The University of Adelaide CENTRE FOR AUTOMOTIVE SAFETY RESEARCH

home   /   centre for automotive safety research   /   Publications   /   List   /   Details

Publication Details

TitleThe effect of blood alcohol concentration on light and heavy drinkers in a realistic night driving situation
AuthorsLaurel H, McLean AJ, Kloeden CN
Year1990
TypeReport
AbstractAn experiment was conducted to test the effect of alcohol on actual driving behaviour. An instrumented vehicle was used to record driver performance on 8 laps of a 6 km course at night. Target detection, lane tracking, curve taking and speed regulation were used as measures of performance. Each of the 24 male subjects were tested at BACs of zero, .05g/100mL and .10g/100mL. To examine the possible effects of habituation to alcohol, 12 of the subjects were light drinkers and 12 were heavy drinkers. For 6 of the 7 measures, alcohol was found to be detrimental to driving performance although the effect at .05 was much smaller than that at .10 and failed to reach statistical significance. There was no evidence of any difference between the light and heavy drinkers.
Report Number1/90
PublisherRoad Accident Research Unit
Publisher CityAdelaide
SponsorWorld Health Organization, Collaborating Centre in the prevention and control of road traffic accidents
ISBN0908204159
Page Count21
Notesavailable from CASR library on request

Reference
Laurel H, McLean AJ, Kloeden CN (1990). The effect of blood alcohol concentration on light and heavy drinkers in a realistic night driving situation (1/90). Adelaide: Road Accident Research Unit.


Files Available for Download
CASReffectofBACnighttimedriving201.pdfscanned PDF, OCR'ed