Laboratory analysis of risky driving at 0.05% and 0.08% blood alcohol concentration

Abstract

Background The public health costs associated with alcohol-related traffic crashes are a continuing problem for society. One harm reduction strategy has been to employ per se limits for blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) at which drivers can legally operate motor vehicles. This limit is currently 0.08% in all 50 US states. Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board proposed lowering the legal limit to 0.05 % (NTSB, 2013). While research has well-validated the ability of alcohol to impair driving performance and heighten crash-risk at these BACs, relatively little is known about the degree to which alcohol might increase drivers’ risk-taking. Methods Risk-taking was examined in 20 healthy adults who were each tested in a driving simulator following placebo and two doses of alcohol calculated to yield peak BACs of 0.08% and 0.05%, the respective current and proposed BAC limits. The drive test emphasized risk-taking by placing participants in a multiple-lane, high-traffic environment. The primary measure was how close drivers maneuvered relative to other vehicles on the road (i.e., time-to-collision, TTC). Results Alcohol increased risk-taking by decreasing drivers’ TTC at the 0.08% target BAC relative to placebo. Moreover, risk-taking at the 0.05% target was less than risk-taking at 0.08% target BAC. Conclusions These findings provide evidence that reducing the legal BAC limit in the USA to 0.05% would decrease risk-taking among drivers. A clearer understanding of the dose-response relationship between various aspects of driving behaviors, such as drivers’ accepted level of risk while driving, is an important step to improving traffic safety.

Variation of performance, of self-reported alertness and effort as a function of low doses of alcohol and of driving experience

“…Finally, this study considers driving after alcohol consumption, in the descending limb of the BAC curve, coherent with the fact that decisions to drive often occur as BAC is declining. However, it could be that the stimulating effect of alcohol could be higher during the ascending limb of the BAC curve [51,60]. Our next step will therefore be to test a group of older drivers in the ascending and descending phases following the consumption of low doses of alcohol.…”

Offending behaviour, health and wellbeing of military veterans in the criminal justice system

“…The presence of alcohol misuse was a risk factor for motoring offences in veterans, after controlling for socio-demographic variables. This finding, again, is unsurprising given the link between alcohol consumption and risky driving behaviours [ 54 , 55 ].…”

A Review of Driving Simulation Technology and Applications

“…To perform these experiments on real roads with real vehicles would be not only unethical but also irresponsible, while this kind of experiment can be safely performed in virtual environments. Examples using driving simulation with alcohol consumption is presented in [90] and [91]. In those studies, subjects were evaluated in low and high quantities of alcohol while others were provided with placebo.…”