On the other hand, the legally drunk had fewer really bad injuries than the moderate drinkers. Drinkers (here meaning those with any amount of alcohol in them) suffered more head injuries on average, had six times the death rate of nondrinkers, and were much more likely to suffer from serious injuries.
A 1992 study in Vermont focused on 427 trauma victims, 43 percent of whom had been in auto accidents.Oddly, however, they found drivers with blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) between 0.15 and 0.19 percent (i.e., really drunk - legally drunk is 0.08 percent) suffered less severe injuries than those with other, often smaller amounts of alcohol in their system. Examining data on more than a million drivers involved in car crashes in North Carolina, a research team headed by Patricia Waller reported in 1986 that drunk drivers were roughly twice as likely as sober drivers to be seriously injured in a car crash and two to four times more likely to die.(Women didn’t see much difference.) Overall, the drunker the victim, the less severe his injuries and the less likely he was to die. A two-year study at a Seattle trauma center found intoxicated men had lower death rates and less severe injuries than sober men for all types of trauma except car accidents.
Subsequent studies have produced mixed results, but even those undercutting the lucky-drunk hypothesis had their puzzling aspects. Complication: the researchers were looking at all kinds of trauma, not just trauma caused by car wrecks. The surprise: The death rate among nondrinkers was one in six the death rate among drinkers, one in nine. Drinkers and nondrinkers had equally severe injuries. Roughly a third of the 1,200 patients had been drinking. Although it’s been floating around for a long time, scientists apparently first examined it seriously in a 1982 study of trauma victims treated at a Texas hospital (Ward et al, American Journal of Surgery).
We’ll call what you’re describing the lucky-drunk hypothesis. However, while all the facts aren’t in, there’s reason to think drunk drivers sometimes get a break they don’t deserve. If somebody’s going to walk away from a fatal car crash, you really want it not to be the inebriated loser who caused it.
0 kommentar(er)
