Research has shown that young people who drive after drinking have a higher relative risk of crash involvement than older drinking drivers, at all blood alcohol concentrations (BACs). this paper focuses on the many contending explanations as to why young drinking drivers are at greater risk. A central concept in some of these explanations is inexperience with both drinking and driving. It has been speculated, for example, that since young drivers have had 'less experience with alcohol', their performance is more affected than that of older drivers given the same dose of alcohol. According to this explanation, young drivers are more 'impaired' because of either a 'special sensitivity' or 'less tolerance' to the effects of alcohol. Others have argued that the higher risk is related to the level of experience with driving - the overlearned performance of experienced drivers is less disrupted by alcohol effects. By contrast, for young 'inexperienced' drivers, whose 'spare capacity' for handling the various task demands is already heavily taxed, even small decreases in efficiency produced by alcohol create potentially critical disruptions. Accordingly, alcohol use significantly increases their risk of crash. This paper reviews the experimental/clinical literature pertinent to these hypotheses, but finds little empirical support for them. Accordingly, alternative explanations are considered. For example, the greater risk experienced by young drinking drivers may result from the disinhibiting effects of alcohol that are translated into a great willingness to accept risk among young drivers. Alternatively, the effects may be attributable more to personal and social characteristics of a subset of this group - those who engage in risky driving behaviours and who also happen to consume alcohol. For this special group of risk-takers, alcohol exacerbates behaviour that is already risky and thus contributes to an even greater risk of collision. (A)
Abstract