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How Alcohol Can Affect Safe Driving Skills
- JUDGEMENT: The ability to make sound and responsible decisions.
- Alcohol affects your mental functions first, and
judgement is the first to go,
which means reason and
caution are quickly reduced.
- Can be affected as low as .02% BAC.
- CONCENTRATION: The ability to shift attention from one point of
action to another.
- Alcohol impairs a driver's ability to concentrate on the multiple tasks involved
in driving, such as vehicle
speed, position of the vehicle, other traffic on the road,
tuning the radio, and participating in conversation with passengers.
- Leaves the driver concentrating on a singular action.
- COMPREHENSION: The ability to understand situations, signs, and
signals.
- Alcohol impairs the driver's ability to "interpret"
situations, signs,
and/or signals which a driver must understand and/or respond to quickly to be safe on
the
road.
- Leaves the driver easily confused and not able to
respond to emergency situations
or to comprehend
the meaning of simple signals (ie: running through a
stop sign).
- COORDINATION: The ability to coordinate motor skills.
- Impairs ability to coordinate motor skills, beginning
with the fine motor skills
(putting key in ignition) up
to gross motor skills (walking to the car).
- Loss of coordination severely affects reaction time
and ability to react.
- VISION & HEARING ACUITY: The ability to see and hear
clearly.
- Reduces visual acuity up to 32%.
- Reduces peripheral vision resulting in tunnel vision.
- Impairs ability to judge distance and depth perception (position of car).
- Dilates pupil, slows down reactions of pupil resulting
in problems with on-coming
headlights (glare) and
"blind" driving.
- Reduces the ear's ability to hear, muffling sounds,
and interfering with the
ability to determine the
direction of sounds.
- REACTION TIME: Ability to see and understand a situation, then
take an action.
- Severely reduced due to impairment of comprehension
and coordination in
particular.
- Slows down reaction time by 15-25%, resulting in
crashes and accidents which
could have been avoided
if no alcohol was in the system.
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