Erratic Driving – Drunk or Distracted?A police officer will often testify that it was erratic driving that caused him to stop a vehicle for suspicion of OUI.  Yet erratic driving is often caused by innocent non-alcohol related behavior.   Driving distractions such as using cell phones, lighting cigarettes, eating food or changing radio stations or CDs can cause such symptoms of drunk driving as ”swerving” or “drifting” — leading to an officer’s incorrect conclusion that the driver is intoxicated.

The fact is, however, that distracted driving can be more dangerous than intoxication.

Researchers at the University of Utah conducted a study comparing the driving performance of cell-phone drivers with drivers legally intoxicated from alcohol.  The study was cleverly entitled Fatal Distraction? A Comparison of the Cell-Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver and was given at the Second International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driving Assessment, Training and Design (July 2003). Using a simulator, the researchers measured how subjects reacted to vehicles braking in front of them.

The results?  Drivers conversing on a cell phone were involved in more rear-end collisions, and their reactions were 8% slower relative to normal baseline; it also took them 15% longer to return to normal speed. By contrast, drivers who were legally drunk (at or above .08% blood-alcohol) showed no higher accident rates than normal, nor did they exhibit significant variation from normal baselines for reaction times or return to normal speeds.

The researchers concluded: Drivers on cell phones showed greater impairment, less responsive behavior and more accidents than drunk drivers.

It was also shown that it did not matter whether the cell phone was hand-held or hands-free. Both forms of cell phone communication were equally impairing