I was going to avoid this thread, but screw it, I'll dive in. Everyone who's had to endure these terrible losses, I am truly sorry.
I've got a pretty good idea about this stuff, seeing as how I'm probably the only poster in CP history to
admit I got a DUI. Go read the thread I started if you want to know the story, I'm not going into it. And if you want to dump on me some more, go to town.
Here is my point, and why I posted the BAC calculator link: Drinking and driving happens way more often than any one of us would like to admit. If you've ever gone out to the bar, had some drinks, and driven home? You probably drove drunk.
BAC has
zero correlation to how "you feel". Your tolerance and the science of alcohol in the human body are completely separate. A teetotaler who has 2 beers may feel loaded, and a heavy drinker who has 10 may feel like they're just "buzzed". The teetotaler might only have a .03 BAC, while the heavy drinker has a .11
Now you may say "well, I've got a high metabolism" or "I don't feel it at all". This does not change much. The average person metabolises alcohol at .03 an hour. How do I know this? I had to take 24 hours of alcohol classes, and that stuff sticks with you.
Let's use a different calculator. This is the University of Oklahoma's Police Department site
http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm . I see a lot of posters say they are in good shape, I assume they are an athletic build, so lets say you're a 185 lb male. You go to happy hour after work with your buddies, we've all done that right? From 5-7, you have 3 16oz pints of Canadian 5% beer. That's again one beer every 40 minutes.
When you're done, according to this, your BAC will be close to .06. This is definitely enough to get you a ticket and enough to impair your driving. To get back to zero, you need to stay at the bar, sober, until 9pm.
I guess what I'm trying to say is be very careful what you do. Like I said, this is far more prevalent than most of us would like to admit, and I'll say I think it's far more prevalent than the poll shows. You don't have to be sloppy drunk to drive drunk.
From here:
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/inju...CWeb/page2.htm
Blood Alcohol
Concentration (BAC)1
Typical Effects
Predictable Effects on Driving
.02%
- Some loss of judgment
- Relaxation
- Slight body warmth
- Altered mood
- Decline in visual functions (rapid tracking of a moving target)
- Decline in ability to perform two tasks at the same time (divided attention)
.05%
- Exaggerated behavior
- May have loss of small-muscle control (e.g., focusing your eyes)
- Impaired judgment
- Usually good feeling
- Lowered alertness
- Release of inhibition
- Reduced coordination
- Reduced ability to track moving objects
- Difficulty steering
- Reduced response to emergency driving situations
.08%
- Muscle coordination becomes poor (e.g., balance, speech, vision, reaction time, and hearing)
- Harder to detect danger
- Judgment, self-control, reasoning, and memory are impaired
- Concentration
- Short-term memory loss
- Speed control
- Reduced information processing capability (e.g., signal detection, visual search)
- Impaired perception
.10%
- Clear deterioration of reaction time and control
- Slurred speech, poor coordination, and slowed thinking
- Reduced ability to maintain lane position and brake appropriately
.15%
- Far less muscle control than normal
- Vomiting may occur (unless this level is reached slowly or a
person has developed a tolerance
for alcohol)
- Major loss of balance
- Substantial impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary visual and auditory information processing
1 Information in this table shows the BAC level at which the effect usually is first observed, and has been gathered from a variety of sources including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the American Medical Association, the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, and
www.webMD.com.
