Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving
is a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor
to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive
a vehicle:
Judgment
0 Muscular Coordination
Vision
0 Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving. In recent years, some
18,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the use
of alcohol, with more than 300,000 people injured.
Many adults
-- by some estimates, nearly half the
adult population
-- choose never to drink alcohol, so
they never drive after drinking. For persons under 2 1,
it’s against the law in every
U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for
these laws. The
obvious way
to solve this highway safety problem
is for people never
to drink alcohol and then drive.
But what if people do? How much is
“too much” if the
driver plans to drive?
It’s a lot less than many might
think. Although it depends
on each person and situation,
here is some general information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of someone
who
is drinking depends upon four things:
The amount of alcohol consumed
0 The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
consume the alcohol.
According
to the American Medical Association, a
180-lb. (82 kg) person who drinks three 12-ounce
(355 ml) bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a
BAC
of about 0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4-ounce (120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had 1- 1/2 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
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