This post will never serve as an excuse for you to drive drunk, but it could make you think about not going anywhere when you're feeling under the weather (which could also be a pretty good excuse to just game all day). A new study finds that driving while sick is easily comparable to driving after having four double-whiskeys.
We're a little suspect of this study, but it could have huge impact, so here you go. Decide for yourself.
Young Marmalade, a U.K. auto insurance company partnered with Cardiff University (Wales) for this study, which found your driving skills drop about 50 percent when you're not feeling well.
The company wouldn't release the full study, but ABC News did some quick math and found that about 1 million Americans are driving with a cold on any given day. Add in the drunks, and we've seemingly got a huge problem on our hands, but then again, we already know that automobile death is painfully high. (30,797 auto-related fatalities in 2009 according to the NHTSA. Wikipedia pegs 2010 at 32,708, following a downward trend since 2006.)
Plus, illness will obviously lower reaction times and alertness. Last time I was sick, it took me twenty-two minutes before I realized I had actually watched an entire episode of The New Girl without diving for the remote.
Dr. Christopher Ohl, associate professor of medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine said, "the vast majority of persons with colds or flu are unlikely to be as impaired as that from alcohol or narcotic consumption."
So decide for yourself if you'd like to crawl into that death trap you call a car next time you've got the sniffles.
Via ABC
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