Neurological Journal: "alcohol Shrinks Your Brain"

[maklelan]

Without commenting on the accuracy these specific numbers, I would point out that if 4% is even close to the actual number then this is a cause for grave concern. By contrast I would point out the seriousness of concerns and dollars spent combating the flu virus which has a mortality rate of well under 0.01%

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates alcohol costs the economy $185 billion every year. The World Health Organization estimates alcohol accounts for 3.2% of all deaths in the world every year. The 2001â??2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions found 8.5% of US adults had alcohol use disorders, up over 1% from ten years before. Alcohol abuse rose from 3.03% to 4.65%. With that I'm done with this thread.

[AKS]

Of course, but how much of the total are you going to attribute to that?

Well this is the question. I don't know, and further I don't know how the researchers knew. I'm not sure how you can claim, except in extreme cases, that alcohol was the cause of an accident. If a driver that has had a couple of beers swerves and kills a motor-cyclist on his way home can you say without a doubt that alcohol was the reason for the accident? Was alcohol the cause or was there other factors like the cyclist riding in the drivers blind spot? Isn't it possible that the crash was going to occur regardless of any alcohol consumption? I would love to see a real study (and I'm certain its been done) where peope were given alcohol in a controlled environment and tested to find the exact point that they became dangerous (and how do you define dangerous?) drivers.

[thesometimesaint]

AKS:

.08% in California.

http://www.expertlaw.com/library/drunk_dri...Calculator.html

[J.S. Mill]

With that I'm done with this thread.

I'm not going to bully you into discussing this topic any further, but I do think you owe me an apology for your patronizing assumption that alcohol abuse has never impacted my life and relationships.

[AKS]

AKS:

.08% in California.

http://www.expertlaw.com/library/drunk_dri...Calculator.html

Based on that web page I may well have to change my stance. According to that calculator I can drink a sixer of medium beer in 3 hours and only be at .05% (170 lbs). While I dont do it often, after a 6 pack in an entire night theres no way I would drive. If this is accurate then .08 is more than lenient and probably a little too conservative.

[thesometimesaint]

AKS:

It is VERY lenient. Twice the legal limit is very common. I don't see how those people stand up.

[groove]

I'm not sure how you can claim, except in extreme cases, that alcohol was the cause of an accident.

I don't think anyone even has to claim that alcohol causes the crash. Rather, it is enough to state that from a physiological standpoint of impairment and an epidemiological standpoint of association, that alcohol both has the capacity to impair driving ability and is highly associated with car crashes. In other words, alcohol consumption is a predictor of risk of car crash independent of all other factors. If you want more information I can dig up a few of the original studies which outlined all of this. However, it should be noted that this is the evidence which is forming the basis for drunk driving laws, and is pretty overwhelming.

Also, as I mentioned before, anecdotally in my experience, I would say that current statistics probably underestimate alcohol's impact on injuries due to car crashes and other trauma. We only test a small portion of trauma patients for blood alcohol levels (there's usually nothing clinically important to be gained and we are not in the business of law enforcement), yet many of these people are clearly intoxicated and/or reek of alcohol.

If a driver that has had a couple of beers swerves and kills a motor-cyclist on his way home can you say without a doubt that alcohol was the reason for the accident?

That's why there are investigations into such things, and again, the issue of "proximate cause" seems to come into play. If after investigation we can say that were it not for the alcohol, that the accident would not have likely occurred, then we can place alcohol on the list of of contributing causes of the crash.

I would love to see a real study (and I'm certain its been done) where peope were given alcohol in a controlled environment and tested to find the exact point that they became dangerous (and how do you define dangerous?) drivers.

This has been done numerous times and most go a ways back such that you will have to go dig up the articles in a library if you want to read the primary studies. Barring that, the NHTSA has some great information on this sort of thing if you dig around their website a bit. I would suggest starting with this:

A Review of the Literature on the Effects of Low Doses of Alcohol on Driving-Related Skills

You also have to keep in mind that this isn't a simple linear BAC = risk relationship. There are all sorts of other factors which come into play as well. People don't behave the same way when they are driving a reaction time simulator with some guy with a clipboard standing over them versus out partying with friends or trying to get home from the bar at 3AM. Additionally, these types of studies typically don't define "dangerous" -- that is usually done by the epidemiologists who look at national crash statistics or police reports for DUI stops and do the sorts of analyses to tease out the risk attributable to alcohol levels (or do meta-analyses like the one I linked to).

[Calm]

I would love to see a real study (and I'm certain its been done) where peope were given alcohol in a controlled environment and tested to find the exact point that they became dangerous (and how do you define dangerous?) drivers.

They even did a mythbuster episode on it once, IIRC.