The best way to prevent accidents related to drunk driving is to prevent the displacement of its evenings in advance rather than relying on breathalyzers, which are “not always reliable”, suggests the director general of Éduc ‘Alcohol.
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“Plan your trips [vers la fête], how we are going to get there, how we are going to come back”, suggested Geneviève Desautels in an interview with the QMI Agency.
By choosing a designated driver for the drunken evening, revelers can afford to celebrate with a clear conscience, before realizing too late that one is no longer in a fit state to drive.
“Our young people are particularly good, because it has been zero tolerance for young people under 22 for 10 years. So when they’re 23, 24, 25, they keep doing the same thing.”
Too often, says Ms. Desautels, people overestimate their ability to drive.
“When you are no longer able to drive, your judgment is impaired. That’s why people don’t realize it,” she said.
Alco Prévention Canada, a company specializing in the sale of prevention products such as electronic breathalyzers and breathalyzers, unveiled Wednesday the results of a field experiment carried out at more than 300 office parties over the past two months.
Of more than 30,000 tests taken in that period, more than 35% of drinkers exceeded the legal limit of 0.08 mg of alcohol in their blood, and 35% of them did not suspect it, Alco reported. Prevention Canada. “Too often we hear people say: ‘I think I’m okay.’ Wrongly, of course,” said Eric Ferron, director of communications for the company, in a press release.
The test results are proof that “consumers need to use tools like breathalyzers in order to make sensible decisions,” Ferron said.
Although they can be useful in certain circumstances, the results of the test “demonstrate how useless it is to rely on breathalyzers, because precisely, it is too late,” said Geneviève Desautels. “Your judgment is impaired from the moment you take your first drink.”
What’s more, “the breathalyzers are not 100% reliable,” she said.
For example, it is possible that the last drink taken before blowing in the test will not be reflected in the result, since the alcohol may not have already been assimilated into the blood.
