All the essential ingredients of a safe driver – a person’s reactions times, perception, judgment and co-ordination are affected by the depressant drug alcohol. Even in small amounts, alcohol can make driving almost impossible for a driver to assess their driving ability. This is because alcohol provides the driver with a false sense of confidence and ability, which in turn fuels risk taking and the perception that they are in total control of their vehicle, even when they are not.
Unless a blood or road side breath test is performed it is absolutely impossible for a driver to know the amount of alcohol still present in their system when they get behind the wheel. Knowing the drink drive limit and stopping drinking when you reach the current drink drive limit is just not enough. Everyone processes alcohol through their bodies at different rates; this is due to a number of different reasons. For a start, a person’s height, weight and gender affects the rate of processing alcohol. Also their age and metabolism of their body is a big factor as is the time you last ate a meal and the person’s age.
There is no scientific way to measure exactly how long it takes to sober up completely after you have been drinking, and it’s probably a lot longer than you think. It can take over ten hours, yes TEN hours for your body to process the alcohol, even if you drink less than four pints the night before.
Who are the high risk offenders?
The driving limit is, or blood alcohol concentration (BAC) currently stands at 80mg. the average BAC of a convicted drink driver is 160mg, exactly twice the legal limit. Studies show that when you are at this point, you are exactly 20 times more likely to be involved in a serious road traffic accident. The majority of drink driving offenders can now be classified into the following groups;
Young drivers that have a difficult time respecting the law.
Regular heavy drinkers that drink drive and have up to know, evaded the police.
People with chronic alcohol problems that delude themselves that they are perfectly capable of driving a vehicle, they may not even be aware that they have drunk before getting behind the wheel.
There is also a clear pattern of offenders that that have a long list of motoring offences that can be classified as high risk. In particular, drivers without a valid license and drivers repeatedly stopped for having no tax, MOT or insurance.
The conclusion is that the high risk offender is someone whose behavior is out of control and therefore a person that is difficult to influence by law which draws the question; how do you stop these offenders?
Educate the offender and teach them about the risk to their own health.
Driver education; teach them about the risks of exceeding the daily BAC.
Close supervision of the offender and proactive police monitoring and use of the media to publically appeal to the offender and promote the penalties and risks of being caught drink driving.
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