...Drinking While Driving Car COMM/215 January 1, 2014 Drinking While Driving a Car Alcohol is directly responsible for the thousands of deaths and injuries on the roads each year. Drinking alcohol and driving basically do not go together. Alcohol affects alertness, and one’s ability to make fast choices on the road, respond to changes in the surroundings and implement specific, often difficult maneuvers behind the wheel. It is therefore very important for drivers to have a maturity to accept the responsibility of acquiring a license. Alcohol is obviously the highest contributing issue in serious and fatal vehicle crashes, and key issue in groups of vehicle crashes. Despite efforts to deter drunk driving, alcohol- related traffic fatalities still pose a grave and dangerous problem. Why people drink alcohol. . Many people who drink alcohol enjoy the taste of beer, wine, and other kinds of alcohol. Beside the test, people like ethanol because it can make them drunk. for others it is way of life. Many people drink alcohol to avoid the problems in their lives, or to loosen up so that they feel more relaxed or happy when they party. A person whose drinking surpasses the guidelines is at risk of adverse health effects. Damages Caused by the alcohol and the liver Liver is an important organ of the body. Even though this organ is responsible for breaking down alcohol, it is mostly susceptible to alcohol- associated injuries; thus the commonness of diseases of the liver and...
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...Dangers of Texting and Drinking while Driving Ashlyn R. Fellman Western Governors University WGU Student ID# 000298280 Every year there are thousands of fatal car crashes due to distracted drivers. Distracted driving is not only caused from texting and drinking, but from eating, music, children, other people in the car, and even putting on makeup or fixing their hair. There are many laws out there to ban texting and drinking while driving to keep people from harm’s way but there are so few people who actually obey the laws. Research shows that drinking while driving and texting while driving are equally harmful because they both impair the driver’s vision, the driver’s reaction time, and the driver’s concentration and vigilance, all skills needed to prevent millions of accidents, deaths, and injuries every year. The driver’s vision becomes impaired when they look anywhere else but the road and how fast they are going also when they are drunk, their eyes are glazed over and bloodshot. Just one or two drinks in a person’s system affects their nervous system and motor skills. Alcohol slows reaction time and clouds depth perception, vision, sense of touch, coordination, and judgment even when they are not considered legally drunk (Kedjidjian, 1994). Drinking while driving may cause people to become drowsy which is just as dangerous. Drowsy driving makes people fall asleep at the wheel or close their eyes for a few seconds every couple of minutes...
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...Most People would think that drinking and driving is the biggest distraction among drivers, but drinking and driving is the second biggest distraction. According to textinganddrivesafetly.com, "The biggest distraction among drivers is texting."(textinganddrivesafetly.com) Even though drinking and driving is not the biggest distraction, drinking and driving has a punishment much worse that texting and driving. According to Rich Stim, "Getting caught drinking and driving will cost thousands of dollars."(Stim) Rich Stim also said, "Getting caught texting and driving will cost a couple hundred dollars."(Stim) The same law should apply to texting and driving as drinking and driving. The same law should apply because texting and driving distracts...
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...drunk driving accident. The fatal accident that leads to the death of Cari Lightner was a result of drunk driving that causes her mother, Candace (Candy) Lightner’s organization of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was established on September 5, 1980, four months after 13-year-old Cari’s tragic death. The platform was created by Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a way of bringing public awareness of the results of driving while intoxicated and under the influence of drugs. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) also provided support to families and victims of drunk driving. Through the organization, a small group of women who went around the nation providing information and facts about driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. What initially started out as a small group of women quickly caught the attention of the United States Congress. MADD is still active today and has hundreds of chapters across the United States. Social Policies of MADD The overall predicament that led to the establishment of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was due to the individuals who were driving while under the influence of alcohol. Individuals were driving while under the influence of alcohol since the end of prohibition. Evidence provided a link to drinking alcohol and impaired driving. It was a challenge to prove that the accidents were caused as a result of drinking alcohol, and not by faulty automobile equipment. The problem with drinking while...
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...driver. Eric had went out that morning on a bike ride and while he went on a road not far from his home near Santa Maria, California, Eric was killed when a teen driver traveling at 60 miles per hour struck his bike with her truck. Eric was struck and killed by a distracted teenage driver who neither swerved nor braked. It was later revealed by the driver's cell phone records that she was texting just before the crash. Even though people have been told numerous amount of times what not to do while driving such as texting, driving intoxicated, eating,...
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...experimental study is being done to better understand the effectiveness of anti-drinking and driving advertisements on university-aged students. “Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among 16 to 25 year olds, and alcohol and/or drugs are a factor in 55% of those crashes” (Madd, 2013). Increasing the effectiveness of anti-drinking and driving advertisements could be a solution to this critically high mortality rate in young people. The main purpose of this study is to better understand the effect of positive and negative anti-drinking and driving advertisements within different settings and different amounts of times. Literature Review Studies have shown that university aged students are affected by anti-drunk driving campaigns (Cirmaru, Lavack & Markewich, 2007). Some studies have even shown the effectiveness of ads with varying motives (Wickramarachchi, 2013). In this area research falls short on certain factors such as location of these ads and the distance between seeing the ads and duration of the ads’ effect. Study One The first study to take place within this experiment is a 2 by 2 design. The first factor will be message valence being positive vs. negative while the second factor is message setting being an academic setting vs. a relaxed setting. This experiment is designed to test whether university-aged students respond better to positive or negative anti-drinking and driving advertisements in an academic setting, the University, or within a relaxed...
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...467 10/2/2015 Effects of drunk driving on teens and adults In 2011 over 1.2 million people were arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Driving while under the influence is most seen in 21 to 25 years old. I found this information to be interesting because are demographic has a high tendency to drive while being under the influence of alcohol. I’m more interested in the effects of drunk driving on teens and adults because it is something that affects anybody who drives an automobile now a days. There is something you should know about driving under the influence. One of out every three Americans on the road has been involved in an alcohol related car crash sometime in their life time. Those are really bad odds looking at the fact that most Americans are on the road for at one hour per day. I’m very interest to learn more about the effects of driving under the influence on teenagers and adults. Most people who drive under the influence don’t actually realize the harm they can actually cause until the minute after the accident has happened. Most drunk driving incidents can be avoided with just a simple phone call. What drunk drivers don’t seem to understand is they are endangering not just their own life but everyone on the roads with them. For example, “In 2013, a total of 1,149 children fourteen and younger were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes. Of those 1,149 fatalities, 200 (17%) occurred in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. Out of those 200 deaths...
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...weekend with a few beers. While you’re living it up, getting tipsy, you get a call from a friend who’s stuck at home, without a car. You tell your friend you’re on your way to get him, when he asks, “Are you sure you can drive?” you reply, “Oh I’ve only had a few beers, I’m alright.” So you get your keys and head off to your friends house. While you’re driving, you notice you are feeling a little drowsy. You see some headlights that look like they are heading towards you. Then all of the sudden you collide. After everything settles, you realize you are alright. You crawl out of the window and walk towards the other car. Looking through the spider-cracked windshield, you see a woman and her two kids, all dead. In 2005, there were an estimated 16,885 alcohol related fatalities in the U.S. That is over 39% of automobile related fatalities that year. On average, 254,000 people are injured in alcohol related wrecks in a year. After hearing these statistics, you can tell that drinking and driving is a huge issue in America. The dangers of drunk driving effect drivers of America every day. Not only do you have to be responsible enough to control yourself from drinking and driving, you also have to worry about other people that are drinking and driving. Even though you may not wreck while driving drunk, there are other risks involved. When driving while impaired by alcohol, it’s very easy for police officers to notice you. If you are even caught drinking underage, no matter where...
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...Drinking and driving has long been a major issue in today’s modern world and has pretty much coincided a while after the car was invented. Driving impaired means driving while under the influence of alcohol. While alcohol without moderation is a cause for concern, driving while drinking is even worse. The amount of people who get injured or lose their lives is astonishing. Impaired drivers put both themselves and others at risk which why i’ll be arguing against drinking and driving. In this assignment i’ll be discussing what alcohol does to your body, how it affects your decision making and i’ll also be bringing up cases of people who lost their lives while impaired. Before we get into drinking and driving we need to go into...
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...Student corner n°1 Drinking and driving The text October 18, 2011, The NY times Friends Still Let Friends Drive Drunk By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D. On Sept. 15, Matthew Grape, 21, got into the passenger seat of a car with one of his Duke University fraternity brothers. The driver hit a tree, escaping with minor injuries, but killing his dear friend. According to local press reports, the driver was charged with impaired driving. Nearly 11,000 deaths related to alcohol-impaired driving still occur each year in the United States, despite a three-decade surge in anti-drunken driving activism, stricter laws and clever slogans like “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” There are more than 110 million instances of impaired driving each year, according to data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey and summarized in a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How can this still be occurring, and what can be done about it? Back in 1980, when Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed in California by a drunken driver with several previous arrests for driving while intoxicated, including one only two days earlier, there was little public discussion of the topic, even though drunken drivers killed 25,000 Americans annually. Crashes were called “accidents,” and victims were characterized as having been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Police and prosecutors routinely allowed drunken drivers to plead to lesser offenses...
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...the day, even while driving. The most prevalent cause for being on your phone is to socialize with someone else via text. In 2012, there were over 2 trillion texts sent in the US. With more and more individuals having a phone that can send texts, that number has only risen in the past several years. This can only mean that the danger of a car crash because of texting has also increased. Texting while driving is becoming more dangerous every single day and the American populous should be more informed about how bad texting is, the texting laws need to be updated and become stricter, and drivers need to stop getting distracted by their mobile devices. In 2013, there were 1.1 million car crashes caused by a mobile device. Of those 1.3 million wrecks, 424,000 individuals were injured, and 3,154 people lost their lives due to a distraction from their phone or tablet. One out of every four car accidents is caused by texting and driving. There was also another report done in 2013 comparing drinking and driving to texting and driving. The report stated that “Texting while driving is like drinking 4 beers.” Although the person driving might not have consumed any alcohol, the individual has the same likelihood of causing a car crash from 4 beers as texting while driving. After all 50 states had integrated stricter laws regarding drinking and driving, the number of drunk driving fatalities dropped by 25%. If were to have stricter laws regarding texting and driving, we would see a...
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...The Consequences of Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol The consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol could be fatal, or affect a person and their family in a harmful way. Driving under the influences is illegal, irresponsible, and dangerous. One could be arrested, seriously hurt, or even killed, which could affect their family in a major way. If a person plans on drinking, and knows there is a possibility they could end up driving, they should have a designated driver. Drinking and driving is just not a good thing to do. Our goal is to deter young adults not to drink and drive, by educating them on their responsibilities, the destruction that it causes and the consequences. The key to ending drunk driving is to educate young adults on their responsibilities. Drunk driving is a severe offense in every state. An irresponsible person who drinks then drives can affect the lives of many people. People that misuse alcohol inappropriately endanger everyone that is around them, they jeopardize public welfare, and generate a possible bloodshed on highways and streets. Nothing positive can come from a person who drinks and drives. Drunk driving is an issue that is beyond out of control. Society has a responsibility to punish any nuisance that thinks it is okay to drink and then operate a motor vehicle. People need to take control of this rising issue. No one wants to watch people who make wrong choices hinder themselves and others. Offenders need to understand that...
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...objection to the thesis is the common thought that highering the drinking age will lead to lower motor vehicle crashes under the influence. Many health experts and statisticians will say that a lower age lowers motor vehicle crash numbers, but this is purely based off observational data. Current studies on the effect of the minimum drinking age law and motor vehicle collisions are problematic in that there has not been a significant amount of research. This topic opened up more recently with the enactment of the Minimum Drinking Age Act. New studies started up and the current studies use observational data to make conclusions on data trends. However, many of these papers note that the spike in motor vehicle collisions...
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...The drinking age has been a topic of debate ever since an age was established. Many years ago, government said that 21 years old would be the minimum age for drinking. This was fine for a while but later became an issue. People started to think of all the things one can do as an 18 year old, yet still not able to drink a beer. At 18 years old one is considered an adult. They become eligible to serve in the military and yield weapons. Also at 18, one can go out to the store and buy a pack of cigarettes. So why can they still not have a beer. This is where controversy has begun. People believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18. Already in some states it is legal for someone to drink at 18, under some circumstances, but why is it not nationwide?...
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...Texting and Driving: Two Technologies Collide Harry Williams Jr ITT Technical Institute Abstract Texting and driving has become a serious problem in recent years. In 2011, at least 23% of auto collisions involved cellphones. The death rate caused be texting and driving is higher than that of drinking and driving. The financial burden caused be texting and driving affects everyone from the individuals involved to the public services. Penalties are not severe enough to deter drivers from texting. Public awareness of the consequences of texting and driving is not where it should be. In recent years there has been an alarming increase in traffic accidents and deaths related to cellphone usage while driving, the most notable being texting and driving. The purpose of this research is to identify the causes of traffic incidents and to propose solutions to help curb the number of incident and mortality rates caused by this highly dangerous and illegal behavior. In 2011, 23% of all auto collisions involved cellphones. That’s 1.3 million crashes. (Texting and Driving Saety.com/texting-and-driving-stats, 2013) “The minimal amount of time your attention is taken away from the road when you are texting and driving is 5 seconds. If you’re traveling at 55mph, this equals to driving the length of a football field without looking at the road.” (NHTSA, 2009) “A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month found...
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