Filter
Top Products
I
Your
Driving
and
the
Road
Drunken Driving
(CONT.)
Research shows that the driving skills of
many people are impaired at a BAC
approaching
0.05
percent, and that the
effects are worse
at
night.
All
drivers are
impaired
at
BAC levels above
0.05
percent. Statistics show that the chance of
being
in
an accident increases sharply for
drivers who have a BAC of
0.05
percent
or above.
A
driver
with
a BAC level of
0.06
percent (three beers
in
one hour for a
180-pound or
82
kg person) has doubled
his or her chance of having an accident.
At
a BAC level of 0.10 percent, the
chance
of
that driver having an accident is
six
times greater; at a level of
0.15
percent, the chances are twenty-five times
greater!
And,
the body takes about an
hour to rid itself of the alcohol
in
one
drink.
No
amount of coffee or number of
cold showers
will
speed that up.
“I’ll
be careful’’ isn’t the right answer.
What
if
there’s an emergency, a need to
take sudden action, as when a child darts
into the street?
A
person
with
a higher
BAC might not be able to react quickly
enough to avoid the collision.
There’s something else about drinking
and driving that many
people
don’t know.
Medical research shows that alcohol
in
a
person’s system can make crash injuries
worse. That’s especially true for brain,
spinal cord and heart injuries. That means
that
if
anyone who has been drinking
--
driver or passenger
--
is
in
a crash, the
chance of being killed or permanently
disabled is higher than
if
that person had
not been drinking. And we’ve already
seen that the chance of a crash itself
is
higher for drinking drivers.
Control
of
a
Vehicle
You
have three systems that make your
vehicle
go
where you want
it
to go. They
are the brakes, the steering and the
accelerator.
All
three systems have to do
their work at the places where the tires
meet the road.
Sometimes, as when you’re driving on
snow or ice, it’s easy to ask more of those
I
control systems than the tires and road-
can provide. That means you can lose
control of your vehicle.
...
108