driving ch 22
When alcohol is combined with anxiety, it can be the start of a vicious circle. Stress and anxiety can lead to alcohol use, and alcohol can increase anxiety and depression. As a result, these drinkers tend to rely more heavily on alcohol and become less able to cope with life's problems.
A driver suffering from anxiety is more likely to drive in a distracted, worried way. Not only will alcohol increase the driver's sensitivity to these emotions, but it will also make the very act of driving much more difficult and stressful, exacerbating the problem further and putting everyone on the road at risk.
Alcohol will not solve your problems. In general, the effects of drinking will be the opposite of what you intended. For instance, when you drink alcohol, your behavior won't be what anyone would describe as "cool." Your speech will be slurred, you'll be unable to form sentences, and you'll stumble, vomit, and pass out. Alcohol may make people laugh at you, pity you, or be disgusted by you—but it certainly won't make them admire you.
Alcohol won't make you forget your problems, either. You'll be more likely to dwell on sad thoughts when drinking, and you'll have more difficulty than normal thinking of ways to solve your problems. Alcohol can continue to cause depressive emotions even after you've finished drinking, and can even contribute to major depressive disorder.
Alcohol doesn't just affect your health. It also affects your mood and personality in ways you can't anticipate. The psychological effects of alcohol and other drugs can be extremely debilitating. When you consume alcohol, you'll experience: Impaired judgment Poor concentration Impaired thinking and reasoning Compulsiveness Exaggerated feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety
As a minor, your organs and your body are not mature enough to fully handle the impacts of alcohol on your system. Moreover, you probably haven't had sufficient life experience to consume alcohol in a mature and responsible way and will be particularly susceptible to its psychological effects. Prohibitions against underage drinking are not arbitrary. They're designed to give you enough time to develop so you'll be physically and mentally prepared to handle alcohol when you start to drink.
When you've been drinking, you won't have the cognitive skills to cope with your emotions adequately. You'll also feel worse, have a harder time focusing, grow impatient quickly, and take longer to notice dangerous situations. Together, these factors can cause you to feel your emotions intensely and it will be impossible for you to maintain a courteous and cautious attitude when you're on the road.
Alcohol is particularly like to heighten aggressive behavior. Many drivers, especially male drivers, have a tendency to view driving as a competitive activity and treat other drivers in an aggressive manner. Under the influence of alcohol, this attitude is amplified. A combination of aggression, loss of judgment, and lack of inhibitions is a recipe for disaster. It can cause a driver to race others, tailgate another vehicle, try to beat a train at a railroad crossing, or pass another vehicle at reckless speeds.
Alcohol and drug use can blind you to the causes of your stress. You may develop a warped understanding of your circumstances and place blame in the wrong places. As a result, you may try to relieve your stress in inappropriate and unsafe ways, or may fail to even realize how your behavior is being affected by stress. This is an especially dangerous attitude to have on the road. It could cause you to harass other drivers, disregard your own driving mistakes, or respond to a frustrating situation recklessly.
Alcohol prevents you from dealing with your emotional problems in healthy and effective ways. When you've been drinking, you're less likely to act rationally and consider what you're doing thoroughly. The more intoxicated you are, the less able you will be to control your emotions. Even if alcohol isn't the thing making you upset, you'll be more at the mercy of your emotions and less able to take advantage of your natural coping mechanisms when you drink.
In the last unit, we discussed how alcohol can cause permanent harm to your body. It's important to realize that alcohol can just as permanently change your emotions, your personality, and your reasoning skills. When you consume alcohol, you may be surprised to find yourself doing things you never would have considered before. This can lead you to feel complex emotions like confusion, guilt, or shame. To avoid grappling with these emotions, you may drink more. Eventually, you may come to rely on alcohol just to cope with the basic stresses of life.
Alcohol use is a widespread phenomenon in the United States. In 2012, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that 52.1% of Americans age 12 or older reported that they were current alcohol users. In the same report, it was found that 31.0% of heavy drinkers 12 or older were also current users of illegal drugs, compared with only 4.2% of those who were not current alcohol users. This suggests that heavy drinkers are about nine times more likely than non-drinkers to abuse drugs as well.
Alcohol impairs your mental faculties in a number of ways. For instance, it can affect: Attention: Your ability to concentrate, especially on multiple things at once, will be diminished. Memory: With a BAC as low as 0.03%, you will start to become unable to store and retain information. Emotions: As you become more intoxicated, you will lose control of your emotions. Aggression: You will become more prone to aggressive behavior, especially in competitive situations
As we've discussed, alcohol and other drugs do not affect everyone the same way. Indeed, depending on the situation and the kind of alcohol consumed, a single person may have wildly different responses to drinking at different times. However, there are some common effects associated with different kinds of alcohol and drug abuse: Alcohol and other depressants can make depression worse, causing feelings of melancholy or despair to deepen and last longer. Stimulants can cause erratic, overactive, and compulsive behavior without any consideration of the consequences. Various kinds of drugs are associated with extreme stress, insomnia, detachment, and fear.
If you become dependent on alcohol, you'll begin to experience unpleasant or painful withdrawal symptoms if you go too long without drinking more. As a result, you may end up drinking in the morning, at work, in your car, or while supervising children. Your life will become oriented entirely around your next drink. If something prevents you from drinking, you'll lash out. Your thoughts will become occupied by your cravings, and the there will be no room for the unique thoughts that once defined you. All that will be left is another stereotypical alcoholic.
As you review the information presented in this unit, consider how to incorporate the following topics into your driving plan. To reduce risk on the road, you must: Recognize the ability of alcohol to so impair your reasoning abilities that you won't be able to judge your own fitness to drive Fulfill your responsibility to reduce risk by never getting behind the wheel when you've been drinking alcohol Realize that the psychological effects of alcohol can impair your ability to perform essential tasks including multitasking and space management Cope with your own negative emotions by dealing with them directly rather than attempting to address them with alcohol Understand the destructive effect of alcohol addiction on your psychology, personality, and ability to act responsibly
Because the SEE IT system relies so heavily on your ability to see the road clearly, you won't be able to manage space effectively when your vision is impaired by alcohol. Every decision you make, including the decision to get behind the wheel, will be based on what you can see, or think you can see, on the road. Yet many of the ways that alcohol affects your vision can be difficult to recognize and you may not even realize that your perceptions are distorted. If you've been drinking, you should assume that your vision has been impaired, no matter how well you think you can see.
Consider the ways that alcohol affects your ability to see the road: The muscles in your eyes control the shape of the lenses to allow you to shift your focus between near and distant objects rapidly. Under the influence of alcohol, these muscles are relaxed, affecting how clearly you can see things and making it more difficult for you to focus on objects, especially at higher speeds. Though they are normally coordinated by the brain, the muscles of each eye work independently. When this muscle coordination is disrupted by alcohol, each eye may be directed at different focal points, resulting in double vision.
Remember, alcohol also affects your: Night vision: Alcohol decreases how well the eyes can control the amount of light entering them, impairing glare resistance and recovery and the ability to discern low-contrast objects. Peripheral vision: The more you drink, the more impaired your peripheral vision becomes, making you less likely to notice situations to your sides. Color distinction: Alcohol can make it difficult to distinguish between colors, potentially confusing you and causing you to miss important warnings.
Even if you could see clearly, you'd still be unable to complete the other steps of the SEE IT system. For one thing, it can be difficult to determine where "search" ends and "evaluate" begins. Both steps require mental fitness as well as visual acuity. Since alcohol affects the brain's ability to sort information, identify risks, and make predictions, drunk drivers can scan the road without understanding what they're seeing, make multiple observations without recognizing how they fit together, and pursue a course of action without consciously making a decision.
You may be tempted to have a drink so others won't give you a hard time. Yet giving into one type of pressure will not help you escape from people who want to influence your behavior. Once you've demonstrated that you're impressionable, others will recognize that they can manipulate you and make you do things even if you don't want to. Every time you give in, it will become harder for you to stand up for yourself in the future.
If you want people to respect you, know your own mind. By understanding your own desires and motivations, you can prevent yourself from doing something that you feel uneasy or concerned about. Don't let others actively or passively bully you into drinking. Only by standing up to people who try to pressure you will they come to understand that you're fine without they're approval and their attempts to influence you have no power. Eventually others will leave you alone—or even admire you for your convictions.
If your choice to drink is motivated by the reasons we've just discussed, you'll be making a decision that's truly motivated by no real reason at all. While drinking is something that responsible adults can enjoy in moderation for its own sake, no reasonable person has ever thought that alcohol is a good way to solve a problem.
If you're willing to drink for foolish reasons, you're probably not responsible enough to drive. You may deal with complicated situations on the road by driving recklessly, taking shortcuts, ignoring other road users, and disregarding the potential risks of your actions. Ultimately, you may end up solving all your problems in the worst way possible: if you're killed in a collision, you'll never have to worry about anything again.
Remember, alcohol is a poison and it has toxic effects on your body as well as your mind. What could be more foolish than becoming so dependent on a toxic substance that your body comes to rely on it to function properly? As a person becomes more emotionally dependent on something so obviously destructive to his or her health, he or she must begin to rationalize the addiction or simply choose not to think at all. As his or her ability to reason deteriorates, the drinker becomes more susceptible to the influence of extreme emotions.
In Unit 17, we discussed how different forms of stress can affect your performance as a driver. For example: Increased nervousness and anxiety can make you worry excessively, drive too slowly, or attempt to avoid dangers that don't exist. Depression and general distraction can make you miss turns and exits, forget to check blind spots or signal, or fail to observe the situation on the road. Irritability can cause the driver to overreact to minor delays and mistakes, leading to aggressive and reckless driving.
Alcohol can amplify your emotional distress, affecting your performance behind the wheel: Anger can cause you to see other drivers as your enemies, and can make you drive in ways that are designed to upset or offend others. Impatience can cause you to make unsafe decisions about lane changes, passing other vehicles, running red lights and stop signs, and many other things. Sadness can distract you from the road and delay your judgment and reaction time. Worry can also be very distracting, causing you to spend mental energy thinking about problems other than those in front of you.
In most normal situations, you can deal with strong emotions by sorting out your thoughts, determining what is bothering you, and choosing to ignore it to the best of your abilities. Any drug or any amount of alcohol has the potential to worsen any type of emotional distress.
Positive Ways to Cope As a teenager, the problems you face may seem insurmountable and it may feel as though you'll never be able to overcome them. The truth is, most problems are temporary, and all you need to solve them is a little more experience, perspective, and maturity. Dealing with your problems in an intelligent and healthy way won't just improve your life and make you less likely to use alcohol as a crutch, it will also make it easier for you to focus on and enjoy the act of driving.
Instead of drinking, follow these simple strategies to help you cope with your problems: If you're burdened by sad, anxious, or pessimistic thoughts, talk about them with a friend, family member, or other person that you trust. Another person can offer you sympathy and understanding, and may have a perspective on your problem that you haven't considered. If you don't feel comfortable talking about your problems, try writing about them. Putting your troubles into words can help you think about them more clearly. If you're feeling overwhelmed by strong emotions, cry if you have to. It's better to relieve the tension you're feeling in private rather than taking it out on others when you're on the road.
In fact, if you drink to avoid your problems, the situation and your own ability to cope with it will only deteriorate, and eventually you may reach the point where there seems to be no way out. Since alcohol will also impair your ability to evaluate risk, your desperation could cause you to do something incredibly dangerous and reckless. If you actually want things to get better, you must be willing to confront your problems directly.
It's equally foolish to drink to conform to social expectations and avoid feeling pressured by others. There will always be people who try to pressure others into dangerous activities like drinking, smoking, or driving too fast. Sometimes these people want others to act like them, and sometimes they simply want to force others into an uncomfortable situation.
Alcohol's effect on judgment can make even basic driving tasks difficult, even among experienced road users: a BAC as low as 0.02% can adversely affect the judgment of bus drivers trying to guide a bus through a narrow passage. Young, less experienced drivers are particularly affected by a loss of reasoning skills. Because their self-imposed restraints are less developed, it can be easy for an intoxicated young driver to lose his or her inhibitions and drive in an extremely reckless way.
Memory Alcohol damages your ability to store and retain information, even with a BAC as low as 0.03%. Not only will your short-term awareness of the road around you be affected, but your ability to consider the situation in the context of your long-term driving experience will also be weakened. If you can't remember what you've seen and what you're doing, you may forget where you're going, forget what lane you're supposed to be in, forget what street you just passed, or forget that you're in the middle of a turn.
Experience: A person with less experience will be less able to deal with being impaired and less likely to realize when he or she is too drunk to drive. Fatigue: Alcohol acts much more quickly on a person who's physically or mentally tired. Medications: When combined with prescription or over-the-counter drugs, alcohol can have amplified or unpredictable effects. Illness: If your immune system is already compromised, drinking alcohol can be especially dangerous Psychology: Alcohol can have severe effects on a person suffering from depression or other psychological problems.
Moreover, the way a person responds to alcohol is influenced by his or her degree of psychological tolerance. As we've discussed, over time, a person who drinks regularly will need to consume greater amounts of alcohol to achieve the same effects. These drinkers can develop psychological mechanisms to mask the effects of heavy alcohol use. They may avoid activities that might reveal their impairment or learn to recognize and compensate for alcohol's effects on their emotions. Conversely, they may begin to drink more to express emotions that they suppress in everyday life.
Attention and Focus Alcohol reduces your ability to pay attention to your surroundings and focus on particular objects, situations, or other road users. Drunk drivers tend to stare straight ahead without checking around them for cross traffic or pedestrians. Concentrating on multiple situations is especially difficult for impaired drivers, even when they've had only a small amount of alcohol. For instance, a drunk driver may have to focus so hard on staying within his or her lanes during a turn that he or she forgets to activate the appropriate signal.
Remember, drivers must divide their attention between a great number of things, including other road users, weather conditions, traffic control devices, and vehicle controls. For an intoxicated brain, braking, steering, and scanning the road simultaneously can be too much to handle. With decreased focus, it will take you longer to notice when something needs your attention, longer to remember what you should do, and longer to shift between tasks. As a result, when you notice a potentially dangerous situation, it may take you so long to react that you'll be unable to avoid a collision.
Sense of Speed Alcohol adversely affects your ability to judge your absolute speed as well as your speed relative to other drivers on the road. Moreover, due to the other mental effects of intoxication, you're less likely to remember to check your speedometer regularly. You may feel as though you're driving safely at 35 mph when you're actually travelling faster than 60 mph. You may even think that you're driving with the flow of traffic only to realize too late that you're about to hit the car in front of you!
Sense of Distance Under the influence of alcohol, you'll be less able to judge the distance between objects, causing you to make turns that are too wide or too sharp, misjudge braking distances, or collide with another car when you attempt to change lanes. Because alcohol affects your depth perception, you'll find it harder to determine how far you are from other vehicles and objects on the side of the road. As a result, you may crash into a tree before you have time to realize that it was much closer to the road than you thought!
If you're physically or mentally tired, you'll be much more sensitive to alcohol's effects. The depressant qualities of alcohol can combine with fatigue to make you overwhelmingly sleepy. As a result: Your alertness to your surroundings will be severely diminished. You'll be less vigilant for hazards and changing road conditions. Your perception and judgment will be weakened further, making you less aware of what you see and hear and less able to find meaning in those things you do perceive. Your vision, physical coordination, and reaction time will all be impaired. You may be unable to focus, especially sensitive to light, and clumsy and slow when using vehicle controls.
Some people drink because they want to seem "cool". Some drink because they want to forget about their problems. Others drink so they aren't ostracized for not drinking. People drink for many reasons, but almost all of them are misguided. Often, people simply feel pressured into drinking, if not by anyone in particular, then by the expectations of their peers and of society. Before you put alcohol in your body, remember that you always have a choice. The only one who can force you to have a drink of alcohol is you.
When drinkers develop tolerance to alcohol, they may not appear drunk even if they are greatly impaired. As a result, they may seem more mentally and emotionally fit than they actually are and think that it is safe to keep drinking even when they're already dangerously intoxicated. Some people think that developing tolerance helps them handle alcohol better. In fact, it puts them more at risk of a drunk driving crash: research has shown that drinkers with a high degree of tolerance are no better able to deal with driving emergencies than other drinkers.
Something else that many drinkers fail to realize is that a person's tolerance for alcohol will only increase for so long. For a while, the liver will try to work overtime to eliminate the added alcohol in the system. Eventually, however, the liver will become scarred by the strain and unable to filter alcohol efficiently, making the drinker more susceptible to potentially fatal levels of intoxication.
Alcohol significantly slows your reaction time. Depending on the circumstances, reaction time can be classified as simple or complex. The time it takes to respond reflexively to an immediate situation, such as hearing a gunshot or touching a hot stove, is known as simple reaction time. The time it takes to choose the best of several potential responses to a situation is known as complex reaction time. For instance, a complex reaction time is required when you need to decide whether to brake, steer right, steer left, or perform another action when a car ahead of you stops suddenly. Research has shown that a BAC of 0.04% to 0.08% affects complex reaction time much more than simple reaction time. As a result, an intoxicated novice driver may respond quickly but in an unsafe way.
The SEE IT space management system is one of the most important tools you have for keeping yourself safe when you're on the road. However, when you've been drinking, each step of the system will become harder to perform: Alcohol causes visual impairments and makes you more likely to stare straight ahead, making it difficult for you to search effectively. Because alcohol affects your judgment and makes you more likely to underestimate risk, you won't be able to evaluate the road properly. You lose the ability to control your muscles precisely when you're intoxicated, which can cause you to execute maneuvers poorly.
Finally, even if you manage to properly search and evaluate the road, you'll have difficulty executing maneuvers correctly: Your muscle movements will be clumsy, leading you to weave across the roadway, brake too hard or not hard enough, and steer in unsafe ways. Your hand-eye and foot-eye coordination will be disrupted, causing you to use vehicle controls earlier or later than you should. Your response time will be slowed, making it difficult to avoid a hazard even if you notice it in time.
Throughout this course, we've discussed the importance of being in a good mood whenever you get behind the wheel. Driving is not something you can do safely when you're angry, agitated, or anxious. To be a safe and responsible driver, you must have a positive attitude towards driving. If you can't respond courteously to other road users or apply your knowledge of the driving task correctly, you'll place everyone on the road, including yourself, at risk.
If you've consumed alcohol, don't think that you'll be able to drive safely just because your vision is clear or your reflexes seem normal. By the time you start experiencing significant physical effects, your judgment will already be too impaired for you to make the right choices when you drive. Nothing can save you from your own bad decisions! If you've been drinking and you hear yourself say, "I'm sober enough to drive," you should realize your judgment is already dangerously impaired. When you've consumed alcohol, there's only one driving strategy that will reduce risk: don't drive!
To be a safe driver, your mind needs to be alert at all time. Yet when you drink, the cognitive capacities you need as a driver will be clouded, confused, and reduced. From the moment alcohol touches your lips, your mood will be altered and your judgment will begin to deteriorate. As you drink more, your behavior will become exaggerated and you will become less alert and able to react quickly. Eventually, your vision will become blurred, your memory will become hazy, and you'll have less ability to control your emotions.
Vision When your vision is blurred, you'll find it hard to discern details both on objects close to you, like your dashboard, as well as on the road ahead, like traffic lights. Alcohol has particularly adverse effects on the your ability to observe objects in motion, even when your BAC is low and your vision does not otherwise seem blurred or impaired. Because of the speeds involved with driving, it can be almost impossible to evaluate the road effectively when you've been drinking.
To determine how alcohol consumption affects driving skills, researchers have conducted driving simulations in which they tested the same drivers while sober and with predetermined amounts of alcohol in their systems. They determined that the drivers in their study were more likely to: Overreact to skids Brake rather than steer away from a potential hazard Increase their speed unconsciously Misjudge the position of their car in the lane
As you become addicted to alcohol or a drug, your personality will begin to change and your priorities will shift, possibly without you even realizing it. Things you once thought important, like your family, your performance at school, or your career goals, will seem meaningless as cravings for alcohol come to occupy your thoughts. You may even come to feel that getting drunk or high is more important than eating, sleeping, bathing, or taking care of yourself. You could end up so indifferent to your own health that you end up gravely ill—or even dead.
When you abuse alcohol or drugs, you can become selfish, egotistical, irritable, or angry about your life and everything around you. You'll find it more difficult to control your moods and emotions and may do self-destructive things you wouldn't normally have done. Eventually, friends and family may find it difficult to recognize who you are and distance themselves from you. Even if they try to help you, you may become defensive and further alienate yourself. You'll tell yourself you don't care, and drink more to make up for the relationships you've lost.
Being a safe driver requires you to employ a large number of safe driving strategies. In order to reduce risk, you must be able to: Remember to wear your seat belt, keep your headlights on, follow all applicable traffic laws and traffic control devices, and maintain a safe distance from other road users Apply defensive driving strategies such as adjusting your speed for conditions, keeping your hands at the 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 positions of your steering wheel, positioning your vehicle to maximize your visibility, and employing a space management system Pay attention to the maintenance of your vehicle, road, weather and traffic conditions, the actions of other people using the road, and your own physical and mental fitness to drive
When you consume alcohol, you'll be less able to perform the tasks required of you as a driver and less likely to remember your responsibility to reduce risk. For instance, intoxicated drivers tend to forget to perform even the most basic tasks like turning on or dimming their headlights, activating their turn signals, or fastening their seat belt. As a result, they're more likely to be involved in a collision, and more likely to be seriously injured as a result.
Even small amounts of alcohol can degrade your psychological fitness to drive. Your judgment and reasoning, awareness and comprehension of the road, concentration, coordination, and reaction time will all be harmed if there's alcohol in your system. Even if your motor skills and ability to search and evaluate the road were not compromised, alcohol's effect on your decision-making skills would be enough to make you a dangerous driver. If your ability to identify and choose to execute the safest action is impaired, you won't even realize when you're putting lives—even your own life—in danger!
When you drink, you're more likely to: Underestimate the degree of risk in your actions and disregard the physical laws that govern driving Overestimate your own abilities and the capabilities of your own vehicle while refusing to accept responsibility for your own bad decisions React to your emotions rather than consider the consequences of your decisions Become distracted by passengers, devices in your car, or a situation on the road
Just as it can adversely affect the physical and mental skills you need to perform the various tasks that go into driving safely, alcohol can also have a negative effect on your mood. If you've been drinking, it may be impossible for you to maintain a positive driving attitude. Remember, when you're behind the wheel, you must be able to devote your full attention to the task of driving. If you're already feeling stressed or tired, alcohol will only make you more sensitive to your problems and completely eliminate any chance you had of driving safely.
While the physical effects of alcohol are relatively consistent, drinking can alter different people's moods in radically different ways. Alcohol's effects on mood and emotion can be influenced by: Personality: Alcohol will affect outgoing people, shy people, competitive people, reckless people, and other types of people differently. Mood: The mood a person is in when he or she starts drinking will affect how he or she responds to alcohol. For instance, anger affects the same part of the brain as alcohol, so if you drink when you're angry, you'll feel both your anger and the effects of alcohol more strongly.
Consider how alcohol affects your ability to perform essential driving tasks: With a BAC of at least 0.02% to 0.05%, your information processing skills will be reduced and you'll be less likely to notice traffic control devices, vulnerable road users, and important information on the dashboard. With a BAC of at least 0.02% to 0.06%, you'll start to feel drowsy, increasing the chances that you'll doze off or experience a microsleep while driving, especially if it's late at night and you're already fatigued.
With a BAC of at least 0.02% to 0.08%, you'll become less capable of multitasking as you drive. The more things you have to deal with, the more likely you'll forget about something important or make a mistake when you have to perform a maneuver. With a BAC of at least 0.05% to 0.08%, your ability to keep your vehicle in your lane (which is known as tracking) will decrease. Because you'll have less muscle control, you'll be more likely to steer erratically, cross into another lane, run off the road, or attract the attention of a police officer.
There are several reasons that the effects of alcohol on your psychology can quickly spiral out of control. Alcohol is considered a gateway drug. Once a person starts drinking, he or she becomes more likely to abuse other drugs. Because anyone over 21 can buy large amounts of alcohol from any number of stores, and because images of alcohol are culturally pervasive, it's easy to get into the habit of drinking. People who drink more are more likely to seek the company of other drinkers and avoid those who abstain from alcohol. Alcohol causes people to ignore risks, so drinkers tend to become less concerned about its effects the more they drink. Alcohol abuse is not sustainable. The more reliant on alcohol you become, the harder it will be to overcome your dependence.
You may wonder why some people who drink become addicted to alcohol, while others are able to control their habits responsibly. The chances a person will become dependent on alcohol are informed by: Genetics: A person with a history of addiction and dependence in his or her family is more likely to face similar problems. Environment: If someone grows up where alcohol is consumed freely, he or she will come to see that behavior as normal. A person whose parent uses alcohol to cope is more likely to model that behavior when he or she faces problems as well. Peer groups: The more a person spends time around drinkers, the more likely he or she becomes to adopt similar habits. Only rarely is a person influenced by only one of these factors. Most drinkers are affected by a combination of these forces.
Reasoning and Judgment Alcohol hampers your ability to use reasoned thinking. With poor reasoning skills, you won't be able to evaluate risk properly or react quickly, and you'll be more likely to disregard traffic laws and the safety of others. For instance, when you see that you're approaching a red light, you might convince yourself that you can avoid cross traffic as long as you go fast enough.
` As your ability to reason deteriorates, you'll become unable to judge how to react to situations on the road. With impaired judgment, you can't anticipate what other road users are going to do and you may underestimate how risky your behavior is given current road and weather conditions. Not only that—you won't even be able to recognize and respond to your own intoxication properly!
