December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month, where advocates promote safer driving. There are many situations where drivers get behind the wheel under the influence. Read more about National Impaired Driving Prevention Month.
What is National Impaired Driving Month?
Every year, thousands of people die on American roadways because of impaired driving. Personal injury is also a problem. National Impaired Driving Prevention Month is a remembrance of victims of impaired drivers. It is a commitment to impaired driving education and advocating for stricter laws.
What is Impaired Driving?
Impaired driving comes in different forms, but all cause personal injury or fatalities. Driving while impaired is from substance abuse, medical issues, aging, and distracted driving.
DWI/DUI
The most common forms of impaired driving are preventable. Alcohol and drug abuse are the top causes of impaired driving. Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) or Driving Under Influence (DUI) involves substance abuse.
DWAI
Driving When Ability is Impaired, in some states, is a lesser charge of DUI/DWI. DWAI can still have serious legal repercussions and deadly consequences. DWAI is not interchangeable with DUI/DWI, which are separate legal categories.
Operating While Impaired (OWI)
Operating While Impaired (OWI), is a finer differentiation of DUI/DWI. A person could be alcohol or drug-impaired in a car parked on the roadside and present an impaired hazard. A driver under OWI is still in operation of the vehicle at the roadside, even though the vehicle is not in motion.
Texting and Driving
Illegal driving while impaired is not limited to drug- or alcohol-impaired driving. According to the NHTSA, 660,000 drivers, each day, use their cell phones while operating vehicles. This leads to 400 deaths a year from texting and driving. Why? Because of how short of a time it takes for someone to drive into danger reading a text. In the time to read a text, a driver could drive about the length of a football field. Texting while driving is impaired driving, and the costs of texting impaired driving is as lethal as driving under the influence.
Drowsy Driving
Ordinary drowsiness from not getting enough sleep can cause impaired driving. According to the Sleep Foundation, drowsy driving is equal to having blood alcohol levels. After 18 hours without sleep, reaction time, alertness, ability to multi-task, and hand-eye coordination equal a 0.05 percent blood alcohol content. Twenty hours of lacking sleep are comparable to a 0.08 percent blood alcohol content. For a full 24 hours awake, a driver’s impairment is equal to a blood alcohol content of 0.1 percent.
Emotion-Based Impairment
Being emotional on the road can cause impaired driving. “Road rage” is where anger at someone who cuts you off can make you lose your focus and cause impaired driving. Getting distracted by kids in the back seat, being upset or happy can cause you to lose focus on what you are doing on the road. Drivers who manage their emotions while driving are safer.
Other Causes of Impaired Driving
Impaired driving not only means driving under drug or alcohol influence, or texting. Some reasons for driving impaired are medical conditions such as narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a medical condition of daytime sleepiness, sleep attacks, and sleep paralysis. Hallucinations can result from narcolepsy. Cataplexy, a condition associated with narcolepsy, has symptoms where strong emotion or laughter causes muscle weakness while the person remains conscious. Other physically impaired situations can cause personal injury or death related to old age. Older people have trouble reacting to changing traffic. They can have mental confusion, higher levels of anxiety while driving, and diminishing eyesight and hearing ability.
How Being Impaired Affects Driving
Being impaired from drug, alcohol, medical conditions, age, or drowsiness can cause problems with many aspects of driving. Some impaired driving problems are:
- Slower reflexes and reactions to driving situations
- Drowsiness due to fatigue or substance abuse
- Poor coordination affecting steering, parking, and braking
- Lack of reaction to driving situations and emergencies
- A decrease in rational decision-making, such as in road rage
- Inability to understand road signs and other traffic signals
- Slower eye movement and perception affecting night vision and color perception
- Inability to judge your car’s position on the road
- Inability to judge location and proximity of other vehicles
- A false sense of how competently you can drive
- Lack of emotion and behavior regulation
Prevention of Impaired Driving
Drug and alcohol-impaired driving are preventable with education and political action. Educating people about the dangers of impaired driving helps bring awareness. National Impaired Driving Prevention Month is a starting point for awareness and education. Awareness and education about the problems of substance-impaired and texting driving are not enough. Laws about substance-impaired and texting driving must be tougher and enforced for drivers.
Medical issues and aging require intervention from family and healthcare professionals before a tragedy occurs, and law enforcement becomes involved. One step concerned family members can take to address older drivers is to ask family members to have a physical evaluation. Requesting a senior to take a driving test to evaluate the ability to operate a car is essential. Failing a driving test should start a conversation about driving alternatives. As a last resort, concerned family members may have to report those who unsafely drive to their state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). While stopping impaired driving takes commitment and tough decisions from lawmakers, friends, coworkers, and family, the time and effort can help prevent personal injury and death.
