Every time a person gets behind the wheel of his car he is putting himself in a
position to affect everyone and everything around him. Now he can do this in either a
positive or negative way. In general, it is my opinion that most drivers have a negative
effect on their environment while behind the wheel. There are many personal factors that
affect a person’s driving. They are as follows: drugs and alcohol, fatigue, emotions,
aggressiveness, and distractions.
Drugs and alcohol are the most dangerous personal factors to affect one’s driving
ability. Statistics show that nearly fifty percent of all annual traffic deaths are due to
alcohol related crashes. Approximately forty percent of Americans will be involved in
some type of alcohol related crash in their lifetime. These are some pretty staggering
numbers when you sit down and really think about it. So what causes people to drink?
And even more so, why do those that drink end of up driving? There are many different
reasons that people drink alcohol. Probably most people drink because they are in a
social situation where drinking is the thing to do, such as a party or at a bar with friends.
Others drink to loosen up and have a good time; some of those people like to dance at
dance clubs, but they just don’t have the confidence to do it unless they have some
alcohol in their system to “help” them out. In some cases, people drink because they are
depressed or lonely; alcohol is a central nervous system depressant anyway, so it does not
really help those people in any way. It is obvious that there are many different situations
where people drink. Now drinking in itself can be a problem, but what we are dealing
with here is the problem of drinking and driving. Why do people drink and drive? A big
part of it has to do with where one is drinking in the first place. For example, if someone
is at a friend’s house partying and drinking, he would rather leave in his own car totally
intoxicated than take a cab home or hitch a ride with someone else. He really does not
want to have to deal with the problem of how he will get his car back the next day, so he
will take the risk of driving while intoxicated. When referring to “risk,” I am referring to
the chance of damage, injury, or loss. So to put things into perspective, when a person
drives with alcohol in his blood, he is taking the chance of damaging his own and/or
someone else’s property, injuring himself and/or others, or losing something of value to
him and/or someone else, in this case, life itself. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that
people drink and drive, so maybe the question should not be why and where, but rather,
what can be and is being done to prevent or at least decrease it. The government does
what it can to prevent drunk driving, namely by setting a legal limit on how much alcohol
a person can have in his blood and still be safe and legal to drive. In Maryland, the legal
limit is set at 0.07 BAC. BAC is an acronym that stands for Blood Alcohol
Concentration. It is the ratio of alcohol to blood, in other words, it is the percentage of
blood that is alcohol. If a person has a BAC of 0.07, this means that 7% of his blood is
alcohol. Some people wonder why alcohol affects driving so adversely. Simply stated,
alcohol impairs one’s ability to drive because it takes the place of needed oxygen to the
brain, which in turn lowers the effectiveness of that person’s brain power. If 7% of a
person’s blood is alcohol, that means that 7% of his blood is not carrying oxygen to his
brain. The more one drinks, the more he lowers his ability of rational thought. You not
only lose your physical ability to actually control the vehicle, but you also lose the
psychological ability to safely maneuver your vehicle. In Maryland, the legal limit is set
at 0.07 BAC for driving while impaired, anything above a BAC of 0.08 will get you
ticketed for a DUI (driving under the influence). Driving while impaired will get you a
license suspension, but a DUI could result in immediate license revocation or time spent
in jail. Alcohol is a drug and it can cause serious problems when it is placed in an
environment with a vehicle.
The most common drug other than alcohol that is involved in traffic accidents is
marijuana. It affects the human body in many of the same ways as alcohol, but in some
cases it can be worse. The effects of marijuana have been shown to last up to twenty-four
hours after the drug had been used. It causes a person to lose his ability to track the car in
front of him and stay in a given line on the roadway, it also decreases the attentiveness
and alertness of a driver. It affects one’s vigilance and distance judgment. And when
mixed with alcohol the effects are devastatingly increased, this is known as the
synergistic effect. It is when you mix two or more drugs which increases the effects of
both exponentially. Synergism is not only caused by illegal drugs, it can also be caused
by over the counter drugs or prescription drugs. Many people do not heed the warnings
printed on the labels of many OTC medications and consequently put their own lives or
others at risk. Even a simple OTC medication like NyQuil is very dangerous to use if
you know you will be driving. It can cause drowsiness which decreases one’s ability to
stay alert to the driving scene.
Another personal factor that affects one’s driving ability is fatigue. There are
different types of fatigue. Fatigue can be physical, emotional or mental, or illnessinduced. Some of the signs of physical fatigue are as follows: the most obvious being
sleepiness, but there could also be swelling in the hands and feet, or maybe a headache,
or maybe just an aching body. What causes physical fatigue? Any type of physical work
or movement can cause it. One could be fatigued because of a hard day at work or he
could just have finished a grueling sports game, or any type of exercise in general.
Another type of fatigue is mental or emotional fatigue. It is brought on by the exertion of
the brain throughout the day. For example, college students after the week of midterms
or finals are mentally and emotionally drained because of the concentration and stress
that they were exposed to throughout the week while studying for exams. Also one could
be emotionally fatigued after a heated argument with someone, once that adrenaline hits
the blood stream it gives one a burst of energy, but after that energy is gone one feels
totally drained and fatigued. The other type of fatigue is that which is brought on by
illness. If a person is ill and bed ridden for a while or they just haven’t felt good, his
body has been working hard at fighting off the bacteria or virus that causing the illness.
As a result, he does not have the energy required to maintain his daily routine. All
fatigue affects one’s ability to drive. If one is physically fatigued, keeping in mind that
illness-induced fatigue has the same affects, drivers are at risk of falling asleep behind the
wheel, and we all know that dozing off while driving is asking for an accident to happen.
When speaking of mental or emotional fatigue effects, the scope is a little bit different.
These do not necessarily cause physical driving problems, but rather the inability of the
brain to function properly while driving. One needs to be able to concentrate and be
attentive while driving, and mental fatigue just takes away that ability. You can’t think
clearly or process information as quickly as is needed. If you don’t have the ability to be
attentive and process the driving scene, you won’t be able to search, evaluate, and
execute with precision. When a person is driving, he needs to be searching the scene
ahead for motor vehicles, non-motorized user, road conditions, and traffic control
devices. If he doesn’t have the ability to scan his environment for these four search
categories, he is seriously diminishing his chances of driving safely. After searching
those areas, he has to have the ability to concentrate and evaluate what he is seeing;
evaluation is a critical step in the driving process. And finally one needs to be able to
execute a decision based on his searching and evaluating skills.