The effects of Driving Under Influence
You must have certainly heard the saying about having a drink for the road. This was a common enough thing that was told to guests who were leaving and to keep them warm on the way back home. This was culturally accepted until the time that the roads became choc a block with vehicles and accidents increased drastically. What was accepted say 25 years ago is no longer considered good enough. As times change, so do people and it is not good enough to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol and to be driving around. There could be serious implications after getting slapped with a DUI Charge, for example, a DUI can seriously harm your chances of getting into law school.
Citizens have got together and made the demands to ensure that people who are not eligible to drive keep off the wheels. There have been mass movements of mothers, educators, law enforcement agencies and the entire community that is involved in stopping people to getting behind the wheel when they are not legally allowed to. Drugged driving is the most drastic of things that could happen to one.
The very first thing that the alcohol does is to go on and affect the brain and this in turn impairs ones motor skills. This also influences the way the person is able to react, the reaction time taken, reflex actions are slow, hallucinations, and distance is not judged appropriately, hazy vision and no judgment. Now, all of these can be a great danger to one who is driving under the influence of alcohol and drug.
The driver is put to great risk and is actually jeopardizing their life every time they get behind the wheel in this state. Same is the case with the innocent victim or the passengers in the car and the others on the road too. Therefore, drugged driving is considered to be the most dangerous of things on the road. In fact alcohol legislation has become far more stringent than compared to the drug driving laws. This could be because it is not far easier to get the amount of drug levels in the person’s body. The amount of impairment also results in this. Also some drugs are in the blood stream for a far longer time. This could remain in the blood stream even for a week after it was ingested.
Some states such as Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin have passed “per se” laws. This means that it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle if there is any detectable level of a prohibited drug, or its metabolites, in the driver's blood.
The other remaining state laws define "drugged driving" as driving when a drug "renders the driver incapable of driving safely" or "causes the driver to be impaired."
There are trained legal experts and police officers who determine a person’s behavioral patterns and appearance and are able to judge by the trends that follow. There are specific things that are associated with alcohol and drug intoxication and will make a person behave so. After looking at these patterns that emerge, if the officer suspects drug intoxication, a blood or urine sample is submitted to a laboratory for confirmation.
The thing about alcohol is that it is a central nervous system depressant and is among the most abused of drugs in our society. Alcohol is not safe to drink and can be an extremely potent substance. It can go on to cause severe brain damage and the dependence on it increases over a period of time of usage.
Alcohol does not only affect the person when they have reached the permissible legal intoxication level but fare ahead of that. The liver takes about an hour to oxidize the drink. There are several other factors that influence the concentration of alcohol in one’s body. This is the person’s weight, gender, the food that they have consumed and is lining their stomach, how long they have been drinking. Over the years of alcohol consumption the person will need greater quantities to get drunk and intoxicated. The dosage of alcohol increases gradually without the person even realizing it. Imagine this kind of person getting behind the wheels and being a drunken danger on the streets.