Skills performance at low blood alcohol levels

Abstract

The effect of low blood alcohol levels (BALs) on driving skills performance was examined experimentally. Ten moderate drinkers were tested on divided-attention and information processing tasks at BALs of zero, 15, 30, 45 and 60 mg/dl. All response measures showed evidence of impairment beginning at 15 mg/dl and increasing impairment with increasing BALs. Thus there is no evidence that low or very low BALs improve performance on driving-related skills, as has sometimes been suggested.