ALCOHOL AND DRIVING

[Music] wait don't twist that dial the trouble is not in your set you are looking at me through the eyes of a drunken driver and i may be a pedestrian this may be the way the driver would see that pedestrian drinking and driving they do not mix what does alcohol do to a driver well it makes the good driver bad and it makes the bad driver worse and yet many of us say oh it's perfectly all right to take just a little bit you know just a tiny bit results of alcohol are important in driving important for you to know this is what alcohol can do to us as drivers can affect some of the very important characteristics that drivers should have some that we have mentioned perception coordination and reaction time these are some of the things that alcohol affects it dulls perception it impairs judgment it distorts coordination and it slows reaction time this is what alcohol can do to you as a driver perfectly right to take just a little bit he doesn't know this is one of the problems of alcohol most people do not know much about the effects of alcohol on drivers i have a friend my friend john who is one of these good people who just take a little bit an occasional small drink but john like most of you ability you see alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream it does not need to be digested that means it reaches the brain rather rapidly through the bloodstream and it enters the brain from the outside in somewhat like a sponge the alcohol enters from the outside goes down into the brain that means that it affects first the outermost parts of the brain and these are the parts that control our power of self-criticism our power of judgment many other controls of this kind that are so important to driving controls that we cannot afford to lose as drivers certainly alcohol then has that kind of a physiological reaction on it it slows that reaction time it sells these control centers it also has a psychological reaction quite often alcohol causes the person to develop false confidence this is extremely dangerous in driving overconfidence in their driving ability something they would not ordinarily have at all as we can see here even john can become overconfident and along with this we have a loss of caution and this loss of self-criticism loss of caution think of that what this will do to you in driving and the loss of self-criticism how important they are to us as part of our driving function very important now a good many people consider themselves as social drinkers did you ever hear that term social drinker the person who just drinks to be sociable just has one or two however this same social drinker has this kind of a philosophy about drinking and driving he believes that the drunks cause all of the accidents if you ask him yes the drunks cause all of the accidents not the social drinkers but the drunks but even the smallest drink even that first drink has a tendency to release your inhibitions your natural inhibitions and to relax your moral code what's that going to mean to you when you're driving it may mean that you have a little heavier foot than usual on that accelerator it may mean that you take the right-of-way when you don't have the right-of-way it may mean that you pull out the pass when ordinarily you wouldn't consider it under the conditions how important all of these things are in driving and they may all build up into a kind of a superman complex may cause you to have a superman complex what can this do to you as a driver so it can put you into trouble very rapidly now of course people differ in their capacity and their tolerance to alcohol has to do with your mental attitude as you drink has to do with their physical capacity the person who is drinking these are things that that vary considerably and yet we must dangerous as far as driving is concerned we believe that even the first small drink can cause a difference in the person's driving ability tests have shown that even this small amount can affect their ability to control the car can affect our ability to see and we've said that vision is important in driving it may blur their vision or it can cause the visions to be narrowed they do not see to decide as much as they ordinarily would and we've mentioned that it can slow reaction time considerably if reaction time is slowed of course a situation such as this may become extremely dangerous even the first small drink can alter your will to drive safely and this is a most important consideration i think most of you have heard the terms being under the influence just what is meant by being under the influence well this this term actually varies the meaning of this term from state to state but let me read you a general description that applies in most places [Applause] if the ability of the driver of an automobile has been lessened in the slightest degree by the use of intoxicating liquors then the driver is deemed to be under the influence of intoxicating liquor now you notice it said lesson to the slightest degree well let's classify some of these drinking drivers let's see just what we mean when we say that from the slightest degree to the the most degree first we have the driver who has downed a few he knows the effects of alcohol and he tries to compensate for these effects in his driving maybe successfully maybe not down to few tries to compensate and there's the driver who is under the influence definitely under the influence there's no compensation here some get by some don't another type is the driver that is well under the influence they do not blend with traffic and they seldom know what hit them and finally the absolute drunken driver belligerent stupid completely oblivious to the traffic about it remember from the beginning to the end of these categories your driving efficiency is reduced now what is the actual relationship of alcohol to traffic accidents the relationship is considerable in cleveland ohio a study was made and the study showed this they they took actual blood tests from victims of fatal accidents and the blood test showed that 54 of the people involved in fatal accidents had been drinking this is certainly indicative of the place of alcohol in the total traffic accident people drink and drive they're skeptical about it but in toronto canada another study was conducted in which the accident car was compared to four cars in same type situations the same kind of comparison showed that four to eight beers or cocktails in one hour increase the chances for an accident three times that eight drinks of whiskey or beer in an hour increased that accident ten times that accident chance you were ten times more likely to have an accident if you were drinking rather heavily in other words but what can we do about all of this one important factor of course is enforcement we must the law is concerning drunken driving there is tremendous variation in these laws and in the enforcement of these laws from state to state in fact from country to country recently in austria a drunken driver was fined eleven hundred and fifty dollars and in one of the soviet satellite countries a driver who had been drinking and was involved in a fatal accident was executed now this may be a little drastic perhaps we don't want to go this far but we must have enforcement and we must have laws concerning drinking and driving surveys show that actually this variation is quite tremendous from state to state in this country we find that in some states for the first conviction of drunken driving the penalty is merely the cost of court a minimum no fine no jail no suspension in other states we may find that the license is suspended and it may be suspended from absolutely no days up to three years for the first conviction in other states we find that there is a fine for the first offense the fine may range again from nothing to three hundred dollars another part of the enforcement picture of course is the jail sentence and the variation there for the first conviction for drunken driving ranges from zero to three days so there is a considerable variation from state to state one of the problems is getting a conviction of drunken driving through the court the problem here is this if there's a jury case involved the jury is usually sympathetic toward the person who is on trial and remember when the police arrested this drunken driver he looked like this but by the time that he was brought to court two or three weeks or perhaps longer later he looked like a an upstanding citizen he looked entirely different in fact he looked something like this this is one of the reasons that it is difficult to get convictions for drunken driving and yet it can be done one of the ways it can be done is through the use of chemical tests there are many kinds of chemical tests and these tests are in use in some part of all the 48 states we have here one of the types of chemical tests this one called a breathalyzer in all of these chemical tests the alcohol is measured through the breast the blood or the urine in this particular case we are measuring the breath in the breathalyzer the person being tested blows his breath through this tube we have just had a person who had been drinking blow his breath in here and we are going to run the test to show you how it operates we're prepared now to analyze that breath let's see how it looks we find that we have down here in the bottom the breath running through a solution to determine the alcohol content in the breast very soon we will test on our gauge here to determine whether alcohol is present or not and to what degree according to how this indicator will move remember one thing about these tests however and that is that they help the innocent as well as the guilty actually we may prove a person guilty with these but we also may prove a person innocent with them people under diabetic oma for instance may look very much like they have been drinking may look like a drunken driver and yet not have partaken of alcohol in the least these tests will prove that that person has not been drinking you see now let's look at our test and make the measurement we find that if we press our button here now we get a reading now we must center to our indicator the small dial here on our gates bring it to the center point you see it is coming across now now we have a reading we're prepared to make our reading and determine just what the alcohol content is in this person's breath we make our mark here on the small gay tablet here remove the indicator and we have a reading we find that this individual has about 1700 percent alcohol in the breast for most enforcement agencies at 1500 they will be sure to take the person to trial if he reads somewhere between 5 100 and 15 100 supporting evidence will help to convict that person but if you read if the individual would read at 1500 or above they would believe that the test indicated this person was drunk and would take him to trial on a drunken driving charge the breathalyzer is one of the many types then of chemical tests that can be made and they are accurate to determine if the person has been drinking when he has been arrested on a drunken driving charge and to what extent he has been drinking of course we occasionally find that some people refuse to take the test in one state they have enacted what they call the implied consent law it means this that when the individual gets his driver's license and that license by the way is a privilege and not a right remember that he implies consent to take any test to determine his driving ability well of course these chemical tests are a test to determine determine driving ability if he refuses to take this test then he finds that his license is automatically revoked or suspended bearing in mind that the license is a privilege and not a right we can understand how this law can be put into effect what else can be done to help as far as drunken driving is concerned well we can make a three-pronged attack on drunken driving you can make it in your community or you can see that it is made in your community we can make this attack through education through proper legislation as we've pointed out and then through enforcement of that legislative legislation education such as we see what we're having right here legislation a chemical test and maybe a law requiring tests of all drivers involved in traffic accidents and then enforcement perhaps fines suspension or jail sentences a three-pound attack on drunken driving it can be done it has been done in detroit michigan in 1941 47 people were killed in drunken driving accidents and 1774 injury accidents occurred because the driver had been drinking detroit decided to do something about it they decided on first educating the people that something was going to happen if they would drink and drive and then secondly doing something about it and they did it this way they put these signs up about town particularly in the taverns pointing out that drunk drivers are going to jail they advertise the facts and then they did send those drunk drivers to jail what have been the results of this campaign well since 1946 in any given year they have never had more than seven people killed from drunken driving accidents and their average is about 130 injury accidents per year caused by drunken driving this represents a 92 percent reduction makes sense doesn't it it's certainly worthwhile now there's another problem in drinking and driving it's a smaller problem and yet it does exist the problem of the teenager that unusual teenager not the average woman the unusual one who does drink and drive what causes this we know that teenagers actually dislike the taste of alcohol well why do they drink they drink probably because of social pressure because of the pressure of their group for them to drink and yet you see the teenager has an excellent reason for not drinking when he's driving for the good driver doesn't drink and how about the girls in the situation the dates you're out with your escort and he drinks first of all use your influence and believe me you have great influence use that influence to stop him from drinking if you can't stop him don't ride with me call your parents they'll be glad to pay the taxi fee or to drive over and pick you up i'm sure it's good rule for all of us to remember don't ride with a drinking driver or you as a as a passenger in the car may be killed just as easily as that driver and you'll find that some insurance companies will not pay on a policy if you are riding with a drinking driver they assume that you have taking the risk risk knowingly you knew he was drinking you took the risk of driving with don't ride with a drinking driver don't condone drinking in your group there's another problem too that's somewhat like drinking driving and yet a little bit different the problem of drugs and drives now we don't mean the drug addict the person who is actually addicted to drugs they seldom are in condition to drive we mean mr average ordinary everyday citizen the kind of drugs that you have in your medicine cabinet the kind of drugs we see here the tranquilizers the sleep resistors the sleep producers the antihistaminic drugs all of these have a very definite effect on driving and yet many many people do not recognize this fact but they should recognize it because it is written on the label of all of these bottles there is a caution written a question that tells you that it affects your driving saying do not exceed recommended dosage if drowsiness occurs do not drive or operate machinery so you have been warned you've been warned on the label of the drugs you've probably been warned by your doctor or your pharmacist most of these drugs tend to produce drowsiness when this happens of course you can't do a good job of driving so remember if you find it necessary to take these drugs don't drive now let's see what we've said about drinking and driving we've said that we can control we can reduce it and we can do it through education to legislation through enforcement these are the three-pronged attacks these are the three prongs of the attack we've shown that it has been done in other places we know that tests indicate that the person who is drinking even the smallest amount has reduced his ability to drive automatically we must eliminate or reduce these drinking drivers in the traffic pattern we can do it experts indicate that the area of drunken driving is one area in which we could very easily save many lives by having a campaign to control drunken driving many many of these lives that are lost to drivers who have been drinking could be safe the experts also tell us that approximately 50 percent of our fatal traffic accidents involve some form of drinking now 50 percent at the tremendously high figure what are you going to do about it let me read from a clipping that i have that will indicate just what can happen if you don't have a drunken driving campaign in your community a clipping which says and i quote directly from the clipping an automobile driver who swerved head-on into another car on the cross county parkway saturday caused seven deaths and it was found he was intoxicated the medical examiner said laboratory laboratory tests showed that his blood contained nearly twice the quantity of alcohol that indicates intoxication the driver was among the seven killed he had been stopped shortly before the accident for speeding but had been let go enforcement yes enforcement is important in our efforts to stop driving and drinking well how about it is all of this important to you yes it is because that life that may be saved in your community because of a good campaign against drunken driving may be your life you are the public will we have it it's up to you [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you