Get your sober driver sorted!
Tips, tools and solutions to get you home safely!
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How can alcohol affect our driving? ALCOHOL COULD AFFECT YOUR DRIVING BY CAUSING: • Impaired vision • Reduced reaction times • R educed concentration and vigilance • F eeling more relaxed and drowsy, which may cause a driver to fall asleep at the wheel
• D ifficulty in understanding sensory information • D ifficulty doing several tasks at once (e.g. keep in the lane and in the right direction, while concentrating on other traffic) • F ailure to obey road rules over confidence, which may lead to risk taking
WHAT HAPPENS TO US WHEN ALCOHOL GETS INTO OUR BLOOD? BLOOD ALCOHOL CONCENTRATION
TYPICAL EFFECTS
PREDICTABLE EFFECTS ON DRIVING
0.02%
• Some loss of judgment • Relaxation • Slight body warmth • Altered mood
• Decline in visual functions (rapid tracking of a moving target) • Decline in ability to perform two tasks at the same time (divided attention)
• Exaggerated behaviour • May have loss of smallmuscle control (e.g., focusing your eyes) • Impaired judgment • Usually good feeling • Lowered alertness • Release of inhibition
• Reduced coordination • Reduced ability to track moving objects • Difficulty steering • Reduced response to emergency driving situations
• Muscle coordination becomes poor (e.g., balance, speech, vision, reaction time, and hearing) • Harder to detect danger • Judgment, selfcontrol, reasoning, and memory are impaired
• Concentration • Short-term memory loss • Speed control • Reduced information processing capability (e.g., signal detection, visual search) • Impaired perception
• Clear deterioration of reaction time and control • Slurred speech, poor coordination, and slowed thinking
• Reduced ability to maintain lane position and brake appropriately
• Far less muscle control than normal • Vomiting may occur (Major loss of balance)
• Substantial impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary visual and auditory information processing
2 alcoholic drinks
0.05% 3 alcoholic drinks
0.08% 4 alcoholic drinks
0.10% 5 alcoholic drinks
0.15% 7 alcoholic drinks
Can you get rid of alcohol when it’s in your blood? Once alcohol is in your blood there are only a few ways to get rid of it. A little goes out through your kidneys in your urine, you may sweat a little bit out, you breathe some of it out through your lungs but most of it (over 90%) is broken down and eliminated by your liver. If your liver is healthy it takes about an hour to get rid of the alcohol in just one standard-size drink! If your liver isn’t healthy it takes even longer. Here’s the problem – because your liver can only get rid of the alcohol from one drink per hour, when you drink more than one standard drink per hour, alcohol builds up in your bloodstream. Your blood alcohol level goes up. This is also the reason you can still be way over the limit the morning after a heavy drinking session.
Drive sober, you don’t need to drink to have a good time! • Everyone’s perception of how much they can drink is different, but the law is precise: if you’re over 20 years of age the legal blood alcohol limit for driving is no more than 50 milligrams of alcohol for every 100mls of blood. • There is a zero alcohol limit if you are under 20. That means if you drive after consuming even one drink, you can be charged with drink-driving. • Be prepared: if you’re planning on drinking, plan not to drive. DON’T GO ALONG WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S BAD DECISIONS TO DRIVE WHILE THEY’RE IMPAIRED BY ALCOHOL OR DRUGS.
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DRIVE, HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS ON
Other ways you could get home after a night out… • Nominate a sober driver with your mates, take it in turns! • Grab a taxi • Dial A Driver (dialadriver.co.nz)
GET YOUR SOBER DRIVER SORTED.