought in by DUI fear/arrests.
Texas is the only state I know of that takes a person's susceptibility/tolerance to alcohol in effect when prosecuting a DUI.
This .08 for everyone is not the way. I would rather the state, federal government take some of those taxes they slap on alcohol purchases, and put it towards testing individuals when a driver's licence is renewed. People would have diifferent percentages printed right on the drivers licence. Mixing medications would invalidate that number. You could test the individuals at a remote location? "You want to drive, and drink--lets take a test?"
We all know there's people who shouldn't be driving after one drink.
I know there's people, like my decised father, who was a maintance drinker, that could safely drive after more than a few drinks.
I'll get a lot of downvotes, but I'm tired of getting pulled over by cops looking for a marginal DUI.
I'm tired of them looking into bars, and following patrons home, just hoping to make a bust.
I'm tired of cops thing everyone drinks to excess like they do on their days off. Yes--many do drink heavily, and "the flash of the badge" is still alive and well in America. Did you ever wonder when the profession with the highest rates of alcoholism never seems to get DUI's?
There's all sorts of situations where it is legal for minors to drink alcohol.
Like for example, when accompanied by a parent in a bar in Wisconsin.
No bar owner wants to deal with nitpicking from law enforcement over whether or not the person with the minor was actually their parent or guardian, and serving someone that is obviously a minor is a big enough cultural taboo in the US that few if any business owners/managers are willing to do it.
One would've thought that maybe a place which stuck it's neck out and became known as 'the place to drink under 21' would get a lot of business, but I guess that could also be a potential PR disaster
[0]http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
Anything else and it can be used to throw the book at you in a lot of ways.
I had a friend kicked out of our high school graduation because a teacher disliked him, convinced an officer to breathalyze him, and he blew a ~.02 if I'm remembering correctly. He'd had a beer with his parents at dinner before the ceremony, but by the time that was all sorted it was well after the ceremony had ended. Kid didn't walk the stage at his own graduation because of a power hungry teacher and a (legal) beer his parents gave him.
In most states in the US having any alcohol at all in your system or being in possession of it is very much a crime and the burden of proof is on you that it was consumed legally.
The activities listed - getting married, serving in the military, etc. are related to no longer being a minor. It is completely ridiculous that people who are not minors are barred from purchasing alcohol.
In the late 90s, when I was 16-17 and doing my A levels in the South East, plenty of people had fake "Prove It" cards and the like.
If you wanted to grab a drink at anything but the most desperate of pubs or go out in e.g. Brighton, you didn't have a hope unless you could prove your age.
Funnily enough, I knew plenty of 18 and 19 year olds that also used fake IDs, just because getting a more legitimate form of ID was a bigger pain than they could be bothered with - and taking your passport out seemed a bit over the top.
I dunno, maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd?
We knew the places which wouldn't ask, and it helped if you're tall
A lot of teens aren't learning to drive in the UK anymore due to the high cost and quality of public transport in cities. So they by extension don't get a driving license until well into their 20s (if at all). So their choice was either, as you said, take out your passport (dangerous/impractical) or use a fake ID.
That's why they had to create the PASS scheme (Proof of Age Standards Scheme)[0][1]. In essence it is a non-driving licence/non-national ID card, card which only exists to prove your age. It costs £15, but that's still cheap relative to getting a driving licence (inc. test/cost to learn £200+) or replacing a lost passport (£72.50).
It is a good scheme.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_Age_Standards_Scheme
[1] https://www.validateuk.co.uk/official-UK-ID-Card
You and me both. I remember going out "in town" drinking and watching live bands from the age of 14, fake ID in hand. Pretty much all of my friends had them. Good times.
Most vendors/bouncers in a college town are going to know the kid handing them a florida ID thousands of miles away from florida is almost certainly a fake - the fakes being produced by IDGod and most of the other college vendors are pretty terrible. They don't care though, it's enough to keep them from being fined/losing an alcohol license should police become involved. Hell, most of the local police departments in college towns are relatively unconcerned about underage drinking unless they can use it as a way to shut down other behavior they deem an issue. Most parents in the US are fine with their college students drinking as well.
The optimist in me thinks our insane drinking laws are the next to fall after widespread legalization of cannabis, but unfortunately most of the influential people in politics are so far removed from that period of life that they're apathetic towards it being an issue.
The better question is among those who plan to drink in the US, who actually waited to be 21 to drink? I don't know anyone.
In the last 5 years or such, that lax attitude towards IDs has changed.
Police departments in large cities, are asking bar owners to use the ID "verification" machines to check IDs at the door. And in some cases, that ask is making its way into the state's alcohol control departments' policies.
> http://www.idscanner.com/legal/new-york-id-scanner-law-affir...
I put verification in quotes, because while these machines verify the data on your ID, what they actually do is record the magstripe data for later downloading.
That data can then be downloaded by for CRM purposes, or likely by your PD after a crime, to gain a list of potential suspects and/or witnesses.
http://flawlessfakeids.com/wp-content/uploads/French-Fake-Dr...
In contrast to e.g. the French, our drivers licence is a valid means of identification though.
This can prove your name and age, but not your nationality.
http://diepresse.com/images/uploads/5/e/b/1299947/ansturm_sc...
p.s. your link is broken:
> The owner of this website (flawlessfakeids.com) does not allow hotlinking to that resource
There really is no national minimum on the security of a drivers license. Since a drivers license can be used to board a domestic flight, there is something called the REAL ID Act that attempts to set a federal standard for state issued licenses. But other than that the states are mostly on their own with regards to implementation.
Ever since I've been waiting for the US to suck it up and drop the drinking age back to 18, highway funds be damned.
I am confident that these shipments from IDGod are being tracked and recorded, and a bust of the customers and/or IDGod is in the works.
This is the weirdest part of the story for me. Does anyone else get boxes of chopsticks in their mail so regularly that they instinctively treat it as junk mail?
Actually, every two months or so we will receive an amazon package with some item that we never ordered and is not in our purchase queue, etc. Something we never even looked at.
I used to think this was just a mistaken fulfillment, etc., but now I think it's intentional. I think vendors are mining purchase history to determine likely new customers for item X and then sending a "mistaken" shipment to introduce the product.
I have no evidence to back up that conclusion.
This is so frustrating for me to read. Western Union has its own set of problems and its users throw money away on fees, but why is cryptocurrency being thought of as a only being used by Russian Hackers and Dark Web impresarios?
Who you can give the money too is generally a good indication of what it's used for and for better or worse bitcoin is for hording and illicit purchases.
Have you seen the transaction fees for Bitcoin lately?
As a Brit, it amuses me that there are apparently so many balding 20 year olds with grey beards in the US that I am suspicious.
They also don't seem to like my SO's GA driver's license in Boston.
Edit - I should add that the second time we went back to the place which wouldn't take my green card as ID they didn't ID us at all
A document that permits someone to enter the country isn't acceptable to prove their age. Wacky.
If you're 16+ you can drink beer, wine or cider with your meal if it's bought by an adult. And in that scenario it would be rare to be asked to prove you aren't 15
I remember one year we ended up driving to NH to fill the trunk - due to the day that Xmas fell on nowhere in MA was allowed to sell booze, even though it was a regular business day
Charlotte North Carolina is adjacent to the South Carolina state line, where the alcohol taxes are lower. A few years ago, the NC Alcohol Beverage Control Commission sent an officer to sit in the parking lot of one of the beer & wine stores located just across the border. He would radio the vehicle license plates to his buddies waiting along Interstate 77, who would pull the cars over and charge the driver with bootlegging (still a crime, even in the 21st century).
The South Carolina highway patrol took great offense to this and sent several officers to the store and explained to the NC ABC officer that he was out of his jurisdiction and would he kindly go home and not come back.
There's nothing there. In fact the exit says "No Services" and indeed there's none.
But there is a big liquor store, that also has a sign on the front door saying "We will not knowingly sell to retail customers" (I'd estimate that 99% of their customers are retail, buying their liquor for about 2/3 the price of Oregon liquor prices, or coming up on half of the Washington price).
The problem in the US is too many people hate that others have freedom--hence the MADD group's desire to remove any semblance of fun in order to make everyone else as miserable as they are.
The US drinking age, if there should be one at all, should revert to 18 and the ID problem would pretty much disappear.
I can't describe all the ways that people have become emotionally and socially stunted simply because we have too many laws making typical, normal human behavior illegal in order so that some company can earn higher profits (think lawyers, think insurance industry). They've ruined our way of life and we need it back. We are a nation in hiding, ducking too many laws, too many cops, and too many restrictions. I'm not saying people should be free to drink and drive, but I am saying that all the laws limiting behavior have had tremendous negative consequences.
On to the lowly driver's license. Once upon a time, possessing one demonstrated that one could competently operate a motor vehicle. No more. Today, most "driver's" can't drive worth a damn, and the "license" they hold is an over-regulated, poorly implemented national identity card that you must have in order to get on a flight or enter certain Federal facilities. It's utterly stupid. Identity cards in general are dumb and over-wrought contrivances that are mostly totalitarian in nature "your papers please"--how soon we forget. And now we have RealID, which is even worse, and soon there will be a massive data breach of all that RealID information the feds are hanging on to with all the attendant negative consequences for the people who willingly surrendered themselves to big government.
That there exists a thriving illegal Id industry in the 21st century makes me happy because it means the trap of tyranny isn't completed shut--there is still resistance, still a means of escape.
People, Americans especially, and HN readers most notably, need to forego their fears and re-learn what it means to be free again. Free doesn't mean "subject to incalculable bureaucratic restrictions on one's life." Quite the contrary. Be free, resist the bullshit!
The other, related matter that irks me is the background check. Never was there are more worthless, false sense of security than the background check. But that is a matter for another day.