Controls

Your Driving and the Road
Drunken Driving (CONT.)
approaching 0.05 percent, and that the
effects are worse at night. All drivers are
impaired at BAC levels above 0.05
percent. Statistics show that the chance of
being in an accident increases sharply for
drivers who have a BAC of 0.05 percent
or above. A driver with a BAC level of
0.06 percent (three beers in one hour for a
180-pound or 82 kg person) has doubled
his or her chance of having an accident.
At a BAC level of 0.10 percent, the
chance of that driver having an accident is
six times greater; at a level of 0.15
percent, the chances are twenty-five times
greater! And, the body takes about an
hour to rid itself of the alcohol in one
drink. No amount of coffee or number of
cold showers will speed that up.
“I’ll be careful” isn’t the right answer.
What if there’s an emergency, a need to
take sudden action, as when a child darts
into the street? A person with a higher
BAC might not be able to react quickly
enough to avoid the collision.
rhere’s something else about drinking
tnd driving that many people don’t know.
Medical research shows that alcohol in B
Yerson’s system can make crash injuries
worse. That’s especially true for brain,
spinal cord and heart injuries. That means
:hat if anyone who has been drinking --
jriver or passenger -- is in a crash, the
:hance of being killed or permanently
disabled is higher than if that person had
not been drinking. And we’ve already
seen that the chance of a crash itself is
higher for drinking drivers.
Control of a Vehicle
You have three systems that make your
vehicle go where you want it to go. They
are the brakes, the steering and the
accelerator. All three systems have to do
their work at the places where the tires
meet the road.
Sometimes, as when you’re driving on
snow or ice, it’s easy to ask more of those
control systems than the tires and road
can provide. That means you can lose
control of your vehicle.
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