Drunk driving
For law enforcement purposes, breath analysis using a breathalyzer is the preferred method, since results are available almost instantaneously.
A measurement in excess of the specific threshold level, such as a BAC of 0.08% (8 basis points), defines the criminal offense with no need to prove impairment.
However, this does not preclude the simultaneous existence and use of the older subjective tests in which police officers measure the intoxication of the suspect by asking them to do certain activities or by examining their eyes and responses.
A BAC from 0.35% to 0.80% causes a coma (unconsciousness), life-threatening respiratory depression, and possibly fatal alcohol poisoning.
"[13] This is a useful gauge because in an actual driving situation drivers must divide their attention "between a tracking task and surveillance of the environment.
"[13] It has been found that even "very low BACs are sufficient to produce significant impairment of performance" in this area of thought process.
Thus, the literature has for the most part treated the Grand Rapids Dip as a statistical effect, similar to Simpson's paradox.
"[2] The researchers found through the study that as the students became more drunk there was an increase in their mistakes "and the recovery of the underlying cognitive impairments that lead to these errors is slower, and more closely tied to the actual blood alcohol concentration, than the more rapid reduction in participants' subjective feeling of drunkenness.
[23] According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alcohol-related crashes cause approximately $37 billion in damages annually.
[23] According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alcohol-related collisions cause approximately $37 billion in damages annually.
There are a wide variety of characteristics common among DUI offenders which are discussed, including: "anxiety, depression, inhibition, low assertiveness, neuroticism and introversion".
[28] It is also common for offenders to use drinking as a coping mechanism, not necessarily for social or enjoyment reasons, when they are antisocial in nature and have a father with a history of alcoholism.
They tended to start drinking heavily earlier in life and "exhibited more premorbid risk factors, had a more severe substance abuse and psychosocial impairment.
Through this testing a previously overlooked character trait of DUI offenders was uncovered by the "low scores on the openness to experience domain.
"[28] This area "includes intellectual curiosity, receptivity to the inner world of fantasy and imagination, appreciation of art and beauty, openness to inner emotions, values, and active experiences."
"[29] In addition to these societal restraints, DUI offenders ignore their own personal experience, including both social and physical consequences.
[29] The largest indicator for drinking was situational cues which comprised "indicators tapping psychological (e.g. letting oneself down, having an argument with a friend, and getting angry at something), social (e.g. relaxing and having a good time), and somatic cues (e.g. how good it tasted, passing by a liquor store, and heightened sexual enjoyment).
"[29] It may be that internal forces are more likely to drive DWI offenders to drink than external, which is indicated by the fact that the brain and body play a greater role than social influences.
Examples of such issues "include fights, arguments, and problems with people at work, all of which imply a need for adaptive coping strategies to help the high-risk drinker to offset pressures or demands.
This is a not the way professionals tell people how to best deal with the struggles of everyday life and calls for "the need to develop internal control and self-regulatory mechanisms that attenuate stress, mollify the influence of relapse-based cues, and dampen urges to drink as part of therapeutic interventions.
The laws relating to drunk driving vary significantly between countries, particularly the BAC limit before a person is charged with a crime.
"[34] It has also been ruled that defendants are not allowed to request testing after they have already refused in order to aid officers' jobs "to remove intoxicated drivers from the roadways" and ensure that all results are accurate.
Criminologist Hung-En Sung has concluded in 2016 that with regards to reducing drunk driving, law enforcement has not generally proven to be effective.
Sung, commenting on measures for controlling drunk driving and alcohol-related accidents, noted that the ones that have proven effective include "lowering legal blood alcohol concentrations, controlling liquor outlets, nighttime driving curfews for minors, educational treatment programs combined with license suspension for offenders, and court monitoring of high-risk offenders.
"[35] In general, programs aimed at reducing society's consumption of alcohol, including education in schools, are seen as an effective long-term solution.
[38] A designated driver programme helps to separate driving from drinking in social places such as restaurants, discos, pubs, bars.
[37] Reduction of legal limit from 0.8 g/L to 0.5 g/L reduced fatal crashes by 2% in some European countries; while similar results were obtained in the United States[37] Lower legal limit (0.1 g/L in Austria and 0 g/L in Australia and the United States) have helped to reduce fatalities among young drivers.
However, in Scotland, lowering the legal limit of blood alcohol content from 0.08% to 0.05% did not result in fewer road traffic collisions in two years after the introducing the new law.
One possible explanation is that this might be due the poor publicity and enforcement of the new law and the lack of random breath testing.
Experience shows that: Education programmes used to reduce drunk driving levels include: In the United States, local law enforcement agencies made 1,467,300 arrests nationwide for driving under the influence of alcohol in 1996, compared to 1.9 million such arrests during the peak year in 1983.
