Drinking & driving
What is the legal limit?
The law says that it is an offence to drive with more than 80 milligrams of alcohol in every 100 millilitres of blood.
However, alcohol affects different people in different ways depending on whether they're male or female, their weight, their age, how quickly they drink, how much and how recently they have eaten, and if they have taken other drugs.
It is also important to remember:
- if you've been out drinking you might still be over the legal alcohol limit the next day
- only time will sober you up - not a cold shower, fresh air, glass of water, or strong coffee!
- if you know somebody is driving, don't offer them an alcoholic drink.
Even small amounts of alcohol can impair your driving ability so the sensible solution is:
If you have drunk any alcohol, don't drive!
How alcohol affects driving:
Alcohol reduces:
- concentration
- the chances of you reacting in time to danger
- muscle control and coordination
- clarity of vision and awareness
- ability to judge speed and distance
Even small amounts of alcohol can impair your ability to drive:
Although you may not be breaking the law, drinking as little as one unit of alcohol (i.e. half a pint of lager) can affect your ability to drive. You will be less able to judge the speed of oncoming vehicles, and their distance away from you. You may not be able to see or locate moving lights correctly and you may have a tendency to take dangerous risks, particularly in manoeuvres such as overtaking. Driving with even this amount of alcohol in your body is inadvisable.
And, if you drink larger amounts of alcohol:
In addition to breaking the law, your eyes will be unable to become accustomed to changing light conditions, and will become insensitive to red light (e.g. brake lights, traffic lights). You will begin to suffer from tunnel vision and your eye's ability to react to light and dark will be greatly impaired. Your lack of peripheral vision may cause you to collide with parked vehicles. Your perception of other cyclists, pedestrians, bollards, and other vehicles, will be affected. You will greatly overestimate your abilities and be unable to assess distances accurately. Your ability to concentrate will be severely affected, and your reaction time impaired, therefore your stopping distance in an emergency would be significantly increased. You may experience major problems operating the controls of your car. You would be a real danger to yourself and any other road users in the vicinity.
All this means you are far more likely to have an accident.
It is important to remember that drinking and driving does not only affect you. You can also cause untold damage to other people's lives.
Drinking and driving is never necessary:
- take it in turns to drive
- book a taxi
- use public transport
- stay overnight.
Contacts
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Information on this page based, with kind permission, on the following sources:
- "Alcofacts: A Guide to Sensible Drinking" produced by the Health Promotion Division, 1999
- www.roadsafetyuk.co.uk
