(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-29 16:56

 

Paris Hilton promised to become a better person when she got out of jail. The more important issue, though, may be whether she can be a better driver.

Will the hotel heiress have the good sense to hand her keys to someone else after a night of club-hopping, or risk another stay at the gray-bar hotel?

She says she's wised up, but the intersection of Hollywood and wine (not to mention beer and booze) has long spelled trouble for celebrities who take the wheel, meaning it could be harder than even Hilton realizes to find another way home.

"They don't want to spend the money to pay for a car service because they want to be photographed in their fancy cars," veteran Hollywood media image consultant Michael Sands says of too many celebrities he's known.

What should be a no-brainer -- don't drink and drive -- becomes all but impossible for many of them, Sands says. As a result, the list of celebrity DUI scofflaws grows almost daily.

A few highlights:

-- Mel Gibson tools down Pacific Coast Highway at 87 mph with a bottle of tequila in his Lexus last year before he's pulled over. After an angry, anti-Semitic rant in which he blames Jews for all the world's wars, he's taken to jail for drunken driving.

-- Lindsay Lohan, six weeks shy of the legal drinking age, winds up in the hospital, then under arrest on suspicion of DUI and finally in rehab after crashing her Mercedes-Benz into a curb on the Sunset Strip over Memorial Day weekend.

-- Nicole Richie, 25, is charged with DUI in December after the California Highway Patrol finds her SUV parked in a freeway car pool lane with her in it. She's entered a not guilty plea.

-- Rapper-actress Eve pleads no contest to DUI after smashing her Maserati into a concrete median on Hollywood Boulevard and is sentenced to wearing a booze-detecting ankle bracelet for 45 days.

Why not pay a driver?

Observers in other parts of the country wonder why someone with more than enough money to hire a limo -- not to mention a small army of hangers-on to drive it -- would persist in getting plastered and then getting behind the wheel.

In New York, with more public transportation and less emphasis on personal cars, fewer celebrities seem to get stopped. Actor Tracy Morgan of "30 Rock" did manage to get busted for DUI in both cities, however, pleading no contest in Los Angeles last year and guilty in New York this year.

Driving drunk has less to do with Southern California's car culture and more with a mind-set, says Los Angeles behavioral psychologist Antoine Bechara. Someone who is drunk, celebrity or otherwise, has trouble realizing they shouldn't drive, he said.

"Alcohol tends to impact the area of the brain ... which has to do with judgment and decision making," Bechara said. "Usually these individuals become unaware, or they just deny, that they are drunk and not able to drive."

Add to that the self-importance and narcissism of famous people who are surrounded by entourages, says University of Southern California sociologist Julie Albright, and it can be a dangerous mix.

"Often, they're so self-absorbed that they can't think of the impact of their behavior on others," she said.

That's an attitude Chris Heltai has seen firsthand. He's the chief driver for Home James, a business that dispatches drivers on small fold-up motor scooters to clubs and bars where people have had too much to drink. The riders fold up their scooters, put them in a client's car and drive the person home.

The number of celebrities using the service is small, said Heltai.

"They just don't want to be bothered. They think it's a hassle," he said. "They feel a lack of control when they hand their car over to someone else. And to acknowledge they're too drunk to drive is another thing. No one wants to feel like a wuss."