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Drinking, Driving and Taking Lives

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On a dark night in 2007, Jessica Rasdall and her best friend went out for entertainment, but primarily, a night of heavy drinking. Even after being too impaired to drive, Jessica drove herself and her friend home, but sadly, did not make it there. Jessica crashed the car, killing her best friend. Now she faces four years in prison, and the grim reminder of the death of a young woman that could have been avoided (I Killed). Every year thousands of people are killed because of alcohol impaired driving. Alcohol is a liquid substance that negatively affects the body, and it is a contributing factor to many car accidents each year, but steps can be taken to educate and protect citizens about this issue (Bergan). Alcohol is a colorless liquid that is intoxicating by being absorbed into the bloodstream and brought to the brain. This liquid affects the body in many ways. It affects the heart, lungs, skin, blood, and brain. It is a vasodilator which makes blood vessels relax and allow more blood to flow through the skin and tissues. Alcohol does not change the appearance of the drinker much, there is just a warm flushed look from the increase in blood flow (Independent). There are different ways to know when someone has been drinking. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when someone has been drinking because they can’t walk or talk. Other times it is difficult to tell because they are used to drinking alcohol and doesn’t affect them much anymore. At the level of impairment people have little or no ability to make quick decisions or have any motor skills for driving (“Cold”). At about .02% blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the amount of alcohol that is in the blood stream, there is loss of judgement, relaxation, visual functions, and ability to perform tasks. When reaching a BAC of .05% performance is impaired, there is slow eye movements, visual perception, reaction time and information processing. At .08% BAC muscle coordination is poor, there is little self control, reasoning, and memory is impaired (“Drinking”). Any amount of alcohol affects the body and the way it works. The more that is consumed, the worse impairment of brain functions get (Independent). Nonetheless Drinking and driving is a dangerous matter and takes a huge toll on Americans because it is such a dangerous activity, even though death and injury rates have dropped in the past 10 years because law enforcement is enforcing laws more but it is still a problem. Hundreds of thousands of people are injured and 11,000 die every year from impaired driving (Bergen). Out of all of car accidents that happen every year, in america, 41% of them involve alcohol. Motorcycle accidents are also happen a lot and 44% of those crashes involve alcohol in some way whether the motorcycle driver was drinking or another driver was and hit them. Not only do the drivers harm themselves by drinking and driving, they harm people that are on or near the road. About 47% of pedestrian and 37% of passenger deaths are ca

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