Drunk Driving - What's the Big Deal?

By: Stevie Collier

States are cracking down on drunk driving. DUI and DWI laws across the nation are becoming stricter and being enforced with greater diligence. Why is drunk driving such as big deal? What happens to your body when you drink that makes driving so dangerous?

Alcohol slows the brain by acting as a depressant. When you drink, some of the messages your senses are sending to your brain are suppressed. That means you the fact that the car in front of you is stopping may not register with your brain, or it may register far to late for you to act. Alcohol in your system also makes you have a distorted picture of how you are moving. You may think, for instance, that you are moving in a straight line, when, in fact, you are staggering across the room. When you are driving, this makes it almost impossible to drive straight down the road.

When you drink and drive, you are putting yourself at risk. Many drink drivers are killed because of their poor driving skills. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, car wrecks are the leading cause of death for people in America who are under the age of 24, and about 40 percent of those deaths are somehow related to alcohol. Many of those in this statistic were the drivers or passengers of drunk drivers.

So just how dangerous is it to drive drunk? Having a blood alcohol content of just .10, a tiny bit over the legal limit, puts you at seven times higher of a risk for being involved in a crash that kills someone. If that level is raised to just .15, the risk increases to 25 times.

What about driving with a little bit of alcohol in your system? What if you are driving under the legal limit? Are you still putting yourself and people around you at risk?

Believe it or not, you could be. A blood alcohol content of .04, for instance, can increase the likelihood of someone being involved in a car crash by 1.4 times. Every drink that is added to that person's system increases the risk dramatically. Doubling the blood alcohol level to .08 increases the risk of a car crash to 11 times more likely. So having "just one more" could bring devastating consequences.

So before you jump in the car after a party, stop and think about the risk. Are you ready to live with the knowledge that your actions killed someone? Are you willing to put your own life and the lives of your passengers at risk? If not, pass the keys to someone who did not drink or call a taxi. The rest of the community will thank you.

Article Source: http://www.newarticledaily.com

Get the DUI Laws for your state or the Ohio DUI Laws at DUIConsequences.com Check out more on Drunk Driving - What's the Big Deal?

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