The effect of alcohol impairment on road-crossing behaviour

The risk of pedestrian injury and fatality in collisions with motor vehicles, a social ecological study of state routes and city streets in King County, Washington

“…This finding added to the literature on pedestrian collisions, which had emphasized the increased risk associated with pedestrians having been drinking (Oxley et al, 2006). While pedestrians under the influence of alcohol appeared to negatively affect safety on such major facilities as state routes, on city streets, drunk drivers increased the risk of a severe injury or fatal collision.…”

“…In 2000, the fatality rate of male pedestrians was twice that of female pedestrians (National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 2008). Also, pedestrians under the influence of alcohol have been shown to engage in risky road-crossing behaviors (Lee and Abdel-Aty, 2005;Oxley et al, 2006;Spainhour et al, 2006).…”

Disinhibition of olfaction: Human olfactory performance improves following low levels of alcohol

“…Consistent with previous studies [43], we selected 0.06% BAC as cutoff between "high" and "low". We found a main effect of time (before = −3.9 ± 1.5 log (v/v), after = −4.4 ± 1.4 log (v/v), F 1,19 = 6.6 p < 0.05) reflecting better performance during the second test in a given day, and a main effect of condition (alco-…”

Countermeasures to the problem of accidents to intoxicated pedestrians

“…These are well known in their general features 5 : perceptual, cognitive, and physical skills (including detecting vehicles in motion, integrating multiple sources of information, and initiating actions) are all adversely affected. It also seems likely that a very high BAC sometimes leads to a positive attempt at suicide or at least to utter indifference to one's own survival.…”

“…And situational factors are relevant, in that drunk pedestrians may be on the streets at times when it is dangerous for other reasons (darkness; high speed traffic). In contrast to the general reasons for the dangers of alcohol being well known, Oxley et al 5 (p. 259) also considered that ''there is very little research-based evidence detailing the effect of alcohol on specific skills required to cross roads safely". In a simulator-based road crossing experiment, Oxley et al found that an appreciable proportion of people whose BAC was at least 0.070 accepted a gap of only 1 s. This is consistent with evidence from interviewing injured pedestrians: McLean et al 6 (p. 20) noted that four out of five pedestrians in their sample who had a BAC of at least 0.010 recalled having noticed the headlights of an approaching car, but then mistakenly attempted to cross.…”