THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVERS' BLOOD ALCOHOL CONCENTRATION CBAC) AND ACTUAL DRIVING PERFORMANCE DURING HIGH SPEED TRAVEL.

INTRODUCTION The disabling influence of alcohol-use on daily life functions has always been as notorious as its allurement. Yet much research— effort has been spent in this field since Goldberg Cl) demonstrated scientifically such detrimental effects with his experimental psychological test-battery in 1943. Only few authors could repro­ duce the dose—dependent relationship that he found, while others couldn’t find dose dependency or even any relationship at all. Epidemiological research gave lead to the a1coho 1 — 1 egis1 ation that has been introduced by many gouvernements. Borkenstein C2) was the first to demonstrate a relation between b1ood—a 1 coho 1—concen­ tration CBAC) and accident-risk in the famous Grand-Rapids study. These results were confirmed by many authors since C3). O ’Hanlon C4) develloped a method to measure objectively the influence of conditional changes on aspects of real driving perfoi mance. The method has proven to be very sensitive for the effects of prescription drugs. This work was done and continuous still as a part of the research effort of the Traffic Research Center of the State University in Groningen Cthe Netherlands) on participation in traffic as a behavioural phenomenon. The aim of this study was to establish a dose—effect relationship between BAC and objectively measurable aspects of real driving performance. Such relation can also serve as calibration of the method and gives an indication of implications of the effects registrered after drug-use.