Reassessing Fitness-to-Drive in Drinker Drivers: The Role of Cognition and Personality

Drunken driving is among the main challenges for road safety by causing worldwide motor-vehicle crashes with severe injuries and deaths. The reassessment of fitness-to-drive in drivers stopped for drunken driving includes mainly psychological examinations. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and the consistency of selected variables of different psychological driving-related dimensions (i.e., cognitive skills and personality) in discriminating 90 male drinker drivers (DD) from matched non-drinkers controls. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Mental Rotation Test (MRT), and the Perspective-Taking Test (PT) were administered to assess overall cognitive functioning, and object- and self-based spatial transformation abilities, respectively. Participants completed a computerized test measuring resilience of attention (DT), reaction times (RT), and perceptual speed (ATAVT). The Personality Psychopathology Five scales (i.e., PSY-5: Aggressiveness-AGGR, Psychoticism-PSYC, Disconstraint-DISC, Negative-Emotionality-NEGE, and Introversion-INTR) the validity scale (L) and the dissimulation index (F-K) were scored from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). A logistic binomial regression analysis (backward subtraction method) was used to identify discriminant predictors. A prediction analysis (ROC curve method) was performed on the final model. Results showed that the scores obtained in MRT, DT, and the personality measures of PSYC, DISC, NEGE, and INTR significantly discriminated DD from their matched controls with moderate-to-good values of accuracy (0.79), sensitivity (0.80), and specificity (0.79), as well as a good AUC value (0.89). In some cases, the personality dimensions provided—reliable—unexpected results. Low scores of PSYC, NEGE, and INTR were found to predict the membership to the DD group; results are discussed with reference to response management. Personality measures should be assessed with particular attention in a forensic context because they are more prone to be feigned than cognitive ones. Overall, the present study confirmed the relevance of integrating different driving-related psychological dimensions in the evaluation of fitness-to-drive showing the usefulness of standardized tools for the reassessment of drinker drivers.

Automatic Alcohol Detection System

In pretty much every industry and field, innovation keeps on disturbing old frameworks and opening up new pathways. Not more so than in the field of law enforcement, where analysts, designers, and tech virtuosos are chipping away at further developed apparatuses not exclusively to uphold DUI, yet additionally to forestall it. Maybe the most encouraging of these drives is the Alcohol Safety Detection System, fostering an innovation that will consequently keep an intoxicated driver from driving an engine vehicle, an attempt will be made to fabricate a locking mechanism for vehicles so it would not begin without an Alcohol detection system. This paper portrays a driver alcohol concentration detection framework dependent on breath testing, created utilizing a microcontroller Compatible Compiler, that permits the program of microcontroller boards. The framework can gauge the liquor from the breath test and control the activity of the vehicle start framework to forestall smashed driving. Additionally, the utilization of virtual instrumentation gives high adaptability, in contrast to traditional methods. Drunken driving has become a significant problem in present-day culture. It is a typical reason for vehicle crashes including human mistakes. This venture focused on developing a system to prevent, in anticipation of making everyday traffic safe. Keywords: Alcohol safety detection system, MQ3 sensor, Arduino UNO.

Design of Driver Alcohol Detection System with Automatic Engine Locking

Drunken Driving is one of the most fatal causes of premature deaths around the world. According to WHO, about 20% of the fatally injured drivers have excess alcohol in their blood in high income countries whereas the figures may be as high as 69% in low and middle income countries. In India alone, there have been 38,000 road mishaps due to drunk driving in the past three years according to the latest report of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The objective of this paper is to make human driving safer and overcome such incidences. The present paper describes the process of detection of alcohol in sample breath testing, developed using Arduino and Arduino Integrated Design Environment (IDE). The system will sense the alcohol concentration in breath and control the switching of ignition engine according the data it receives. Also, it allows the driver a delay time in case the breath is detected after the vehicle has started to avoid traffic mismanagement. Finally, it will send an SMS alert to his/her relatives/close friends to alert them of possible drunken driving incident and prevent it.

Open Letter to Mothers against Drunk Driving

Although I shall be criticizing you, even severely, please do not take this amiss. I mean your organization no harm. Quite the contrary. My two children, in their early 20’s, are both new dri-vers. I would suffer more than I can tell you if anything were to happen to them as a result of drunken driving. I am thus a sup-porter of yours. I am on your side. Please take what I say as no more than friendly amendments to your plans and proposals. Some of the following critiques may sound harsh, but friends do not mince words with each other in life and death situations, and I would like you to consider me a friend of yours. We may disagree on means, but certainly not on ends. First, you must expand your scope of operations. While drunk driving is of course a major calamity on our nation’s roads, it is far from the only one. There are quite a few others, even besides the «big three» of speed, weather conditions and driver error1. What difference does it really make if our children and loved ones die in a traffic fatality emanating from drunkenness or any of these other conditions? Happily there is no need to change even the MADD name if you adopt this suggestion. Only instead of the first «D» standing for «drunk» it could refer to «death,» as in Mothers Against Death Drivers. All of these things —alco-hol, drugs, speeding, malfunctioning vehicles, badly engineered roads, weather conditions, whatever— are threats to our fami-ly’s lives. Why single out any one of them? A possible defense of the status quo is to borrow a leaf from the economists, and defend the present, limited, status of MADD on grounds of specialization and division of labor2. True, no one organization can do everything. Better to take on a limited agenda and do it well, than to take on too much and accomplish little or nothing.

The alcoholic individual and facial trauma: a 3 years survey

Background: Road traffic accidents, under the influence of alcohol constitute a majority of patients in the emergency trauma services in tertiary health care facilities. The incidence of the same and the region predominantly involved was analysed.Methods: 61 subjects in the Otorhinolaryngology and Maxillofacial trauma services were studied, during a period of 2 years, at Dayanand medical college, Ludhiana, Punjab. In this prospective study the admission records were analysed in context to alcohol intake prior to the trauma.Results: The incidence of facial fractures, attributed to road-side accidents was the highest i.e. 72%. Other antecedent events were, assaults in 15%, fall from heights in 8% and due to sport injuries in 3.2%. 34% of our patients were under the influence of alcohol at the time of injury. Incidence of facial fracture in our series were fracture mandible, 39.3%, zygomatic 23.5%, Le Fort II 17.9% and nasoethmoid 12.3%. One case of Le Fort I, orbital and alveolar fracture was seen.Conclusions: Drunken driving in Punjab was behind one third i.e. 34% of the trauma patients in our casualty services.