The news is filled with individuals who have been caught driving under the influence and are now paying the piper for their indulgence. Not everyone knows precisely what it means to be driving under the influence, however; this is one point on which the newsmen are generally failry unclear.

Driving under the influence means that you have been caught driving with a BAC of greater that .08% What is a BAC? BAC in an individual’s blood alcohol content, or the percentage of their blood that is alcohol. This is determined by use of either a breathalyzer test or a blood test. A breathalyzer is a device which will determine the alcohol content of a driver’s breath and use this to calculate the alcohol content of the individual’s blood. (A driver’s breath generally contains 1/2300 of the alcohol that is found in an individual’s blood). This allows an officer to ascertain whether an individual has imbibed what may be considered an excessive amount of alcohol prior to getting behind the wheel of a car without having a waiting period.

Another method of determining a driver’s blood alcohol content is to ask them to submit a blood test. This will require the individual to have their blood drawn by a medical professional in the presence of an officer of the court to have it tested for alcohol. This is generally a more lengthy procedure, and because of the time that must inevitably elapse before an individual’s blood can be drawn this is much less accurate when determining the level of alcohol the driver had in their system when they were actually operating a vehicle. For this reason a breathalyzer will almost inevitably be the method used to determine whether a driver is fit to operate a vehicle.

Why .08%? Alcohol is a depressant, which is why so many people use it in an attempt to “relax and unwind”. What this also means is that an increased amount of alcohol in a person’s system will greatly slow down their reaction times. While this is not a big deal when the individual is sitting at home it can be fatal if they are behind the wheel of a car on a busy highway. As a result, professionals have determined that a BAC of .08% is the maximum amount at which an individual’s response times are considered normal enough that they are safe behind the wheel of a car.

Driving under the influence means that an individual is not able to safely operate a vehicle, and may be a hazard to themselves and those around them. For this reason the legal system is particularly hard on those they consider to have broken their laws with regard to alcohol consumption.