Motorbikes and Alcohol Awareness

An Imperial Pint of American craft beer

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Motorbikes and Alcohol Awareness

Riding a motorcycle can be hazardous enough, even when you have all of your faculties in tact, I mean, it’s not necessarily what you do, it’s the other drivers who can cause problems and put your life at risk. If you aren’t on the top of the your game so that you can see, evaluate and take the necessary action to avoid potential disasters, then you really shouldn’t be driving your motorcycle at all.

Alcohol and driving do not mix – end of story. Let’s look at a few facts:

  • If you have BAC (blood alcohol concentration) of as little as 0.01 – 0.04%, your judgment immediately starts to lessen, your reaction time is substantially slowed and you begin to become a more mentally relaxed.
  • By the time you reach BAC of 0.05 – 0.07%, judgment is definitely not sound, it becomes difficult to think and reason clearly, and you will find it increasingly difficult to perform complex skills.
  • If your BAC rises above 0.08% forget it, your reasoning and judgment are about out of the window, and you can’t even complete the simplest of tasks without making a mess of it.

And look at this little collection of facts and statistics:

  • even the smallest amount of alcohol in your body will increase the chances of you having an accident by an astonishing five times
  • if you have a BAC of more than 0.05%, the chances of you crashing increase forty-fold (yes, forty)
  • 46% of all fatal motorcycle crashes involved alcohol
  • 25% of these motorcycle crashes didn’t involve other vehicles or crashing into anything, the motorcycle simply ran off the road, overturned or the rider fell off.

Don’t just take my word for it, these statistics come from the NHTSA, Kentucky, Florida and Australia – so it obviously works the same if you’re down under.

Why should a little tipple make such a big difference? Well, alcohol means that you can’t SEE properly. I don’t just mean see, I mean SEE:

  • S earch for any hazards which could lead to trouble
  • E valuate how these hazards could interact and form a real risk
  • E xecute the correct form of action to maintain your safety

You see, if you’ve been drinking even a small amount of alcohol, you won’t be able to make sound judgements, evaluate situations properly or react effectively and safely to by-pass any potential problems.

Motorbike and Alcohol Awareness

The bottom line is this:

  • If you are drinking, don’t drive your motorcycle
  • If you are driving your motorcycle, don’t drink any alcohol

 

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