How It Is That a Person Can Choose to Drink and Drive?
How does a person get a DUI if they didn’t choose to drink and drive?
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when working to halt DUIs/DWIs — driving while impaired — is that by the time a person who has been drinking through dinner or over the course of an evening still thinks s/he is sober enough to drive, it’s way too late for them to make the right choice. Drinking quantities of alcohol (even just 2 drinks in an hour) CHANGES the way the brain works; these changes last until the liver is able to metabolize (get rid of) the alcohol in the drinks the person has consumed; changes that affect motor control, judgment, and reaction time, for example.
“Choosing” to Drink and Drive – How Does it Happen?
Yes, a person chooses to drink; absolutely. But the choice that gets fuzzy once a person has been drinking is the decision to drive. Because even “just a couple,” clouds this decision-making capability by the very nature of the brain changes that have occurred as a consequence of how much they’ve had to drink. Sounds like a classic “Catch-22.” It is.
Below are a few excerpts from the California DMV chart to help you see where your BAC might fall after having “a couple of drinks” and then driving:
110-129 lbs: 2 or more drinks in one hour, your BAC is probably .08% or higher
130-149 lbs: 3 or more drinks in two hours, your BAC is probably .08% or higher
170-189 lbs: 4 or more drinks in two hours, your BAC is probably .08% or higher
So many factors contribute to how quickly alcohol passes through the small intestine, into the bloodstream, and onto the brain, where it “sits” until it is metabolized by the liver (at a very rough average rate of ABOUT one drink per hour). These variables include: weight, gender, whether food was eaten to slow down how quickly it passes into the bloodstream, stress, medications, tolerance, stage of brain development, lack of sleep — unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule, other than, “Don’t Drink and Drive.”
Below you will find a video that describes what the wrong decision can do to so many, many lives. The important take-away, here, is that while a person chooses to drink, making the right decision with regards to not drive after an evening of drinking is likely beyond their brain’s capability. At that point, sober others need to step in to make the decision for them because that person’s decision-making capability is dangerously compromised.
Lisa Frederiksen
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