Car Insurance
Light drinking 'still dangerous'
Thu, 06 Jul 2006
Drinking alcohol, even when blood alcohol levels are well below the legal limit, can have a seriously detrimental effect on driving ability, causing drivers to fail to see objects in their field of vision, researchers have warned.
Researchers based at the University of Washington in Seattle looked at the effect that alcohol has on a phenomenon known as 'inattentional blindness'.
This is known to occur even among sober drivers, where often very obvious objects are not noticed because of driver concentration on other things.
Indeed, drivers have been known to drive into the side of moving trains, claiming that they simply failed to see them.
The research, published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, looked at the effect that relatively low levels of alcohol intoxication had on this phenomenon, finding that subjects who had been drinking were two to three times more likely to experience inattentional blindness than their sober counterparts.
The findings add further support to the view that to ensure that the roads are as safe as possible, drivers shouldn't drink at all, even below the legal limit, as this can result in a fatal accident or an expensive claim on the car insurance.
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