May is a popular month for getting wasted celebrating. (Then again, what month isn't? Still...) There's May Day, Cinco de Mayo (which is today), Senior Proms, graduation parties, Mother's Day, and Memorial Day weekend. So we at GearLog are officially designating May as Alcohol Safety Month.

Of course, the only way to be safe while drinking is to know your limits and not to drink and drive. But how many people really know how much they can handle before they're drunk-dialing or throwing up on the shoes of a 6-foot tall bouncer? (hehe) And how many people opt to call a cab or bring along a designated driver?

Apparently, California and Texas are the worst when it comes to drunk driving: over 1,500 traffic deaths were alcohol-related in 2004 alone (source: MADD). What's even scarier is that every 2 minutes in the U.S., someone is injured in a crash due to alcohol (source: AlcoholAlert.com).

Undoubtedly, you've heard the myths of how to get sober quickly: put a penny under your tongue, take a cold shower, drink a few cups of coffee, eat bread... (Hasn't MythBusters covered this?) But, the only sure-fire way of getting sober is to give your body time.

One objective way to determining whether you should get behind the wheel is to use a digital breathalyzer. It didn't take long here at PC Magazine for people to volunteer themselves as guinea pigs by testing one of 7 different breathalyzers. Each day next week, you'll be hearing about their different experiences with the devices and just how drunk they got. Then, we're going to round up all of the breathalyzers and test them against the big Kahuna: the FC10 breathalyzer, which is used by law enforcement. (This is why our jobs are so great: we can get drunk on company time after hours and write about it. Gotta love it.)

Look for my reviews of two breathalyzers, the AlcoHAWK Slim and the AlcoHAWK ABI later today.