[News] Drink driving - why?

[Triggaaar]

Are you really asserting that if you have 34.9mg/100ml of alcohol in breath then, whilst legal, you are perfectly fine and as competent as someone with zero ? why does that 0.1mg suddenly render you dangerous (according to the law) ?

What a strange thing to say. Are you asserting that it's perfectly fine to drive at the speed limit and then you're suddenly dangerous if you go 1mph over it?

Nope

But you were saying that, you said the problem with allowing 1 drink is that it can lead to "one for the road".

Are you somehow better at drinking than the rest of us ?

Another weird comment. If I have a glass of wine with lunch and drive a couple of hours later I do not think my driving is impaired.

 

[Greg Bobkin]

I've every sympathy with anyone with mental health issues. I've zero sympathy with anyone using that as an excuse for drink-driving. If he uses that as an excuse then he does a disservice to everyone else with MH problems and damages all the hard work trying to get mental health problems better understood. (In my opinion)

Agree with you.....but won't be surprised if it happens...

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

Having just been onto Twatter to have a look, it seems like there are HUNDREDS of people who are using that as an excuse on his behalf...

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

As an aside, to what level can either breathalysers or the blood equipement measure to? Are they actually able to go to zero or do they have a level below which they cannot detect?

 

[Triggaaar]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1008127517301141

"To date, however, no studies with large samples evaluated the correlation between consumption of psychoactive substances and driving performance in natural settings, and although the negative impact of alcohol and illegal drugs on cognitive ability has long been recognized, their relative contribution on driving performance remains unclear"

"BAC was positively associated with RT, achieving significance, however, only when BAC was higher than 0.49 g/L"
"Importantly, the difference in reaction time between subjects with zero alcohol concentration and those with higher alcohol levels achieved significance only after the cutoff of 0.50 g/l, being highest after 1.00 g/l"

I asked you to provide evidence that even one drink impairs your ability, and you appear to have done the opposite, showing that there's no difference when alcohol levels are under 0.5 g/l.

 

[Driver8]

Thanks for that, but quotes studies with no link to the studies, so it's not easy to see the findings. I'll have a look though.

Here you go, a bit more info.

http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Low-BAC-policy.pdf

 

[Triggaaar]

Here you go, a bit more info.

http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Low-BAC-policy.pdf

It doesn't show how it's determined that small levels of alcohol affect a driver's ability?

 

[Ninja Elephant]

But why, what's your reason for lowering the limit? Are people driving dangerously due to being below the current limit?

But why? It's not dangerous.

Dangerous driving is dangerous driving. Why take an unneccessary risk? I think the argument for being "allowed" to have a few drinks and still be able to drive is similar to the gun argument in the US. It boils down to freedom of choice and ultimately, there's never going to be a consensus because some people will always want to be allowed to drive having had a jar or two, and there are always going to be people who think that you have a choice either to have alcohol, or to drive.

Personally, I think you should avoid all alcohol if you are going to be driving. That's for your safety, and the safety of everyone else in the car and/or on the road. Better to be sober and safe than cause an accident and live the consequences for the rest of your life, and potentially the consequences for innocent victims for the rest of theirs too.

 

[BensGrandad]

My view is that the level should be zero that way you know if you have had 1 drink it is 1 too many to drive as the law stands now 1 person can drink 2 pints and still pass a breathalyser and another person will fail it. Hence nobody knows if they are over the top if they only have 1 or 2 drinks. It would make the situation crystal clear

 

[The Clamp]

Fosters is okay though isn't it. That's a driving beer.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

My view is that the level should be zero that way you know if you have had 1 drink it is 1 too many to drive as the law stands now 1 person can drink 2 pints and still pass a breathalyser and another person will fail it. Hence nobody knows if they are over the top if they only have 1 or 2 drinks. It would make the situation crystal clear

So say you have a beer right now. 1 beer. Call it a 4%, can you now tell me the earliest you can drive with your result being 0%? Say your phone rings at 11pm tonight and you need to head out to collect someone, are you ok to drive?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

So say you have a beer right now. 1 beer. Call it a 4%, can you now tell me the earliest you can drive with your result being 0%? Say your phone rings at 11pm tonight and you need to head out to collect someone, are you ok to drive?

Best to tell the person to make their own way home, put your feet up and pull the trigger on another beer.

 

[BensGrandad]

When we are coming home from visiting relatives it is usually late evening and it is surprising the number of cars you see wandering along the A272 all ov er the road at dead on 30mph so it seems that they have had a drink. My wife has often remarked how obvious it is and how easy for the police to pick them out.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Just for the record, when a substance is absorbed, its pharmacological properties are by and large linearly proportional to the concentration (actually the log of the concentration, but let's not get too technical) in the blood. Blood levels are proportional to the amount ingested (if it is by mouth) and this is determined by absorbability (plastic and glass, for example, are not absorbed and resurface in the poo). The amount of alcohol in the blood at any given time is determined by the speed that you drink, the strength of he drink, how much food is sitting in your gut at the time, and excretion (which is actually constant per hour for alcohol, which is slightly odd, but anyway). By far the most important determinant for the effect of alcohol is how much you drink per unit time. Even big fat blokes who drink too quickly can end up with high blood levels.

Society has tolerated some alchohol in the bloodstream as legally acceptable. Certainly the amount will have an effect, whatever the amount, but we consider that when the effect is small it is acceptable. It may even be hard to measure an effect of a small amount of alcohol objectively. Therefore we decide on a threshold which is the transition from acceptable to unacceptable. In the UK we set this threshold lower than what we actually think may cause dangerous impairment of driving ability and judgement in most people. Obviously some people are shit and dangerous drivers when sober so a small bit of alcohol may tip them into being dangerously wreckless.

But the bottom line is the threshold is arbitrarary. It makes a good deal of sense since it is quite conservative.

(Note that blood alcohol levels after drinking exacty the same thing will vary between a 20 stone fat ******* and a wee tiney 5 stone waif only in terms of blood volume, initially, which may be double, but the effect is proportion to the log concentration so the effect in the big 'un is only 0.3 fold bigger, initially - but the biggun can drink more, slowly, over time, than the tiddler, due to alcohol distribution into body fat).

We still have some problems with folk who don't realise that their blood still has alcohol in it and they are over the limit the next morning, after a night on the lash. I suspect this is more an issue that mithering about whether the threshold should be lowered to zero.

Fortunately habits have changed immeasurably since the 60s and 70s (as discussed on other threads). In the late 80s I knew an American who 'always' drove 'impaired' in the US. Not sure what happened to her. These days few but the most abject of idiots would make a similar boast.

Sounds like Ant (or Dec) has problems, and reducing the threshold to zero would have made no difference.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

When we are coming home from visiting relatives it is usually late evening and it is surprising the number of cars you see wandering along the A272 all ov er the road at dead on 30mph so it seems that they have had a drink. My wife has often remarked how obvious it is and how easy for the police to pick them out.

Are you sure it's not your eyes doing the wobbling?

 

[GT49er]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3145590/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1008127517301141
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2014/607652/

Are you really asserting that if you have 34.9mg/100ml of alcohol in breath then, whilst legal, you are perfectly fine and as competent as someone with zero ? why does that 0.1mg suddenly render you dangerous (according to the law)?

The fact that some zealots who want to completely change our whole lifestyle cannot grasp is that some people with 34.9mg/100mi of alcohol in breath are still better and safer drivers than some without ant alcohol. Don't think there's any way of testing who falls into which category, so let's just stick with a reasonable limit and leave it at that, eh?

 

[BensGrandad]

Are you sure it's not your eyes doing the wobbling?

We gauge it on their position on the road in relation to the white lines in the middle and I am sure that if asked they would stay they stayed on a straight course.

 

[happypig]

What a strange thing to say. Are you asserting that it's perfectly fine to drive at the speed limit and then you're suddenly dangerous if you go 1mph over it?

Quite the opposite. As with alcohol consumption the danger increases as speed (or alcohol level) increases. The government have decreed that there is a limit above which you are breaking the law. Your assertion was that if you're not over the limit you're safe; I disagree.

Another weird comment. If I have a glass of wine with lunch and drive a couple of hours later I do not think my driving is impaired.

You might not, but you would be wrong. If you went somewhere with no drink drive laws (like Burkina Faso for example) would you be able to drive perfectly after 2 drinks ? Or three ? Or 10 ? Of course not, the affect is cumulative. If you cannot see that you are either being deliberately obtuse or deliberately argumentative.

 

[Buzzer]

When we are coming home from visiting relatives it is usually late evening and it is surprising the number of cars you see wandering along the A272 all ov er the road at dead on 30mph so it seems that they have had a drink. My wife has often remarked how obvious it is and how easy for the police to pick them out.

If you think a car in front is a drink-driver then you need to call the police there and then. It could save a life.

 

[BensGrandad]

The fact that some zealots who want to completely change our whole lifestyle cannot grasp is that some people with 34.9mg/100mi of alcohol in breath are still better and safer drivers than some without ant alcohol. Don't think there's any way of testing who falls into which category, so let's just stick with a reasonable limit and leave it at that, eh?

Is that not what drink drivers think irrespective of the amount consumed, I am still a better driver p....d than you or most other people sober.

 

[BensGrandad]

If you think a car in front is a drink-driver then you need to call the police there and then. It could save a life.

I often do but the patrols on the road nowadays are non existent and invariably the car turns off usually onto the A23. I have never reported a car and the been overtaken by a police car following the tip off or even seen a police car before we get home to HH.