According to the CDC, in vehicle accidents involving drunk drivers, 29 people lose their lives per day in the United States; which means a death occurs every 50 minutes. Over $44 billion is spent annually on crashes caused by alcohol.

What is it about drinking alcohol that makes it so risky when driving?

Alcohol and driving are not a good combination. Your first sip of alcohol will immediately start to impair your judgment. You’ll notice mood swings and a reduction in your capacity for rational decision making. Your thinking will weaken and eventually become distorted as you keep consuming alcohol. Your vision will gradually get blurry, and your response time will deteriorate to the point that you won’t be able to recognize dangers or react to them. Although you see them, there is a very little possibility that your compromised judgment will allow you to make the right decision. Therefore, it is risky to engage in any activity demanding skill, attention, and coordinated movement not just because of the long-term impacts on health but also because of the immediate ones.

Despite several public service programs warning drivers against drinking and driving, alcoholic drivers still engage in this risky behavior, leaving the victims of their accidents with severe injuries or even fatalities.

5 reasons why you shouldn’t drink and drive

To keep yourself and others safe on the road, it’s important to know and communicate these facts. There are several ways that alcohol can impair your judgment and ability to drive. Let’s go through these to get a better idea.

1.  Impaired judgement

Drinking alcohol dramatically reduces your capacity for thoughtful, logical decision-making. Your ability to understand the information your brain gets as you scan the road will reduce, and you’ll be more likely to pick an unwise action from the options available.

As an example, a drunk driver may opt to accelerate up and race through a junction rather than stopping as the light turns red while approaching it. Although they are aware that doing this is against the law and risky, their brain gives less emphasis to these facts as a result of impaired judgment.

2.  Reduced memory

Both the capacity to recall and the retention of new memories are hindered by alcohol. Reduced memory is a risky issue to drivers because,

• New memories can’t be stored which will result in overlooking crucial information when assessing the roadway.
• Your capacity to make decisions and exercise judgment will be reduced if you can’t recall past memories. Without accessibility to the knowledge that your brain has stored about traffic laws, safe driving practices, and past driving encounters, the decisions you make will mostly be risky.

3.  Delay in reaction time

The duration that it takes for an individual to perceive, process, and react to a circumstance is referred to as your reaction time. Your reaction time will affect how safe you are while driving. That is; when your reaction time is short, it is safer when you drive.  Alcohol can impair reflexes, understanding, and the capacity to react swiftly to changeable driving conditions. Thus, it will increase the reaction time which would result in missing turn-offs, run over stop lines, collide with other vehicles in the rear end and crash with unanticipated dangers.

For example, this can be shown by the sudden appearance of a pedestrian in front of your car where you will have a brief window of time to determine if you must brake, turn, or take another action to prevent an accident. So, if you’re drunk, your increased reaction time will make you confused and thus it’s likely an accident could occur.

4.  Lack of sense of speed and distance

It’s a common fact that drivers under the influence of alcohol frequently drive at dangerous speeds without noticing it. Alcohol will impair your ability to estimate the speed of the vehicle and make you less conscious of how you are driving in relation to other vehicles. Also, due to disturbed memory the chances that you look at the speedometer is less likely.

After drinking, you will be less able to effectively evaluate the distance between vehicles and other objects because alcohol distorts your perception of depth. This can lead you to overestimate or underestimate the distance available while entering into a new lane, leave an inadequate distance from the vehicle to the other vehicle, or take turns too rapidly.

The lack of sense of speed and distance could cause unnecessary road traffics and drastically increase the fatality of you and other drivers.

5. Vision impairment

Alcohol consumption causes the muscles and nerves that regulate the eyes to relax, which slows down optical reaction time and blurs vision. Additionally, alcohol impairs eye sight, making it more difficult for drunkards to perceive objects that aren’t directly in front of them, such as other vehicles, people, and other objects on the road.

Long before you experience any visible blurs or doubled vision, you will lose the capacity to follow moving things, lucidity and your capacity to concentrate on particular objects. This will make it more difficult to figure out crucial information from the dashboard and on the road outside.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the drunk driver may not be able to recognize hazardous circumstances, respond effectively to hazards, or maintain control of his or her car as these consequences start to take action in the body. This can result in a serious mishap that not only harms the alcohol associated driver but also seriously wounds or kills other innocent sober drivers and passengers along with harms to the properties. 

FAQ

How does alcohol effect driving?

Drinking alcohol reduces our senses of speed and distance, causes vision impairments, delays our reaction time, reduces our ability to come in to judgement and reduces the memory which could result in accidents.

What is the death rate due to drunken driving in the USA?

According to the CDC, in vehicle accidents involving drunk drivers, 29 people lose their lives per day in the United States.