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Although individual rates can vary, on average, a 170-pound man who has four drinks in an hour on an empty stomach, or a 135-pound woman who has three drinks under similar conditions, would reach a BAC of 0.08 percent (NHTSA 1992). In the United States, blood alcohol measurements are based on the amount of alcohol, by weight, in a set volume of blood. For example, a BAC of 0.10 percent—a level at which it is illegal to drive in the United States—is the equivalent of 0.10 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood.
Furthermore, schools and colleges routinely reject scholarship students with previous DUI offenses. As a result of one idiotic decision, your education and career plans could be ruined. Drunk driving is a one-way ticket to a dead-end job, a low-rent neighborhood and unfulfilled ambitions. Wickens, C. M., Mann, R. E., Stoduto, G., Butters, J. E., Ialomiteanu, A., & Smart, R. G. Does gender moderate the relationship between driver aggression and its risk factors?
Get caught, and a single drunk driving infraction may have legal, financial, personal and even professional ramifications. The Governors Highway Safety Association has state by state information about consequences of drinking and driving. It also provides a state by state breakdown of alcohol-impaired driving laws. Prevention campaigns in the United States began in earnest in the early 1980s (2). Back then, drunk driving accounted for about half of all crash fatalities in the nation.
Alcohol impairs vision, reaction time, coordination, and judgment, all of which are essential to safe driving. It’s also linked to aggression, meaning it can fuel road rage incidents. Drinking and driving can result in serious injury, fatality, damage and legal ramifications. In the DOT study, researchers interviewed 581 people who admitted to drinking and driving and asked them about the decisions that led to the choice to get behind the wheel. More than one-third of responses involved social or environmental influences.
Of all pedestrian deaths, 17 percent involved a driver who had been drinking and 38 percent involved a pedestrian who had been drinking. In 7 percent of pedestrian deaths, both the driver and the pedestrian had been drinking (NHTSA 2003f ). Relative to nondrinking drivers, drivers in all age and gender groups examined who had BACs between 0.08 percent and 0.099 percent had at least an 11 times greater risk of dying in a single-vehicle crash.
The higher the BAC of a driver in a fatal crash, the greater the likelihood that the crash involved only one vehicle. Thirty percent of zero-BAC drivers in fatal crashes were involved in single-vehicle crashes, compared with 68 percent of drivers with BACs of 0.15 percent or higher. Drivers in fatal crashes who had positive BACs were more likely than other drivers in fatal crashes to have had their driver’s license suspended. In 2002, 39 percent of deaths of motorists in automobiles were alcohol related (7,954 out of 20,416), compared with 42 percent of deaths of motorists in vans or light trucks (5,148/12,182), and 44 percent of motorcycle deaths (1,422/3,244). Though deaths of bicyclists (from both crashes with cars and bike accidents not involving cars) are much less frequent, 37 percent of them in 2002 were alcohol related (i.e., either the driver or the bicyclist was drinking) (243/660). In contrast, only 13 percent of deaths among motorists in large trucks were alcohol related (87/684) (NHTSA 2003a).
Plus, this calculation does not take into account the financial consequences of lost productivity, time spent off work, medical costs, compensation and money spent on alternative means of transportation. Most employers, schools and landlords conduct background checks on applicants, consequences of driving drunk include: which would bring your DUI conviction to their attention. You may be fired from your current job or have trouble securing a new job, when employers find out about the offense. If you need financial aid in school, your application may only be successful if you have a clean record.