Student corner n°1
Drinking and driving

The text
October 18, 2011, The NY times
Friends Still Let Friends Drive Drunk
By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D.
On Sept. 15, Matthew Grape, 21, got into the passenger seat of a car with one of his Duke University fraternity brothers. The driver hit a tree, escaping with minor injuries, but killing his dear friend. According to local press reports, the driver was charged with impaired driving.
Nearly 11,000 deaths related to alcohol-impaired driving still occur each year in the United States, despite a three-decade surge in anti-drunken driving activism, stricter laws and clever slogans like “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” There are more than 110 million instances of impaired driving each year, according to data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey and summarized in a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
How can this still be occurring, and what can be done about it?
Back in 1980, when Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed in California by a drunken driver with several previous arrests for driving while intoxicated, including one only two days earlier, there was little public discussion of the topic, even though drunken drivers killed 25,000 Americans annually. Crashes were called “accidents,” and victims were characterized as having been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Police and prosecutors routinely allowed drunken drivers to plead to lesser offenses, and few served any time in prison. Officials politely told the families of victims to “get on with their lives.”
When a police officer told Ms. Lightner that the man who had killed her daughter would probably receive only a slap on the wrist, she was incredulous and livid. She formed Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, one of the first citizen groups devoted to the issue. Within five years, the organization had more than 300 chapters and 600,000 members. Its relentless lobbying efforts and publicity campaigns helped lead to the passage of 700 new drunken driving laws and the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
MADD unabashedly heaped criticism on people who willfully drank and drove without regard to the threat they caused. The connection of alcohol and driving, formerly celebrated on television, in movies and in advertising, became stigmatized. Drunken driving deaths began to decline.
Too many young people still climb into cars after drinking, despite hearing countless admonitions against drunken driving in health classes in high school and from their parents and friends.
Adolescent feelings of invulnerability no doubt play a role. But other, more subtle reasons probably contribute as well.
Binge drinking at colleges remains a huge problem. Despite public health campaigns to eliminate drinking on campuses, the alcohol industry continues to sponsor events, and provocative advertisements persist. Men ages 21 to 34 and binge drinkers of all ages are those most likely to drive while drunk.
In addition, scientifically proven methods for lowering drunken driving deaths are being underused, as the C.D.C. report points out. These include sobriety checkpoints, in which drivers are stopped to assess their level of alcohol impairment. Twelve states don’t use them at all, while many others underuse them. Ignition interlocks, which prevent those who have been drinking from starting their cars, are used for only one in five persons convicted of driving while intoxicated, although they lower the rate of subsequent arrests by two-thirds. Designated drivers have become more commonplace, but they are much more socially accepted in other countries like Sweden and Australia.
Finally, and ironically, the recent focus on distracted driving, in which drivers text or speak on their cellphones, may have distracted our attention from drunken driving. Both are enormous public health problems.
Some might argue that measures to control drunken driving in the United States have been remarkably successful. After all, the number of people who will die because of alcohol-related crashes this year is less than half what it was 30 years ago.
But it is unlikely that the families of thousands of other victims of drunken driving would agree. Drunken driving remains among the most preventable of violent injuries. Every time we lose a young person — or an old person — to this crime, it is as tragic as it was in 1980.

Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University Medical Center, is author of “One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900,” just published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

The summary text
Friend still let friends drive drunk
Each year in the United States, nearly 11,000 people die from driving after excessive drinking, and 25,000 Americans are killed by drunk drivers.
Despite campaigns for 30 years against it, there are over 110 million cases of drunk driver each year.
In 1980, one of those drivers killed a 13 years old girl, Cari. Prosecutors characterized the victims as just 'being in the wrong place at the wrong time'. Shocked, Candy Lightner, Cari’s mother, founded the association 'Mother Against Drunk Driving.". This association led to the adoption of new laws on drunk driving and moving to the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1983.
Deaths driving because of drunk people have since begun to decline. But accidents are still frequent.
This September 15, a drunk student died in a car accident. It was his friend, just as drunk as him, who was driving. This one is not dead.
Despite the warnings, what has pushed them into a car while they were drunk?
Certainly the sense of invulnerability of adolescents is something to do with all this. But the alcohol abuse in college can be also a cause.
Many student events are focus on alcohol. It follows therefore that young people aged between 21 and 34 are the most susceptible driving after drinking.
Many methods such as roadblocks or ignition interlocks are under-used to reduce deaths related to drinking and driving.
Besides drunken driving, distracted driving, by calling or sending messages, is also a major public health problem.
Even if the number of deaths caused by alcohol is twice as low as thirty years ago, drunk driving is a preventable violent injury.

My opinion
I chose to deal with this subject because I think drunk driving is a problem which particularly affects young people. Sometimes we are unconscious and car accidents are a frequent consequence of it (and even when not drunk). But we think that only happens to others but not to us. Until we or someone close was a victim of alcohol.
I think the number of deaths due to alcohol is enormous. The problem is that alcohol affects our judgments and so we think we are able to drive. Yet there are other ways to get home, like by taxi, or with someone who did not drink (with a designated driver “the bob” for example).
We also put the lives of others in danger and that's what I find the most unacceptable and unforgivable. People lose their lives for the mistakes others have made.
I heard about the volunteers who drive cars instead of their owner when they were drunk. It is a good initiative but I don’t believe that it will reduce the number of drunk drivers.
Regarding the “legal drinking age” in America, I think the reduction in teen drinking and driving is due to it. But in the other side, if they allow their 16 year olds to drive a car, it is not surprising that there have accidents because some of them are not enough mature to drive.

Activities
Discussion
1. Do you believe that the reduction in teen drinking and driving accidents since 1983 in America is due to the minimum drinking age?
2. Doesn't a "legal drinking age" just make alcohol more attractiv that teenagers try harder to get?
3. Why do college students drink excessively?
4. Have you ever driven while drunk? or have you ever been in a car driven by someone who had been drinking?
7. Have you ever heard about the volunteers who drive at home people under influence of alcohol?
Do you know the law in Belgium?
1. What is the minimum age to buy alcohol? Answer: 16 years
2. And for the strong alcohol? Answer: 18 years old
3. Can a bartender refuse to serve you alcohol if you are too drunk? Answer: Yes, he has to. The penalty is doubled if the person is under 18 years.
4. What blood alcohol content can we not exceed if we have to drive?
Answer: If the result is less than 0.22 mg, but less than 0.35 milligrams of alcohol per liter of expired air, A prohibition from driving for a period of three hours is imposed to you.
If the result is less than 0.35 milligrams of alcohol per liter of expired air, You is imposed a prohibition from driving for a period of six hours. At the end of these six hours, you will need to undergo a new breath test.
We can no longer have only a maximum of 0.5 per thousand of alcohol in the blood.
5. What amount of alcohol do you need to drink to have a blood alcohol content of 0.5? Answer: two glasses of wine but it depends of the sex or the height.
And in the others countries?
0,8 pour mille : Grande-Bretagne, Irlande, Italie,
0,5 pour mille : Pays-Bas, Portugal, France, Grèce, Espagne, 0,35 pour mille : Luxembourg
0,3 pour mille : Allemagne
0,2 pour mille : Norvège
0 : Hongrie, Pologne, Roumanie, Slovaquie, Tchéquie, Suède
QUIZZ (A map of world alcohol consumption)
Sort these countries according to their average alcohol consumption (from the smallest to the largest consumer)
1. CHINA - TANZANIA - PERU - COLOMBIA - BOLIVIA
2. NORTH AFRICA SAUDI - IRAN
3. CANADA - USA - QUEBEC - MEXICO - BRAZIL - SOUTH AFRICA - NORWAY - JAPAN
4. ARGENTINE - NIGERIA - AUSTRALIA - KAZAKHSTAN - ITALY - SPAIN - SWEDEN - GREECE - BELGIUM
5. RUSSIA - FRANCE - FINLAND - ENGLAND - IRELAND
6. INDIA - TURKEY - MONGOLIA - KENYA - SUDAN - CONGO
Good answer : 2 – 6 – 1 – 3 – 4 – 5

Quizz for life!
1. What is the legal rate of alcohol do not reach to drive?
O.3 grams per liter of blood
0.5 grams per liter of blood
0.7 grams per liter of blood
O.5!

2. Served in a bar, a glass of whiskey contains more alcohol than a glass of beer
True or False?
False!

3.With a glass of whiskey, what is the rate of alcohol of a woman?
0.24 grams per liter of blood
0.33 grams per liter of blood
O.35 grams per liter of blood
O.33!

4.How long does it take for a woman to remove a glass of alcohol?
Between 1H30 ET 2H
Between 2H and 3H
Between 3H and 4H
Between 3H and 4H!

5.If a man goes to bed at 4am with 2 grams of alcohol per liter of blood, what time will he be allowed to drive?
After 11H?
After 13 H30?
After 14H?
After 14H!

6.How are multiplied by the risk of accidents with an alcohol rate of 0.5 grams per liter of blood? x1, 5 x2 x3
x2!