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A COMPARISON OF THE POST‐MORTEM BLOOD‐ALCOHOL LEVELS OF DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS COMPARED WITH THOSE OF DRINKING DRIVERS WHO KILL PEDESTRIANS 1
Author(s) -
BiRRELL J. H. W.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1971.tb92643.x
Subject(s) - blood alcohol , crash , alcohol , blood alcohol content , medicine , injury prevention , occupational safety and health , environmental health , drunk drivers , poison control , medical emergency , drunk driving , emergency medicine , demography , psychology , biology , computer science , pathology , biochemistry , programming language , sociology
A series of post‐mortem blood‐alcohol estimations on 38 dead car drivers responsible for their fatal crashes in Victoria is compared with the postmortem blood‐alcohol levels of their dead passengers, both victims having died within four hours of the crash. These are compared with the blood‐ alcohol levels of 38 drinking drivers who killed pedestrians. Only four drivers showed no alcohol in the blood, as did only four of the passengers. Of the 34 passengers who were drinking, only four had blood‐alcohol levels below 0.05% (50 mg/100 ml). Drivers and passengers tended to be equally “high”, while no such relation obtained for the driver‐ pedestrian group, the blood of nearly half of the pedestrians showing no alcohol. It is essential that routine blood‐alcohol estimations be carried out on all traffic accident victims who die within six hours of the crash, and that these levels be subsequently correlated with scientific responsibility for the crash on a continuing basis. Fourteen hit‐run drivers were also examined; of the ten apprehended, only two had no story of heavy drinking. From the point of view of insurance and education, little appears to be gained by getting another occupant of a car to drive after a communal drinking session.