By: Brice Helms
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.— According to the Centers for Disease control, car crashes are one of the most likely causes of death for a person under the age of 30. In 2018, 27% of drunk driving cases that resulted in an accident involved a person between the ages of 21 and 24.
In the United States, the limit for your blood alcohol content at which you can no longer drive a car is point zero eight. But how fast do you really get there? I wanted to see just how much alcohol it takes me to get to that legal limit.
The process was simple. Drink a few beers and see what BAC I blew on the breathalyzer machine that UAPD graciously allowed me to use. I polled a few of my friends to find out what was their beer of choice. Ultimately, Michelob Ultra narrowly defeated Natty Light as the choice beer amongst my friends.
I drank my first beer and immediately took the breathalyzer test because I was curious how much it changed the number. I blew a .214. I now see why I was instructed to wait at least ten minutes before blowing to get a more accurate number.
My first real blow was a .015. Made sense to me, the CDC website I looked at before said it takes the average person four beers to reach .08.
My second blow was .035, getting closer. I was a little surprised that the amount went up by more than the first beer was.
The third blow I started to feel the drinks. Blew a .055. I was sure the next drink would be the one to put me over the edge.
My fourth blow I blew a .081, I was legally drunk. The CDC was dead on.
While there are factors that change how alcohol affects different people, for the most part the CDC says four drinks is all it will take to get you to point oh eight. This fact might be surprising to some students, I know it was for me.
People who want to go out to the bars should consider planning ahead on how they will get home.
Captain Gary Crain of the UAPD said that “There’s a dozen different ways to handle it. Set up advanced transportation. There’s all these hailing services that you can use now, regular taxi cab, a friend, call a friend. I mean if its unexpected go ahead and call somebody”.
For your safety and the safety of everyone on the road, never drink and then attempt to drive a car.