It is common knowledge that driving and drinking never work out well together. Many drunk or tipsy drivers commit endless traffic offenses that predispose other road users, including pedestrians, to potential danger such as accidents. Alcohol consumption, directly and indirectly, affects your overall motor skills in terms of decision making, critical thinking, response to stimuli, and overall coordination. Additionally, your vision could also be compromised, which indirectly exposes you to a higher risk of running into accidents if you are behind the wheel. This post is about the various methods that alcohol can impair your driving abilities.
How Does Alcohol Specifically Affect Your Ability to Drive?
• Alcohol Disrupts Your Comprehension
Driving competently is all about the correct sight and interpretation of all road signs and other related activities. When driving, it is essential to have all of your senses under control. Drinking alcohol denies your eyes their maximum precision in distinguishing various stop signs and signals. This eventually messes with your comprehension of everything else going in and around the road. Moreover, the lack of reliable concentration could result in the inability to properly respond to emergencies – an aspect that threatens your safety on the read.
Alcohol, Poor Judgement, and Loss of Focus
• Liquor Interferes With Your Focus
Alcohol can change your attention from multi-tasking speedily to focusing on a single task very slowly. This drastic change in reasoning messes with your overall ability to concentrate. Moreover, keep in mind the fact that driving involves more than one body part. To fully pay attention when driving, your hands have to be in check, your legs have to coordinate with your hands, and you need your eyes for proper vision. The brain does it all because the hands, legs, and body cannot drive without the mind’s help. Alcohol consumption changes this concentration as well as coordination.
• Liquor Impairs Judgment
Alcohol consumption affects the body in several ways. First, it changes with your reasoning capacity. The brain slows down its activities while your vision becomes slightly blurry. Your ability to make decisions is reduced, and your critical thinking skills and techniques are at their lowest ebb when you are drunk. This is why it is more than risky to attempt driving while under the influence. Once your judgment is impaired, it may be hard to respond appropriately to an emergency or signal on the road.
Low Alcohol Consumption Affects Brain Signals
• Impaired Vision
Alcohol interferes with the functioning of the brain, thereby causing decreased overall visual performance. When drinking, you develop double vision or blurred vision, which is dangerous when it comes to the road. Also, alcohol leads to a slow pupil reaction. With this, it is impossible to react appropriately to the oncoming traffic. What happens is that the brain fails to send proper signals, thus causing the delay of iris constriction and dilation. The worst is alcohol consumption interferes with your peripheral view, which is a crucial aspect while driving. When this happens, you fail to be aware of other surroundings. In brief, you develop a “tunnel’ vision.
• Disrupted Coordination
Typically, the brain is the central organ concerning coordination. Alcohol consumption aims at giving the brain a different sensation. While the intoxication feeling can be pleasurable, the bottom line is it suppresses the function of an organ that controls all the other body parts. Assuming that you are under the influence of alcohol while driving, you will have it difficult coordinating your vision, hands, and legs altogether. During this time, the brain is not functioning as required, thus sending mixed signals regarding the functioning of your body parts. This is why intoxicated folks stagger: alcohol disrupts the connection between the muscle control regions.
Alcohol and Brain Function
• Delayed Reaction
The primary function of the brain is to cause an appropriate body reaction by sending the right neurological signals. Under alcohol consumption, there is decreased connectivity between muscle control and vision. This reduces one’s cognitive ability. Psychology explains that even moderate alcohol consumption causes confusion between different brain areas. While driving under the influence, the chances of an accident are high because it is quite impossible to react to oncoming vehicles, traffic lights, and barriers, etc. Also, one may respond inappropriately due to reduced coordination.
• Drowsiness
This is one of the most dangerous effects of drunken driving. Alcohol contains chemicals which trick the brain into triggering the production of sleep hormones. During consumption, the brain signals the production of melatonin, a sedative-like hormone that relaxes muscles and eases the body into sleep. Drowsiness accounts for a significant percentage of road accidents.
Drunken driving is never a safe idea. The effects of alcohol can have you cause a fatal accident and put your life that those of others at risk. To stay and keep others safe, drink moderately or best avoid alcoholic drinks. Besides, you can have a back-up plan to avoid driving while intoxicated. Call us today at 844-639-8371.