How many beers break the law ?

Unofficial decoding of 0.03% Blood Alcohol Content

How many beers break the law ?

What does it mean to you and me ?

Read along to know the reality and don't forget to write your comment...

The thought

As all my friends know, I am typically a non-drinker famous for my coke or mocktail glass in the crowd of beer & wine glasses. In one or two outings I graduated to some bacardi breezer. Then there was another problem. Cops on Delhi roads at night, armed with alcometers sniffing out the drunk drivers. Then began my search (and often discussed among friends) how much is this legal limit in terms of a common man.

Official Decoding

Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) means concentration of alcohol in a person's blood.

In India the legal limit of BAC is 0.03% means 30 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood.(Section 185 of Motor Vehicles Act 1988. )

Unofficial Decoding (simplified for you and me)

Now comes the next question, how much booze does this magic number of 0.03% mean ?

I went on to search multiple sites, references, documents, govt-publications. The first thing everybody said were all those diplomatic answers, "it depends on person to person, dependent on weight, metabolism, gender etc etc etc ...". After some digging deeper, and some calculation later, got some standard/general references.

The real Stuff ... It goes like this...

In these examples 1 bottle of beer means a 650ml bottle with 5% alcohol content

• For a male, one bottle of beer (650ml,with 5% alcohol) in 1 hour is around the safe range (about 0.02% to 0.03% BAC). Anything more than that goes in the illegal boundary.
  After 3 hours your BAC should be almost 0.00%
  
  
• If you consume about 3 bottles of beer in 1 hour, then you are at about 4 times the legal limit :-(
  
  
• With 3 bottles of beer, it takes you about 6 to 7 hours (after the last beer) to come back in the legal limit of 0.03%
  (Our liver can remove alcohol from the blood at the rate of about 10ml per hour.)
  
  
• Heavy persons (since they have more water & fat content) will have slightly lower BAC :-)
  
  
• Females will have slightly higher BAC levels for similar consumption :-(
  Females should wait at least 1 hour after even 1 bottle of beer to come in the legal limit.

Is this crazy limit realistic & justified?

After all this gyan, I was curious to see if putting this crazy limit (0.03%) is actually realistic or not.

Read on & decide for yourself

BAC(%)	Behaviour	Impact on ...
0.01–0.029 (LegalLimit)	Average individual appears normal	Subtle effects that can be detected with special tests
0.03–0.059 (Illegal)	Mild euphoria Sense of well-being Relaxation Joyous Talkativeness Decreased inhibition	Alertness Judgment Coordination Concentration
0.06–0.10 (2 hrs after 2 beers)	Blunted Feelings Disinhibition Extroversion	Reflexes Reasoning Depth Perception Distance Acuity Peripheral Vision Glare Recovery
0.11–0.20 (6 hrs after 4 beers)	Over-Expression Emotional Swings Angry or Sad Boisterous	Reaction Time Gross Motor Control Staggering Slurred Speech
0.21–0.29 (5 hrs after 2 Martini)	Stupor Loss of Understanding Impaired Sensations	Severe Motor Impairment Loss of Consciousness Memory Blackout
0.30–0.39	Severe Depression Unconsciousness Death Possible	Bladder Function Breathing Heart Rate
>0.40	Unconsciousness Death	Breathing Heart Rate

It is strongly believed that these figures (legal or otherwise) are meant for 4 wheelers.

Motor cyclists with even small traces of alcohol are at a very high risk of a crash.

Myths

• Drinking coffee increases awareness; therefore, the drinker believes that they are more sober.
  In reality, the person is still impaired for the purposes of driving, as their coordination, reaction time, etc. are still affected by the alcohol in blood and BAC reading would still show the real picture.
  
  
• Eating various dehydrated and salty products such as crackers, chips etc may settle the stomach allowing the consumer to feel more sober.
  In reality, they are simply keeping the blood sugars from crashing, as drinking without the consumption of food would.

Some posters worth looking at ...

(These posters are properties of respective owners)

Poster picked from Delhi Traffic Police Website

Your comments & sugessions are definitely welcome :-)