Don’t have a bar of it!

Drink driving means driving whilst under the effects of alcohol, whether you are aware of it or not.
In the past drinking and driving was a common occurrence, and not many people worried about how they would affect other road users.  Fortunatley there has been a shift in community attitudes as people are more aware the role alcohol has played in road crashes.  The present community attitude is that drink driving is socially unacceptable behaviour and the human and financial cost is unaffordable.
A driver who has been drinking struggles to accurately judge speeds and distanced and will often fail to respond to potential dangers in the traffic environment.  The ability to cope with more than one things at a time is greatly reduced (for example, steer a course within a lane, respond to traffic signals and avoid a pedestrian who suddenly steps onto the road).
The effect alcohol can have on driving performance

• Motor ability – resulting in a reduction in the ability to judge distance and speed
• Muscle function – loss of coordination and control of fine muscle movements
• Reaction – after drinking the brain works inefficiently, taking longer to receive messages from the eye; processing information becomes more difficult and instructions to the muscles are delayed.  Alcohol can slow down reaction time to by 10 to 30 per cent.
• Vision – alcohol reduces the ability to see distant objects and night vision can be reduced by 25 per cent.  Blurred and double vision can also occur.
• Judgement/Reasoning – these are the first functions affected by alcohol.  A person’s ability to judge right from wrong, good from bad or their ability to reason is affected
• Attention – a person’s ability to concentrate on several sources of incoming information is impaired.
• Memory – the consumption of alcohol can reduce or at times prevent the storage of information within the brain.  A decreased ability has been found to occur with blood alcohol concentrations as low as 0.03%
• Emotions – for the average person the consumption of alcohol will affect our emotions
• Aggression – tends to be enhanced particularly in males when placed in a competitive scenario.