driving ch 22 – Flashcards

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

` 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!

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.

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 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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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