Binge drinkers have a disconnect between assessing their driving abilities and reality

The authors hypothesize that binge drinkers lack an “internal sedation cue” that allows an accurate assessment of their driving abilities after drinking.

“Furthermore,” said Marczinski, “the dose of alcohol we gave resulted in a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08g percent, which is the legal limit for driving. If these binge drinkers had been driving and were stopped by police, they would have been prosecuted for impaired driving.”

Marczinski said that these findings might help policy and law makers understand why the standard message of “don’t drive when your BAC reaches .08 or more” may be not be as straight forward to follow as one might think.

“A BAC of .08 may feel differently depending on how much you typically drink,” she said. “If you often drink to get drunk, as many young people do, you will be very bad at determining whether or not you should drive. Thus, prevention programs where college students are stopped leaving bars and given a breathalyzer reading may help many individuals learn what .08 feels like. In addition, we might also entertain a lower BAC limit for driving. Many European countries have had great success in decreasing impaired driving rates and related accidents by lowering their BAC limit to .05.”

There is some good news, however. “While a small portion of young binge drinkers may develop serious problems with alcohol, most of them will mature out of this behavior,” she said.

Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, “Effects of Alcohol on Simulated Driving and Perceived Driving Impairment in Binge Drinkers,” were: Emily L.R. Harrison of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University; and Mark T. Fillmore of the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky. The study was funded by the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation.