ALCOHOL AND ROAD ACCIDENTS

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 1, 1 March 1951, Page 7

ALCOHOL AND ROAD ACCIDENTS

BY CHARLES HILL, M.A., M b. ("The Radio Doctor," England)

“What 1 object to are all the arguments that are used to make people drink . . . What alcohol does is to influence those parts of the brain, the so-called higher centres, that gi\e us judgment, concentration, self-criticism and skill. About ten years ago, the Minister of Transport, England, asked the doctors to say* what Medical Science could state on the relation of alcohol to Road Accident*. And tilt) said, it:— “By the way, the body can only get rid of about one ounce of whisk) an hour —no more. So you see how the trouble can pile up. Of course, to take much alcohol, is to make anything like good driving impossible, but iny point is that taking only a small quantity is enough to turn a good driver into a bad driver. I know that folks, who have taken only a little, think that they are driving better —and oh, they drive magnificently, or so they think—but that’> one of alcohol’s little tricks. It makes people feel pleased with themselves, less critical; in fact, people only think they are driving better. They’re not! They say that two or three ounces of whisky—an ounce, remember, is a couple of tablcspoonsful—is enough to affect one’s skill in driving. After all, in good driving, eyes have to follow quickly the object that conies nearer and nearer, hand movements must be skilled, hand and eye must be worked together and leg movements must he skilled. It’s all an affair of co-ordination of one human part and another, and what small quantities of alcohol such as two or three ounces do, is to diminish both the rapidity and the accuracy of that co-ordination. Most Dangerous Driver—The Slightly intoxicated Person The fact that needs to he hammered home to people is that the man who is really DRUNK is not capable of handling a car. It is the person who has had just a glass or two, just enough to dull the keenness of his judgment, to make him a little reckless, to slow down his reaction time if he gets into a situation that demands quick thinking. The city of Chicago decided something had to he done about the high traffic toll, and has acted on the advice of its National Safety Council, and makes tests for the presence of alcohol in the blood stream when people are involved in an accident. In i () 3 v> . the following report was made: 1. The percentage of accidents usually attributed (without the blood test) to alcohol, considerably under-estimates the true position. 2. The most dangerous driver and

pedestrian is the one who is slightly under the influence of liquor. V A person whose blood stream contains, one drop of alcohol to about seven hundred drops of blood is fiftyfive times more liable to accident with injury on the road, than cne with no alcohol.’’ Australian “W.R.” Signal