Dynamic Characteristics of Alcohol-Impaired Human Controllers*

Abstract Although the operation of vehicles like airplanes and cars involves a complex array of perceptual, decision and control activities, most accident statistics clearly show that intoxicated operators, and not the difficulty of the task itself, are a dominant cause of accidents. This paper summarizes some recent research on the nature of the impairment of operator control under "blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) up to 0.16 percent. Alcohol toxicity is shown to be quite specific with respect to visual-motor functions involved in control of a vehicle, and experiments with a generalized workload task and special driving simulator show how these are reflected in terms of changes in operator control parameters such as response latency, gains, stability margins, and coherency.