Alcohol, drugs and traffic safety — T86

A Review of Alcohol‐Impaired Driving: The Role of Blood Alcohol Concentration and Complexity of the Driving Task

“…While the results of this study demonstrated that impairment was present in both men and women on all tasks at the BACs tested, it was evident that women displayed greater alcohol‐related impairment when compared with men on dependent measures such as simulated driving, tracking ability, divided attention, and speed of information processing . Given that women exhibited significantly higher SDLP when compared with men at an equivalent BAC, Louwerens et al., also postulated that women were more sensitive to the behavioral effects of alcohol.…”

“…Another example, which confirmed the sensitivity of SDLP as a measure of alcohol impairment and further explored the concentration‐dependent nature of the relation, includes Louwerens et al. who observed an exponential increase in SDLP with increasing BAC, with significant impairment at a BAC of 0.060% and greater. The impairing effects of alcohol on SDLP are sufficiently well established that ethanol has been employed as a positive control against which to compare the effects of other drugs on human psychomotor performance .…”

“…Closed‐course studies have provided complementary data to the numerous laboratory studies that identify SDLP as sensitive to the impairing effects of alcohol . Gawron and Ranney employed a within‐subject, placebo‐controlled design to evaluate the performance of six males on a closed‐course and a driving simulator.…”

“…In addition to slow driving speeds, legal and ethical considerations produce another potential experimental confound in this type of research. Task complexity is often limited by the removal of interactions with other vehicles, hazards, and pedestrians . Additionally, on‐road driving studies in actual traffic may be limited to alcohol concentrations below established per se limits.…”

‘Plug-and-Power’ Point-of-Care diagnostics: A novel approach for self-powered electronic reader-based portable analytical devices

“…This sensing method based in fuel cells response is used, for example, in many commercial breath alcoholmeters, known as breathalysers. It is a well-established and proven technique that is endorsed by industry and law-enforcement agencies worldwide (Leonard, 2012;Noordzij, 1975). In this case, the device performs a chronoamperometric measurement, subjecting the fuel cell to a fixed voltage while recording the produced current.…”