Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going
to
be careless and make
mistakes. Anticipate what they might do. Be ready for their mistakes.
Rear-end collisions are about the most preventable of accidents. Yet they
are common. Allow enough following distance. It’s the best defensive
driving maneuver, in both city and rural driving. You never know when the
vehicle in front of you is going
to
brake or turn suddenly.
Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is a national tragedy.
It’s the number one contributor to the highway death toll, claiming
thousands of victims every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive a vehicle:
Judgment
0
Muscular Coordination
Vision
Attentiveness
Police records show that almost half of all motor vehicle-related deaths
involve alcohol. In most cases, these deaths are the result
of
someone who
was drinking and driving. In recent years, some
18,000
annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the
use
of alcohol, with
more than
300,000
people injured.
Many adults
-
by some estimates, nearly half the adult population
-
choose never to drink alcohol,
so
they never drive after drinking. For
persons under
21, it’s against the law in every
U.S.
state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and developmental reasons for these
laws.
The obvious way to solve this highway safety problem is for people never to
drink alcohol and then drive. But what if people do? How much is “too
much” if the driver plans to drive? It’s a lot less than many might think.
Although it depends on each person and situation, here is some general
information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC)
of
someone who is drinking
depends upon four things:
0
How much alcohol consumed
The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and during drinking
The length
of
time it’s taken the drinker to consume the alcohol
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