We all know that it’s illegal to drive if you’re above the legal drink drive limit, and punishable with severe and long-lasting penalties, but what does that mean for you and your Christmas parties?
The Road Traffic Act states that, in the UK, the alcohol limit for drivers is 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, 35mg per 100ml of breath or 107mg per 100ml of urine.
Even a single drink will affect your driving performance as the brain takes longer to receive messages from the eyes, processing information becomes more difficult and instructions to the body’s muscles are delayed, resulting in slower reaction times. So, you’ll:
- be less alert and less careful, however slowly you drive
- have trouble judging your speed
- be slower to react to hazards
- take longer to stop
There is no safe way to calculate how much alcohol you can drink in order to stay below the limit. Unit guidelines are affected by weight, age, gender, metabolism, stress, food, amount and type of alcohol.
Plus, recent research by road safety charity, Brake, suggests people are still failing to understand that just because you’ve been to sleep, it doesn’t mean that you’re no longer affected by alcohol. You can’t speed up the process with coffee or cold showers, and the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream will depend on two things – the amount you consume over what period of time and the speed at which your body gets rid of it – and will vary in line with the same characteristics as above.
Remember, the only way to stay safe is not to drink any alcohol and, instead, select a designated driver.
Refer to the Direct Gov and Drinkaware websites for further information.
We wish you a very Merry (but safe) Christmas!
