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The consequences of drinking and driving essay
Cause and effect of drinking and driving
Cause and effect of drinking and driving
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Why We Should Not Drive Under The Influence Of Alcohol And Drugs Drinking and driving is a very serious and dangerous problem around the world. Many people every year are killed or injured because of drunk drivers. When a person’s blood alcohol content simply known as BAC is over the legal limit he becomes much more impaired and are at a higher risk at hurting themselves or others.The majority of people who drive when under the influence of drugs or alcohol do not believe that their skills are affected until after they are faced with a challenging or dangerous situation. It is only then that they realize their coordination, ability to think quickly and respond appropriately is affected. Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs makes …show more content…
To safely drive a vehicle, good coordination, and mental alertness is required. Sleepiness, fatigue, lack of concentration and slowed reaction times will put both the driver and other motorists on the road at risk. The consequences when driving under such dangerous conditions far outweigh the high that a person may feel when under the influence. Severe injuries such as broken bones, brain damage, and spinal injuries are very real outcomes of a car accident and severe fines and penalties also apply under most circumstances. Road traffic accidents also cause victim-related costs such as medical or funeral costs, lost labor and pain suffering, and grief. In addition, serious injury as a result of a traffic accident can mean that individuals and families have to bear long-term rehabilitation and medical costs. For example, when an accident occurs it not only causes financial loss but, it also affects an individual mentally and emotionally. In this case, an ongoing psychotherapy may be required if the person is suffering from post-accident trauma or stress. There can also be significant changes to employment, loss of work or a loss of the job as a result of an accident. The risk of these costs can be significantly less if a person does not drive when they are under the influence of drugs or
Driving is a privilege Americans have been afforded since the invention of the automobile in the late 1800’s. Yet with great power comes great responsibility. One of the responsibilities associated with being able to drive several tons of metal at high speeds is the responsibility of doing so without any distractions or impairments. Choosing to drive drunk puts not only the driver in danger, but also everyone else in the car and on the road. Currently, the average drunk driver will drive eighty times before getting caught by the police (1). On average, one third of all people will be involved in a drunk driving accident during the course of their lifetimes (7). Whereas driving drunk once can be seen as a mistake and a one-time lapse in judgment, choosing to recklessly ignore the law and the safety of others is a serious offense against society. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that one in three persons arrested for drunk driving are repeat offenders (2).
Driving under the influence is extremely dangerous. Those who drink and drive tend to have an increased risk of car accidents, highway injuries, and vehicular fatalities. However, there are countless ways to prevent drunk driving. Professor David J. Hanson at the sociology department at the State University of New York states that “designated drivers have saved nearly 50,000 lives and spared many more thousands of people from suffering injury from drunk driving. It is a proven fact that almost 30 people in the US die every day in a motor vehicle accident involving a driver impaired by alcohol.” Every accident caused by drunk driving is one hundred percent preventable.
“Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third. The speedway ends at the cemetery” (Rockne). Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This amounts to one death every 48 minutes. The annual cost of alcohol related crashes totals more than 51 billion. In Recent discussions of drunk driving, a controversial issue has been whether the driving while intoxicated laws should be increased due to the amount tax payers are paying for drunk driving crashes. On the one hand. Some argue that the driving laws for driving drunk should remain the same and not change. From this perspective the laws about driving under the influence should greatly increase to be stricter, this will help decrease the death rate per year in the United States. On the other hand, however others argue that the laws about driving while drunk are already too strict and should remain unchanged. In sum, then, the issue is whether the laws about driving drunk should be greatly increased to be more effective, or remain unchanged. Because drunk driving can result in unnecessary and premature deaths, unsafe roadways, billions of dollars spent on taxpayers due to DUI’S, and losing a loved one. Drunk driving laws should be altered to be more efficient.
Drunk driving is an issue that effects many people across our nation. People do not realize the affects alcohol can have on the body and mind that slow decision making while driving. This issue begins in the home. Children see their parents, or other adults figures, have a beer or a cocktail and get in the car. Thus, making it seem like it is acceptable to drink and drive. “One in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime” (MADD).
Drivers who have a low BAC (blood alcohol concentration) are involved in few fatal crashes. Only a few of the drivers have a higher BAC of .15 but they are the ones that cause the fatal crashes. People with high BAC drivers tend to be male between the ages of 25 to 35 with a history of DWI’s (“Drinking and Driving”). Alcohol is a depressant that slows down the functions of the central nervous system. This causes the normal brain function to be delayed, and the person isn’t able to form physical and mentally normally. It also affects the hand – eye coordination of a person, known as psychomotor skills. The greater amount of alcohol consumed before driving, the more likely the person will be involved in a crash. The skills needed to drive become impaired, like judgment, concentration, comprehension, coordination, and reaction time (“ Driving while impaired”). Fortunately, car accidents due to drunk driving has dropped dramatically in the last decade, however, there are still far too many
Drunk driving has been an increasing problem for many years. One issue that contributes to this is that in the United States it is actually legal to drive with a certain alcohol percentage. The blood alcohol limit is 0.8 percent (Drunk Driving). This means that a person may drive legally as long as they have a blood alcohol percentage of 0.8 percent or under. However, even at a percentage of 0.3 there may be some impairment of alertness and concentration (Drunk Driving). Driving requires fast reflexes that may be impaired at a 0.5 percent blood alcohol level but a person with this level of intoxication is not legally drinking and driving. Many people are arrested for drunk driving. In 2009, more than 1.4 million drivers were arrested for driving while under the influence (Drunk Driving). In addition, “an average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first arrest” (Get Involved). Therefore, there were a minimum of 112 million accounts of drunk driving in 2009 alone. Drunk drivers also cause an increasing number of deaths. Drunk drivers in the United States c...
Effects of Drinking and Driving I’ve never seen drinking and driving on a daily planner or heard anyone say I think I’ll get a DUI today. I have heard people say “it’s my life, and if I want to drink and drive I will”. Well, it’s not just your life that is affected by the results of drinking and driving. When you make that choice to drink and drive you are taking the lives of family, friends, and strangers into your hands. You don’t have to get into an accident and kill somebody for the results to destroy you or someone else’s life. Drinking and driving can be the cause of many traumatic life changing events.
In today’s world a DUIs can be classified as being under the influence on many different substances. The main and most deadly substance is actually the most legal. With more and more people dying every day this nation needs to open its eyes on the dangers of drunken driving and begin taking major steps to help prevent this awful trend come to a stop. Drunk driving is when a person consumes alcohol and tries to operate their vehicle while ossified. Today the legal limit is 0.08, but many people believed that it should be lowered or unacceptable to consume any alcohol while operating motor vehicles. Studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that 40% of traffic deaths in United States were a result of DUIs. Many suggestions were made to avoid the change of the legal BAC level such as decreasing the amount of underage drinkers, writing more laws to keep heavy drinkers off the road, or adding...
Driving while drunk is one of the very dangerous things in the life of a driver. Drivers who work under high Blood Alcohol Concentration also known as (BAC) usually expressed as a percentage of ethanol in the blood consisting of alcohol per volume of blood or alternatively mass of alcohol per mass of blood. These drivers are at a great increase of car risk accidents, vehicular deaths as well as highway risks. Drinking under the Influence commonly known as DUI simply refers to driving a motor vehicle while one has level of alcohol in their blood exceeding the legal limit. This is not limited to alcoholic content but covers other drugs that include but are not limited to prescription drugs. This leads the driver to lack coordination, experience double vision, brief blackouts and have a slurred speech. Driving under the influence causes brain impairment leading to a person feeling that they can manage a situation just like they have always handled it before. This is always as a result of poor reasoning and judgment which leaves one vulnerable to the deadly effects of drunk driving.
In addition, alcohol-related traffic accidents not only cause high death rates, but they cost society % 45 billion annually in hospital costs, rehabilitation expenses, and lost productivity (NHTSA 3). It also affects traffic safety, in that the amount of arrests of intoxicated drivers prevents the police from arresting other traffic violators. In 1995 more than 1.4 million people were arrested for driving under the influence, this totaled 10 percent of all arrests made in that year (Hingson 1).
Alcohol is something that people use to help with multiply different things and some studies have shown that alcohol may help protect our bodies from cardiovascular disease. Alcohol does have side effects to our health the surroundings around us and can cause violence, vehicle crashes and even suicide. Alcohol does have an effect on people that many social drinkers may not realize. Many people usually have tried alcohol around 13 years of age and high school students consume more wine coolers that are sold in the U.S. and they drink more than 1 billion beers a year. To understand the effects of alcohol, it begins with the brain. It is a curiosity as to why people feel the need to drink and drive. The way the brain works while influenced with alcohol has always fascinated me. Drinking and driving is one of the biggest decisions that alcohol leads to. The National Public Services Research Institute (NHTSA) did a study on 600 people who admitted driving while under the influence of alcohol. They described in detail the decisions they made leading up to the occurrence of driving while impaired like whether to take part in a drinking event, how to get to the event, how much to drink, and how to get home. The people being interviewed revealed more than 2,000 individual decisions that led to alcohol impaired driving. The decisions were then broken down into several categories as shown on the graph attached. Little is known as to what leads people to continue to drinking and driving. But as research shows, people do think, prior to drinking, how they will get home. It’s after they have already had been drinking that they decide to get behind the wheel.
Drunk driving can be very deadly. Yet many people drive while under the influence everyday. Drivers who are drunk are blamed for the loss of as many as twentyfive thousand lives in highway crashes each year and hundreds of thousands of severe injurys.
Drunk driving is extremely impactful on the lives of you and others. While drinking and driving, you are not just endangering yourself, you are also endangering the lives of others. The driver of the car does not just control the car with their hands and feet. They need their brain to function properly so that you are able to react to objects on the road quicker and control the car. If you drink then drive/ drink while driving. Alcohol affects your brain in many ways that inhibit your ability to drive. Alcohol will affect your reaction time, it slows your reflexes which decrease your ability to react to objects on the road. It affects your vision, in can impair your color perception, and night vision. It slows down the movement in the muscles in your eye causing your visual perception to change. Alcohol affects your ability to track. You will not be able to judge the position of cars ahead of you, you won’t be able to judge the
If you drink and drive, you are not only a danger to yourself but also to your passenger, other road users and pedestrians. In fact, every 30 minutes, someone in this country dies in alcohol-related crash. Every 30 minutes! And last year alone more than one million people are injured in alcohol-related traffic crashes. Alcohol is a depressant that slows down body reactions and the working of the brain. Each year drunk driving is responsible for about 25% of these deaths. The risks of drinking are alcohol-related accidents and violence. The effects of alcohol are poor coordination and slurred speech, double vision, decrease of self-control loss of consciousness and death.
Many people in the United States enjoy a drink of their favorite alcoholic beverage. It could be a nice ice cold beer after a hard day of work or going to the bar and enjoying a few shots or mixed drinks with friends. Drinking alcohol is a common way to mingle with friends and take the edge off a difficult day. However, there are dangers involved with alcohol since it does dampen the body’s ability to cope with new information. Alcohol becomes a poison to the body when consumed in large quantities. The biggest danger is not to the driver after they become inebriated, but comes to anyone the drunk driver comes in contact with. A sober person can be dangerous just by being distracted, but a drunk driver’s ability to cope with changing situations and distractions is one of the biggest hazards on today’s roads. Some individuals believe that they are not as impaired as what they are led to believe from government ads and the many videos that show what can happen to someone who is drinking and driving. Although, there are many policies in place to advocate against drunk driving, there are those who would endanger themselves and others with their thoughtless actions when they jump into the driver’s seat of a vehicle. Drinking and driving should never be combined because a person who has been drinking does not have the ability to use all mental faculties unimpaired, many people have been killed, injured, or psychologically hurt by a drunk driver, many men and women do not know the difference weight and gender have on the body’s ability to process alcohol, and the financial and legal trouble that is awaiting for those convicted by a DUI.