The legal limit for driving after drinking alcohol is 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100
millilitres of blood, when tested. But there is no sure way of telling how much you can drink before you reach this limit. It varies with person depending on your weight, your sex, if you’ve just eaten and what sort of drinks you’ve had. Some people reach their limit after only three standard drinks.
In fact, your driving ability can be affected by just one or two drinks. Even if you’re below the legal limit, you could be still taken to court if a police officer thinks your driving has been affected by alcohol.
It takes about an hour for the body to get rid of the alcohol in one standard drink. So, if you have a heavy drinking session in the evening you might find that your driving ability is still affected the next morning, or you could even find that you’re still over the legal limit.
In addition, if you’ve had a few drinks at lunchtime, another one or two drinks in the early evening may well put you over the legal limit.
In the test with professional drivers, the more alcohol drinks they had had the more
certain they were that they could drive a test course through a set of movable posts… and the less able they were to do it!
So the only way to be sure you’re safe is not to drink at all.
Alcohol is a major cause of road traffic accidents. One in three of the drivers killed in road accidents have levels of alcohol which are over the legal limit, and road accidents after drinking are the biggest cause of death among young men. More than half of the people stopped by the police to take a breathalyzer test have a blood alcohol concentration of more than the legal limit.
It is important to remember that driving after you’ve been drinking doesn’t just affect
you. If you’re involved in an accident in affects a lot of other people as well, not least the person
you might kill or injure.