Brain Injury Lawyer Blog

In the previous blog, the AP story is about a man arrested with a lethal dose of alcohol concentration in his blood, .491%. Not only did he survive (the highest known level for someone who did) he was driving prior to his arrest.

Intoxicated driving is a particularly relevant topic for a brain injury attorney, as so much of what we do involve motor vehicle wrecks. It has and always will be one of the most serious hazards on the roads. As someone who has dealt with BAC’s over .30 on occasion, this one is staggering. The highest I have run into in my practice is a .40, but that was in a young man who died of alcohol intoxication.

The highest I encountered with a defendant driver was a .32, which quite outrageously was in a pharmacist, who was actually “on call”. He admitted to me in his deposition (shortly before the case settled) that any concentration above .30 is potentially lethal.

Alcohol and driving don’t mix. But the equation isn’t quite that simple. Alcohol, driving and late night driving, are particularly dangerous.

Fatigue is one of the single biggest factors in alcohol related accidents and way too many people, drive the drunkest, when they would otherwise be asleep. In addition to the far too common situation of an intoxicated driver falling asleep, alcohol is particularly dangerous when an unexpected situation presents itself to the driver.

Pure reaction time doesn’t change dramatically at and around the legal limit of .08, but unexpected reaction times change significantly. By unexpected reactions times I mean the type of situation where something unexpected happened that required the driver to think and use instant judgment, as part of the reaction.

What makes the combination of fatigue and alcohol so deadly is that fatigue has very similar effects on situational reaction. Add the two risk factors together and you have an exponential increase in danger.2008