Study shows alcohol increases injury

Drunken passengers are more likely to be hurt in car crashes

Intoxicated passengers face greater risk in the case of a car accident, a recent University study indicates.

"When you combine alcohol with traumatic impact, you increase the extent of the injury that results," said University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute Director Patricia Waller, who also heads the project. "If you've been drinking, you're more likely to be injured than if you haven't been drinking."

Waller originally stumbled on the phenomenon in the early 1970s in a study by the University of North Carolina. The TRI project surveyed more than 800 drivers and passengers in Southeastern Michigan emergency rooms to determine correlations between substance abuse and extremities of injuries. The TRI findings supported the original UNC conclusions.

The study showed that 55 percent of drunken drivers are likely to suffer fatal or serious injuries in automobile accidents. This rate is much higher for both sober individuals and those under the influence of other drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine, Waller said.

"We did not see this effect for the other drugs," Waller said. "Alcohol is far and away the major problem on the highway."

Although researchers are not sure exactly how alcohol causes this effect, Dr. Frederick Blow, assistant research scientist at the TRI, believes it may relate to intracellular responses.

"It probably has to do with the body with things that occur with alcohol that don't occur with other drugs," Blow said. "The important thing in the paper we published is that alcohol is making injuries, and secondly, that drugs aren't having a major effect."

Its root as a biological problem suggests the results may not be restricted to motor vehicle collisions, but include normal everyday accidents as well, Waller said.

"If you're going to drink, you probably ought to stay home," Waller said. "(The finding) shows up across the board in just about every kind of injury you can come up with."

Other results of the study showed that drunken drivers are more likely to partake in hazardous activities causing accidents and usually sustain more vehicular damage than those affected by illicit drugs.

The study shows that crashes by illicit drug users are more similar to sober drivers than intoxicated ones.

As a result, without signs of alcohol use, police officers face difficulty in determining whether the accident is drug-related, Waller said. Researchers who reviewed blood samples of car accident victims found cases of illicit drug use that police officers had overlooked.

"They were not good in detecting the drugs," Waller said.

Sgt. Bob Betzing of the Michigan State Police's Alcohol Enforcement Department mentioned cases in which people fell asleep at the wheel as a result of their marijuana use. Since such cases can be similar to drowsy sober drivers, officers trained to look for bloodshot eyes and breath stench that accompanies alcohol use may let drug-abusing drivers off if they don't notice those indicators.

"As far as the visual clues that are put into drug recognition training, most officers don't have that," Beltzer said. "Your average police officer hasn't had that training. They've had alcohol training."

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